Learn how to write pee and seegma
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| Hi everybody, this is Stefania! Welcome to Greekpod101.com’s Alfaveeto made easy. |
| The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn the Greek alphabet: the alfaveeto! |
| In the last three lessons, we covered six letters: “Alpha”, “Mee”, “Taf”, “Yota”, “Kappa” and “Omikron” which I’m sure you remember very well since they are almost identical to the English “a”, “m”, “t”, “i”, “k” and “o”. So this time I thought we could try something a little more challenging! How about two letters unique to Greek in appearance? It might sound difficult but I think you can manage! |
| Our first letter is the consonant, “Pee”. It sounds exactly the same as the English “p” but it’s written in a different way. Let’s have a look at it. |
| Here is what the uppercase “Pee” looks like. |
| It is handwritten like this: Π |
| And this is how the lowercase “Pee” looks like. It’s almost the same as the uppercase “Pee” but you notice that the horizontal line is a little longer. |
| It is handwritten like this: π |
| Let’s do it again- Here’s the uppercase form: Π |
| And here’s the lowercase form: π |
| For anyone who has done math, the lowercase “Pee” will seem immediately familiar since it’s the famous, impossibly long number starting with “3,14”! Most English speakers call it “pie” but now you know its real name is “Pee”. It comes from the first letter of the Greek word “peh-ree-feh-ree-a” meaning the circumference of a circle. |
| But enough with math! You are here to learn how to write Greek, right? So let’s move to our second letter for today. |
| It’s another consonant but very important to the writing of the Greek language. In English, it’s often called Sigma, but in Greek it’s “Seegma” and makes an “s” sound. Interestingly enough, this letter has three forms, one in uppercase and two in lowercase –it’s the only letter with this peculiarity and this happens because it is often used as a final letter in Greek, which is when you use the third shape. |
| This is what the uppercase Seegma looks like: |
| It is handwritten like this: |
| And here’s the lowercase Seegma; it’s like an Omikron but with a small line protruding to the right. |
| It is handwritten like this: |
| And this is what the ending Seegma looks like. It is similar to the English “s”, isn’t it? |
| Let’s do it again- Here’s the uppercase form: |
| Here’s the lowercase form: |
| And here’s the ending Seegma: |
| Now let’s see what we can do with the letters we have learned so far! |
| In our first lesson we used “Mee” and “Alpha” to write “mama” or “mom”, right? So how about we write the Greek word for “dad”? With the letters from this lesson we have everything we need. The word is “μπαμπάς” (“babas”). |
| Let’s write it! |
| Μπαμπάς |
| If you noticed that “Mee” and “Pee” together actually sound like “B”, you were right. In Greek we don’t have a separate letter for the sound “B” so we form it using “Mee” and “Pee” –this is a little bit complicated, but we’ll go over it in detail in the last lesson of this series which is all about double consonants (don’t worry, if you learn the single letters, the double ones won’t be a problem, I promise!) |
| Is there something more simple we can write with these letters? Well there is –actually something very useful! How about the word “ποτό” meaning “drink” as in “πάμε για ένα ποτό” or “let’s go for a drink”. Here it is: ποτό. |
| And it’s handwritten like this: ποτό |
| Okay! You’ve made it through four lessons! Let’s have a look at all the letters we have learned: “Alpha”, “Mee”, “Taf”, “Yota”, “Kappa”, “Omikron”, “Pee” and “Sigma”. Not bad, huh? |
| Now it's time for Stefania’s insights. |
| An alphabet has many letters but not all letters are created equal! The letters you’ve learned so far are the most commonly used in Greek. So even though you only know a third of the letters, you’ll be able to read a lot more than a third of Greek texts! The ending Seegma in particular pops up a lot. Try this: Print some text from a Greek web site and mark all the ending Seegmas red. How many did you count in one page? |
| Up until now, we’ve seen familiar letters -are you ready for an exotic looking one? There is a letter resembling the symbol of the legendary Greek god of the sea, Poseidon -care to see how it looks? Check out our next Alfaveeto made easy lesson! |
| Ya hara! |
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