Learn how to write gama and epseelon
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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! |
| Great job on making it this far! After this lesson, you will have learned half of the Greek alphabet; yes, in this lesson we will learn our twelfth letter. That is, 12 out of 24! |
| Let’s do a quick review of our previous letters. They were “Alpha”, “Mee”, “Taf”, “Yota”, “Kappa”, “Omikron”, “Pee”, “Seegma”, “Eeta” and “Psee”. Have you been practicing them regularly? So I’m sure you have figured out their small quirks and are ready for two more; one very similar to English and one unique to Greek. |
| Let’s start from the exotic one! It is the consonant, “Gama” which makes a “g” sound and might be a little difficult for English speakers since it doesn’t have an exact English equivalent. Most people treat it like a “g” but it is softer; more like the “y” sound in “you” or “young”. |
| Here’s the uppercase form of “Gama”. |
| It is handwritten like this: |
| Γ |
| And here’s the lowercase form of “Gama”. This might seem a little difficult to remember since there is no similarity between the uppercase and the lowercase form so all you can do is learn it by heart! |
| It is handwritten like this: |
| γ |
| Let’s do it again- Here’s the uppercase form: |
| And here’s the lowercase form: |
| Ok, the hard part is over so let’s get to something more familiar! How about the “eh” sound as in the English “them”? In Greek it’s represented by the vowel “Epseelon”, sometimes called “epsilon” in English. |
| Here is the uppercase version. |
| It is handwritten like this: |
| Ε |
| And this is what the lowercase “Epseelon” looks like. It’s not that different than the uppercase “Epseelon” --just more rounded. Sort of like how you would write a backwards “3” |
| It is handwritten like this: |
| ε |
| Let’s do it again- Here’s the uppercase form: |
| And here’s the lowercase form: |
| Not that hard, was it? I mean, you already knew the uppercase from English; as for the lowercase, well it’s just a squiggly line, isn’t it? |
| Let’s use something new and something old to write a short but very important word. It is “Γη” and it means “Earth”. It’s written using today’s “Gama” and Lesson 5’s “Eeta”. Here we go: |
| Γη |
| This was short so let’s write something bigger like “full”. In Greek it’s “γεμάτος” and it’s written like this: |
| Γεμάτος |
| Notice though that this is the masculine form. For the feminine you should use “Γεμάτη” and for the neutral “Γεμάτο”: |
| So let’s recap the first half of the Greek alphabet: “Alpha”, “Mee”, “Taf”, “Yota”, “Kappa”, “Omikron”, “Pee”, “Sigma”, “Eeta”, “Psee”, “Gama” and “Epseelon”. These are all familiar by now, right? |
| Now it's time for Stefania’s insights. |
| Like I said in the beginning, we have covered half of the Greek alphabet. This is no small feat and I hope you feel proud! Even though we are still missing some important letters, the ones we have covered so far are enough to be able to read and write hundreds of Greek words so please don’t neglect your reading and practicing! Furthermore, I’d like to suggest something: using the letters you know, try to read a Greek text and try to guess the ones you don’t. It might sound strange but it will help your Greek because it will hone your instinct for the language. |
| Besides air, food and water, there is something else you can’t live without -can you guess what it is? The answer (and the way to write it) is in the next Alfaveeto made easy lesson so don’t miss it! |
| Ya hara! |
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