Learn how to ask about someone's nationality
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| Geia, legomai Chrissi Hi everybody! I’m Chrissi. |
| Welcome to GreekPod101.com’s “Ελληνικά σε 3 λεπτά”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Greek. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to talk about your plans. In this lesson, we are going to deal with the verb “to be” in Greek, eimai. |
| We will also discuss how to talk about your nationality. |
| When you meet a new person in Greece, they might ask you Apo pou eisai? which is an almost word-to-word translation of "Where are you from?" Let’s break it down: |
| Apo means “from” |
| Pou means “where” |
| Eisai? means “you are” –here, by raising the tone in the first syllable, we make it a question. So instead of “you are”, we end up with “are you”. You might have noticed that there is no actual “you” in there; the verb itself provides the person, in this case the second person singular which, as we have mentioned in previous lessons, is the casual way to address someone. If you want to use the polite form, you replace eisai with eiste. |
| All together it's Apo pou eisai? |
| [slowly] Apo pou eisai? |
| Or for the polite form |
| Apo pou eiste? |
| [slowly] Apo pou eiste? |
| Answering this question is very easy! You just say Είμαι, which means "I am", then your nationality. |
| For example: Eimai amerikanós |
| [slowly] Eimai amerikanós |
| Just replace “Amerikanós” with your own nationality. |
| "I am German" is Eimai Germanos |
| "I am Italian" is Eimai Italos |
| Be careful, because this is how you refer to your nationality if you are male. For the feminine form, the words change a little- |
| Amerikanos becomes Amerikanida, |
| Germanos becomes Germanida and |
| Italos becomes Italida |
| Let’s say these ones separately... |
| If you are an American woman, you will say – Eimai amerikanida |
| German women will say- |
| Eimai germanida |
| And Italian women will say- |
| Eimai italida. |
| To return the question you can simply say Esy? which is "You?" in a casual way. If you want to ask in the polite way, you can say Eseis? |
| Now it’s time for Chrissi’s Insights. |
| The question Apo pou eisai? we learned in this lesson isn’t only used for nationalities; you can also use it to ask from which part of Greece the other person is from. Since the word “pou” is generic enough, it can apply to any location, within the country or international. Some hardcore Athenians even use it to ask from which particular part of the city the other person is from, while it is very common in the Greek countryside to mean “which village do you come from?” |
| In this lesson we learned how to talk about nationalities. In the next lesson, we will look at the verb “eimai” some more and how it is used to talk about locations. By the way, do you know how to ask someone where they are in Greek? I'll be waiting for you with the answer in the next lesson! |
| Tha ta ksanapoume sto epomeno mathima! |
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