Learn how to say "not" and "don't have"
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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 our previous lessons, we learned how to use the verbs eimai and echo –“I am” and “I have”. In this lesson, we’re going to learn how to turn these two verbs into their negative forms so you can say "I'm not" and "I don't have." |
| So let's take an example. Imagine you are about to go to a party with a Greek friend. You ask him if he is ready, and he answers Den eimai etoimos. |
| Then, you ask him if he has a car to use to go to the party and he says Den echo autokinito. |
| Let’s look at these two negative sentences- |
| Then eimai etoimos. |
| Then echo autokinito. |
| [slowly] Then eimai etoimos. |
| Then echo autokinito. |
| Did you catch some similar words in these two sentences? |
| Right! In each sentence, you have one little word, then. This is the special word used to make a verb negative in Greek. |
| So let's have a look at the way to switch from affirmative to negative. |
| First with the verb eimai. If your friend *were* ready, he would say Eimai etoimos, “I am ready.” But he actually said Den eimai etoimos. |
| So basically, you just have to put the word δεν before the verb; yes, it is that easy! |
| Now let's see the example with the verb echo, "to have"- |
| "I have a car" is Eho autokinito, and "I don't have a car" is Den echo autokinito. As you can see it is exactly the same! |
| So now, how would you say "I don’t drink alcohol?" For reference, “I drink alcohol.” is Pino alkool. Even though there is a Greek word for ‘alcohol’, most Greeks use the English word nowadays. Put "den" in front of pino, which means “drink”, and you have it! Den pino alcool. |
| [slowly] Den pino alkool. |
| Easy, don't you think? So now you can turn many sentences into their negative form just by adding the little word den! |
| Now it’s time for Chrissi’s Insights. |
| Depending on the first letter of the word that follows “den”, sometimes “den” becomes “de”. The final “n” is sometimes removed to make the sound of the language flow. When to do it is a little complicated to explain, but if you pay attention to Greeks speaking you’ll notice that some always use ”den” no matter what the first letter of the next verb is. Even though this isn’t 100% correct, it’s acceptable in everyday situations. |
| Ok, get ready for the next lesson because we are going to study a really important part of the Greek language – using adjectives. |
| I'll be waiting for you with some adjectives to spice up your Greek in the next lesson! |
| Tha ta ksanapoume sto epomeno mathima! |
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