Learn how to use the verb "to come"
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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 use the verb areso. |
| In this lesson, we will learn how to use erchomai, the fourth verb in our common Greek verbs series. |
| Erchomai means "to come" in Greek, and we use it a lot! So come on! |
| A friend of yours is organizing a road trip and he asks you - Erchesai mazi mas? That means "Are you coming with us?" |
| So supposing you want to go, you will say, Nai, erchomai mazi sas! That means "Yes I’m coming with you!" |
| So let’s break down this answer. |
| First we had- |
| Nai which is simply "Yes." |
| After that we have erchomai, which is in the present first person tense. |
| Finally we had mazi sas which is "with you", with sas being the plural pronoun for "you." |
| So, altogether it is Nai, erchomai mazi sas |
| In Greek, erchomai is exactly the same as "to come." And like in English, it doesn’t necessarily apply to people. It can also be used for things like “the bus is coming” - erchetai to leoforeio, or metaphorically like “the summer is coming” - erchetai to kalokairi. |
| The verb erchomai is also often used as an order or as motivational advice, as in Ela mazi mou "Come with me!" Or Ela, pame gia treksimo which is, "Come on, let’s go for a run!" Ela here is the verb erchomai in the second person imperative. |
| One more use of the verb is like in the English expression “Come in” – as in, when someone knocks on your door and you want to let them enter. In this situation, you can say elate, which is the second person plural – that is, formal form – of the verb erchomai in the imperative. Don't worry so much about the grammar right now -- just remember the word: elate. You might have noticed a similarity between this elate and the ela we mentioned before in the example ela mazi mou. Yes, it is the same imperative, and it can be used both as an order and as an invitation. |
| Now it’s time for Chrissi’s Insights. |
| Even though we can use erchomai to mean “return”, the Greek language has a separate verb for that: epistrefo. We use this when we want to say we’re coming back from somewhere. However, remember that epistrefo is quite formal, so many Greeks don’t use it in everyday language. On these occasions, the verb we use most is gyrizo, so it’s better to remember this instead. |
| In this lesson, we learned how to use the verb erchomai. |
| So now, our series about common Greek verbs is over, and from the next lesson, we will jump into some very important question words! |
| Do you know how to ask "What" questions in Greek? I’ll explain it for you in the next “Ελληνικά σε 3 λεπτά” lesson! |
| Geia sas! |
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