Learn how to ask "Who?"
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| 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 ask "When" questions in Greek. |
| This time, we are going to ask "Who" questions. |
| Imagine you are in a party and a girl you don’t know sits next to your friend. They seem to know each other, so you might want to ask your friend “Who is that girl?” |
| What you can say is “Poia einai auti i kopela?”. |
| [slowly] Poia einai auti i kopela? |
| So let’s break down this question. |
| First we have “Poia”, which means "Who" in Greek, when you are inquiring about a female. |
| Remember that Greek is a gendered language, which means that nouns, pronouns, adjectives, articles and so on have all three genders - masculine, feminine and neuter. “Poia” is the feminine version of “who”. |
| Then we have “einai” which means "is,". I am sure you already know that it is the 3rd person singular form of the verb “eimai”, which we have already studied. |
| “afti” means “this” when we refer to a female. |
| And finally “i kopela” means "girl", with “i” being the article of the noun “kopela”. |
| All together it is: “Poia einai auti i kopela?” |
| “Who is that girl?” |
| So if “poia” is the feminine version, what happens with masculine and neuter? Masculine “who” is poios and neuter “who” is poio. As you can see, the three words sound pretty much the same, only the last letter changes to show the gender. So to recap, we have- |
| Poios einai autos o antras? – Who is this man? |
| Poia einai auti i gynaika? – Who is this woman? |
| Poio einai auto to paidi? – Who is this child? |
| Because of genders in the Greek language, “Pios”, “Pia” and “Pio” can be used for asking about both people and inanimate objects. In English they translate as “who” in the first case and as “which” or “what” in the second case. |
| So they can be used to ask about pretty much anything. For example, you could ask which bus goes to the Acropolis, Athens’ most famous ancient building – |
| Poio leoforeio paei stin Akropoli? - or instead |
| “Which metro line goes to the Acropolis?” |
| Poia grammi metro paei stin Akropoli? – |
| or even |
| “What street is this?” |
| Poios dromos einai autos? |
| Now that you understood the three versions of Poios, I will explain one more feature of Greek. Luckily this is something you already know from English. Greek has singular and plural, which means that these question words also have singular and plural versions. Until now we have only mentioned the singular, but what happens if you want to ask about more than one? Let’s see the previous examples in plural. |
| Poioi einai autoi oi antres? – Who are these men? |
| Poies einai autes oi gynaikes? – Who are these women? |
| Poia einai auta ta paidia? – Who are these children? |
| As you can see, when we go from singular to plural, everything changes: “poios” becomes “poioi” |
| “autos” becomes “autoi” |
| “o” becomes “oi” |
| and “antras” becomes “antres”. This might sound a bit confusing at first but as you get more used to Greek, it will fall into place. For the moment, just remember the three plus three versions of the question word which means “who”, “which” or “what”: |
| Poios? Masculine singular |
| Poia? Feminine singular |
| Poio? Neuter singular |
| Poioi? Masculine plural |
| Poies? Feminine plural |
| Poia? Neuter plural |
| Now it’s time for Chrissi’s Insights. |
| If someone that you didn't expect is knocking at your door in Greece, you can ask Poios einai? before opening the door. |
| This means "Who is it?" in casual Greek. Even more casual would be a plain Poios? But this borders on the rude so I would suggest avoiding it. |
| In this lesson, we learned how to use "Who" in Greek. |
| The next lesson will be our last of this absolute beginner series. |
| We will deal with the last question word Giati, which means –well, I’ll tell you what it means in the next “Ελληνικά σε 3 λεπτά” lesson! |
| Geia sas! |
Comments
Hide