The Focus of this Lesson is Onomatopoeic Words in Greek (ονοματοποιία).
Γιατί χαχανίζεις;
Yatí hahanízis?
"Why are you giggling?"

As we will see in this series, words in Greek are created in many ways. This is true of all languages but because of its long history, Greek has a vast vocabulary, so understanding how words are created, instead of just memorizing endless lists of words, will really help you improve your language skills and make great strides with this approach!

One of the ways to create words in Greek is through onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia is the process of imitating the sound they express. This construction is artificial, but the words are used as normal Greek words, either in the form of nouns, or in the form of verbs. And even though Greek doesn't make such an extensive use of onomatopoeic words, as languages such as Japanese do, there are many words of this kind used both literally and metaphorically.

In our dialogue there were three such examples:

χαχανίζεις ("you are giggling")
νιάου-νιάου ("meow")
γκάριζε ("he/she/it brayed")

The verb χαχανίζω comes from the sound χα χα ("ha ha"), which is the sound of someone laughing. The noun νιάου-νιάου, or the verb νιαουρίζω comes from the sound cats make (meow) and the verb γκαρίζω comes from the sound donkeys make, which Greeks hear as γκα, γκα ("gah, gah"). Most of the time, onomatopoeic verbs end in -ίζω. Υou can find some more examples of onomatopoeic words in the following table:

κομμάτι (komáti) "piece, part, article, copy"

The word κομμάτι actually means "piece" (as in "I'll have a piece of cake") or "part" (as in "When he left he took a part of me"). In a journalistic context it also means "article" or "copy": a text or a video that is anywhere in the publication or broadcasting chain (pre-editing, editing, pre-production, production, publication etc). Another use of the word κομμάτι is in music. When most people discuss music, they often use κομμάτι (i.e. "piece of music") instead of the word "song."

νιάου-νιάου (niáu-niáu) "meow"

We have an expression: Τι κάνει νιάου-νιάου στα κεραμίδια;
This hasn't been exactly translated in our dialogue. Its literal meaning is "What is meowing up on the roof tiles?" and it is used when we want to make someone else realize something that is glaringly obvious. An English equivalent would be: "Is the sky blue?"

στήσιμο (stísimo) "set up, lay out"

The word στήσιμο means "set up," but in the publishing field it means "lay out." Incidentally, στήσιμο also means "to get stood up on a date"! This word belongs to a family of nouns showing actions that are derived from verbs expressing the particular act. In this case the verb στήνω (to set up). We won't get into this in detail now, but in later lessons of this series, where we will focus on this type of word creation. However, it is good to remember that there is a whole family of these nouns, all related to corresponding verbs. A few other examples are βάψιμο meaning "painting" (i.e a wall), which comes from βάφω ("to paint"), βράσιμο ("boiling") which comes from βράζω ("to boil") and γδύσιμο ("undressing") which comes from γδύνω ("to undress").

Greek Newspapers

It is often said that Greece has too many newspapers for its size and a glance at any περίπτερο (kiosk-newsstand) in any Greek city will confirm this. For a population of nearly eleven million people, twenty political dailies are being published in Athens and at least two are being published in each of the country's 51 prefectures. Five financial dailies and fourteen sports dailies add up to a huge number of copies each day and one would think it is absolutely impossible for all of them to be viable! Especially after 1989, when private TV was allowed in Greece and at least six major national channels started operating alongside the three state-owned ones, it seemed that this would be the end of newspapers—or at least some of them. Still, newspapers have managed to survive and continue to play an important role in the lives of many Greeks. Especially on weekends when people have enough leisure time to drink their coffee, they enjoy reading their favorite publications.