Learn synonyms
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Becky: Hello everyone and welcome back to GreekPod101.com. This is Lower Intermediate, Season 1, lesson 15, One Of These Greek Words Is Just Like The Other One! I’m Becky. |
| Stefania: And I’m Stefania. |
| Becky: In this lesson, you’ll be learning about synonyms in Greek. The conversation takes place at the office of the daily Greek newspaper. |
| Stefania: It is between two senior editors. The characters know each other well, so they use informal Greek. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Κώστας:Τι βλέπεις; Ειδήσεις; |
| Ελένη:Ναι, ένα ρεπορτάζ για τον δήμαρχο. |
| Κώστας:Κι αυτά τα κατσάβραχα τι είναι; |
| Ελένη:Το παλιό λατομείο στην Πεντέλη. Το ρεπορτάζ είναι αρκετά πανούργο! Χωρίς να το λέει ξεκάθαρα, υπονοεί ότι ο τρόπος που διαχειρίστηκε το θέμα ο δήμαρχος αφήνει περιθώρια για παρεξηγήσεις. |
| Κώστας:Χμμμμ. Θα πρέπει να το δούμε καλύτερα αυτό. |
| Ελένη:Να πάμε να μιλήσουμε με τους κατοίκους της περιοχής; |
| Κώστας:Σίγουρα... για αρχή. Και μετά να πάμε να μιλήσουμε και με τον δημοτικό σύμβουλο που χειρίστηκε την υπόθεση. |
| Ελένη:Πιστεύεις ότι αυτό το ρεπορτάζ μπορεί να επηρεάσει τις εκλογές; |
| Κώστας:Δεν νομίζω. Απ' ό,τι φαίνεται από τις δημοσκοπήσεις, το αποτέλεσμα έχει κριθεί υπέρ του δημάρχου. Όμως ποτέ δεν ξέρεις! |
| Ελένη:Ωραία. Ας το ψάξουμε λίγο παραπάνω. Θα το βάλω μπροστά αύριο πρωί-πρωί και θα σε πάρω τηλέφωνο μόλις έχω κάτι. |
| Κώστας:Εντάξει. Κι εγώ θα μιλήσω και με το αφεντικό, να δούμε μήπως μπορεί να μάθει κάτι και από τον ίδιο τον δήμαρχο. |
| Kostas: What are you watching? The news? |
| Eleni: Yes, a story about the mayor. |
| Kostas: And what are these crags? |
| Eleni: The old quarry in Penteli. The story is quite a cunning one! Without saying it clearly, it insinuates that the way the mayor handled the issue leaves room for misunderstandings. |
| Kostas: Hmmm. We'll have to take a better look into that. |
| Eleni: Shall we go and talk with the residents of that area? |
| Kostas: Definitely...for starters. And after that, let's also talk with the city councilor who handled the case. |
| Eleni: Do you believe that this story might affect the elections? |
| Kostas: I don't think so. From the polls, it seems that the outcome has been decided in favor of the mayor. But you never know! |
| Eleni: Good. Let's research this a little bit more. I'll start tomorrow, early in the morning, and will call you as soon as I have something. |
| Kostas: OK, and I'll talk with the boss and see if he can find out something from the mayor himself. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Becky: So is there something suspicious going on with the mayor? |
| Stefania: It seems like it, but at the moment I’m not quite sure what it is. These things aren’t that rare in Greece, you know! |
| Becky: Scandals with politicians in general? |
| Stefania: Yes. That’s why most people don’t trust them! |
| Becky: This doesn’t only happen in Greece, though. |
| Stefania: Yeah, I guess it happens in most countries, if not all! |
| Becky: Bribes and all that stuff? |
| Stefania: Yes. Most of the time it’s about favoring the people closer to them. That’s why in Greece more and more people are staying away from politics. |
| Becky: And also from going to vote? |
| Stefania: Unfortunately, yes. With every election, less and less people are going to vote, which I don’t think is a good thing! |
| Becky: You’re right. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Becky: Let's take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| Stefania: ειδήσεις [natural native speed] |
| Becky: news |
| Stefania: ειδήσεις [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: ειδήσεις [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: πανούργος [natural native speed] |
| Becky: cunning |
| Stefania: πανούργος [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: πανούργος [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: κατσάβραχα [natural native speed] |
| Becky: crags |
| Stefania: κατσάβραχα [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: κατσάβραχα [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: λατομείο [natural native speed] |
| Becky: quarry |
| Stefania: λατομείο [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: λατομείο [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: Πεντέλη [natural native speed] |
| Becky: Penteli mountain |
| Stefania: Πεντέλη [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: Πεντέλη [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: υπονοώ [natural native speed] |
| Becky: to imply, to insinuate |
| Stefania: υπονοώ [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: υπονοώ [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: τρόπος [natural native speed] |
| Becky: way, manner |
| Stefania: τρόπος [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: τρόπος [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: υπόθεση [natural native speed] |
| Becky: case, hypothesis, assumption |
| Stefania: υπόθεση [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: υπόθεση [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: ψάχνω [natural native speed] |
| Becky: to search, to research, to look for |
| Stefania: ψάχνω [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: ψάχνω [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: περιθώριο [natural native speed] |
| Becky: margin, room, space |
| Stefania: περιθώριο [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: περιθώριο [natural native speed] |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Becky: Let's have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. What’s the first word? |
| Stefania: First, we have the verb “βλέπω” |
| Becky: Which means? |
| Stefania: “to see”. As in “I see you right now”. |
| Becky: But in the dialogue, we translated it as “to watch”. |
| Stefania: Yes. When we want to say “I am watching TV”, most people would say “βλέπω τηλεόραση” |
| Becky: So this is something like an idiom? |
| Stefania: Yes, sort of. Normally the appropriate verb for “watching” would be “παρακολουθώ”. So “παρακολουθώ τηλεόραση”. |
| Becky: OK. Next? |
| Stefania: The noun “τρόπος”. |
| Becky: And this means “way”? |
| Stefania: Yes, but not as in “Which way to the post office?” It’s more like “manner” or “way of doing something”. |
| Becky: Can we have an example? |
| Stefania: Yes. Our sample sentence is “Βρήκαμε τελικά έναν τρόπο να επικοινωνήσουμε.” |
| Becky: And this means? |
| Stefania: “We finally found a way to communicate”. |
| Becky: Do we have another one? |
| Stefania: Yes. The adverb “αρκετά” which is in our dialogue in the sentence “Το ρεπορτάζ είναι αρκετά πανούργο!” |
| Becky: Yes, I saw that. What does it mean exactly? |
| Stefania: It means “The story is quite a cunning one!” Generally speaking, this adverb is used to mean “enough” as in “I have eaten enough”, “έχω φάει αρκετά”. However, very often it means “very”, “quite” or “rather”. Just like in our dialogue. |
| Becky: OK. Now onto the grammar. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Becky: In this lesson, you’ll learn about synonyms. |
| Stefania: Right. “Synonyms”, another Greek word actually! |
| Becky: So words that are different, but express the same thing. For example “different” and “dissimilar”. |
| Stefania: Nicely put! |
| Becky: So what happens in Greek with synonyms? |
| Stefania: As you know, Greek has a very rich vocabulary. This means that you can find many synonyms for almost all words. |
| Becky: Sounds scary! |
| Stefania: It’s not! There is no rule about how synonyms are created, so we can't make any lists like we’ve done before in other lessons. |
| Becky: We will just see some words used in our dialogue and we will introduce their synonyms. Ok, let’s see some examples! |
| Stefania: Certainly! The first example is the sentence: “Τι βλέπεις; Ειδήσεις;” |
| Becky: This means “What are you watching? The news?” |
| Stefania: Yes! We can replace “βλέπεις” with “παρακολουθείς” and “ειδήσεις” with “νέα”. In that case, we’ll have: “Τι παρακολουθείς; Τα νέα;” |
| Becky: And these two sentences mean the same thing? |
| Stefania: Pretty much, yeah. Basically, Greek linguists say that even between Greek synonyms there are some nuances involved, that make every word unique, and never the perfect and exact equivalent of another. |
| Becky: Do you have any tip for our listeners? |
| Stefania: My personal tip for our listeners is that those nuances can be understood by tracing the etymology of a word, but that shouldn’t worry you. |
| Becky: Sometimes even Greeks cannot distinguish those various nuances! Ok, what’s another example? |
| Stefania: In the sentence “Το ρεπορτάζ είναι αρκετά πανούργο!”, we can replace the word “πανούργο!” with “πονηρό!” and get “Το ρεπορτάζ είναι αρκετά πονηρό!”. In both cases the meaning would still be the same: “The story is quite a cunning one!” |
| Becky: I see. What’s next? |
| Stefania: Again from our dialogue, we have the sentence “Χωρίς να το λέει ξεκάθαρα” meaning “Without saying it clearly”. |
| Becky: Which word are you going to replace? |
| Stefania: I will substitute the word “ξεκάθαρα” with the word “καθαρά”, which we saw 2 lessons ago. |
| Becky: And what will you get? |
| Stefania: The sentence will then be “Χωρίς να το λέει καθαρά”. The meaning still remains the same, |
| Becky: It’s “Without saying it clearly”. But it’s all clear to me! Can we have one more example? |
| Stefania: Of course! At one point one of the characters says: “Ας το ψάξουμε λίγο παραπάνω” |
| Becky: Which means? |
| Stefania: “Let’s research this a little bit more”. |
| Becky: Got it! And now for the synonym... |
| Stefania: ...Instead of “ψάξουμε” we can use “ερευνήσουμε” |
| Becky: So we’ll get...? |
| Stefania: … “Ας το ερευνήσουμε λίγο παραπάνω”. |
| Becky: And this also means “Let’s research this a little bit more”? |
| Stefania: Yes! So as you can see, we can use synonyms interchangeably. The better you get in Greek, the more synonyms you will be able to come up with and use. |
| Becky: This is very useful when you talk for a long time or write extensively about one specific thing, but you don’t want to end up sounding repetitive by using the same word over and over again. It’s good to know that Greek gives you that flexibility! |
| Stefania: Of course! And a good place to start improving your Greek would be our lesson notes! So please download them and read as much Greek as you can! |
Outro |
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| Becky: Alright! That’s it for this lesson, everyone! Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time. |
| Stefania: Γεια χαρά! |
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