Learn the accentuation of masculine proparoxytone nouns ending in -ος in Greek (προπαροξύτονα αρσενικά ουσιαστικά)
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Becky: Hello everyone and welcome back to GreekPod101.com. This is Lower Intermediate, Season 1, lesson 23, Kids Will Be Kids in Greece. I’m Becky. |
| Stefania: And I’m Stefania. In this lesson, you will learn about the accentuation of masculine nouns whose stress is on the third to last syllable, also known as proparoxytone nouns, and which end in -ος in Greek. |
| Becky: The conversation takes place at the office of the daily newspaper and it’s between Antonia Georgiadi and her supervisor Kostas Giannoulatos. |
| Stefania: The characters know each other well, but since there is a difference in their status in the company, they use both formal and informal Greek. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Αντωνία:Κύριε Γιαννουλάτε, έχω μια ιδέα για μια έρευνα. |
| Κώστας:Σχετικά με τι; |
| Αντωνία:Με τους δασκάλους των δημοτικών. |
| Κώστας:Ό,τι έχει σχέση με την εκπαίδευση έχει πάντα ενδιαφέρον. Για λέγε παρακάτω. |
| Αντωνία:Γενικά υπάρχει η τάση να αντιμετωπίζονται τα παιδιά σαν να είναι μεγάλοι άνθρωποι. Όμως αυτό δημιουργεί προβλήματα γιατί άλλο παιδί, άλλο έφηβος και άλλο ενήλικας. |
| Κώστας:Σωστά. Άρα το θέμα σου είναι η συνολική εκπαιδευτική αντίληψη, έτσι δεν είναι; |
| Αντωνία:Ναι. Αφορμή στάθηκαν κάποια περιστατικά που ξέρω από το σχολείο όπου πάει το ανιψάκι μου. |
| Κώστας:Ενδιαφέρον. Είσαι σίγουρη ότι δεν θα σου βγει υπερβολικά προσωπικό και συναισθηματικό; |
| Αντωνία:Θα το προσπαθήσω! |
| Κώστας:Φτιάξε μου ένα προσχέδιο και θα το δούμε μετά. Η αλήθεια είναι ότι υπάρχει πολύς θόρυβος με τις επερχόμενες εκλογές και τον δήμαρχο, και έχουμε αφήσει κάπως πίσω τα κοινωνικά θέματα. |
| Αντωνία:Σας ευχαριστώ! Θα το έχω έτοιμο αύριο το μεσημέρι. |
| Antonia: Mr. Giannoulatos, I have an idea for an investigation. |
| Kostas: About what? |
| Antonia: About elementary school teachers. |
| Kostas: Anything related to education is always interesting. Tell me more. |
| Antonia: In general, there is this tendency of treating children as if they were grown ups, but this creates problems because a child is one thing, and a teenager and an adult are another. |
| Kostas: Right. So your subject is the overall perception towards education, isn't it? |
| Antonia: Yes. The reason is some incidents I know of at the school where my little nephew goes. |
| Kostas: Interesting. Are you sure you are not going to make it too personal and emotional? |
| Antonia: I'll try not to. |
| Kostas: Make me a draft and we'll see it later. The truth is that there is a lot of commotion with the upcoming elections and the mayor, and we somehow left the social matters behind. |
| Antonia: Thank you! I will have it ready by tomorrow at noon. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Becky: So, do many people go to university in Greece? |
| Stefania: Yes they do...too many! So much so, that it’s becoming a bit of a problem! |
| Becky: Really? But education is great -why is that a problem? |
| Stefania: Greece is a really small country so it can’t absorb that many university graduates. |
| Becky: I see. Yeah, that might be a problem. And what do all these people do? |
| Stefania: Usually other jobs, unrelated to their field of specialty or they try to find something abroad. Parents always want the best for their children but they don’t realize that there is a limit to how many lawyers or doctors such a small country can have. |
| Becky: Hmm, I see. Well, I wish those people the best of luck! |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Becky: Let's take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| Stefania: εκπαίδευση [natural native speed] |
| Becky: education, training |
| Stefania: εκπαίδευση [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: εκπαίδευση [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: παρακάτω [natural native speed] |
| Becky: below /further below /further down |
| Stefania: παρακάτω [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: παρακάτω [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: τάση [natural native speed] |
| Becky: tendency /voltage /trends (usually in plural) |
| Stefania: τάση [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: τάση [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: αντιμετωπίζω [natural native speed] |
| Becky: to face/ to encounter /to confront / to treat as /to overcome |
| Stefania: αντιμετωπίζω [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: αντιμετωπίζω [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: συνολικός [natural native speed] |
| Becky: total, overall |
| Stefania: συνολικός [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: συνολικός [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: αντίληψη [natural native speed] |
| Becky: perception/ understanding /notion /view on something |
| Stefania: αντίληψη [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: αντίληψη [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: αφορμή [natural native speed] |
| Becky: cause /motive |
| Stefania: αφορμή [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: αφορμή [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: περιστατικό [natural native speed] |
| Becky: incident |
| Stefania: περιστατικό [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: περιστατικό [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: θόρυβος [natural native speed] |
| Becky: noise /commotion |
| Stefania: θόρυβος [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: θόρυβος [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: προσπαθώ [natural native speed] |
| Becky: to try |
| Stefania: προσπαθώ [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: προσπαθώ [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: Let’s start with the adverb “παρακάτω “, literally meaning “further down” as in “further down the road”. Like in our sample sentence “Λίγο παρακάτω έχει ένα σούπερ μάρκετ”. |
| Becky: Meaning “Further down there is a supermarket.” |
| Stefania: In our dialogue, though, it is used metaphorically in the phrase “Για λέγε παρακάτω”, meaning “Tell me more”. So the notion here in Greek is “say what comes next” or “go on with what you are saying”. |
| Becky: So it gives us the sense of “more”. |
| Stefania: Yes, you can say that in this context. Παρακάτω can also be used in texts to mean “below”, as in “what will be mentioned below”. |
| Becky: OK. What’s next? |
| Stefania: The word “τάση”, meaning “tendency”, “voltage” or “trends”. In the latter case, we usually find it in the plural “τάσεις”. |
| Becky: Wow, these are very different things! |
| Stefania: Yeah, they seem very unrelated, don’t they? So in our dialogue, we use “τάση” with the meaning “tendency”, for example, “Γενικά υπάρχει η τάση να αντιμετωπίζονται τα παιδιά σαν να είναι μεγάλοι άνθρωποι”, meaning “In general, there is this tendency of treating children as if they were grown ups”. |
| Becky: Can we have an example with “voltage”? |
| Stefania: Sure. In Greece you might see signs that say “υψηλή τάση του ρεύματος”, that is “high voltage”. |
| Becky: That’s useful to know. And what about “trends”? |
| Stefania: Sometimes we can use “τάση” in plural to refer to fashion, design, art, illustrations, technology, celebrities and music trends. For example “Η αδερφή μου πάντα ακολουθεί τις τελευταίες τάσεις της μόδας”, meaning “My sister always follows the latest fashion trends”. |
| Becky: I see. And what’s our last word? |
| Stefania: The verb “αντιμετωπίζω”, which means “to face”, “to encounter”, “to confront”, “to overcome” or “to treat as”. Actually, that’s how we see it in the sentence that I mentioned before: “Γενικά υπάρχει η τάση να αντιμετωπίζονται τα παιδιά σαν να είναι μεγάλοι άνθρωποι”. |
| Becky: Meaning “In general, there is this tendency of treating children as if they were grown ups”. |
| Stefania: Yes. You can see the meaning “to face” from this example: “Ξέρω πολλές οικογένειες που αντιμετωπίζουν οικονομικές δυσκολίες”, meaning “I know many families who are facing financial difficulties”. |
| Becky: Got it. So when it means “to confront”, is it like “to confront a person”? |
| Stefania: Yes, very good! And when it means “to overcome” this can be a negative situation such as a health problem. |
| Becky: OK! Now onto the grammar. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Stefania: In this lesson, you’ll learn about the accentuation of masculine proparoxytone nouns ending in -ος in Greek. |
| Becky: I have to admit that this phrase troubles me. |
| Stefania: It’s that weird word “proparoxytone”, right? |
| Becky: Yes! It sounds like a chemical! So let’s explain it. |
| Stefania: Okay - In linguistics, a proparoxytone word is a word that is accented on the antepenultimate syllable, in other words in the third-to-last syllable. |
| Becky: For example, the words “cinema” or “photography” are proparoxytone words in English? As in CI-ne-ma and pho-TO-gra-phy, for example? |
| Stefania: Yes! Secondly, when dealing with nouns in Greek, we categorize them in many ways, for example, according to their gender, their ending or even their accent mark position, like we just mentioned. |
| Becky: For example proparoxytone words. |
| Stefania: Yes. This helps us apply rules to their behavior. |
| Becky: OK. So what is going on with the nouns we will see in this lesson? |
| Stefania: Coming back to the masculine proparoxytone nouns ending in -ος that we will see, we care about their accentuation because their accent mark moves to the next syllable on the right when we use them in the genitive case, and in the plural accusative. This is quite important to know since it is a very common mistake that people tend to make when speaking Greek as a second language. |
| Becky: OK. Before we get to some examples, I would like our listeners to open the lesson notes. In the grammar section, you will find useful tables with all the words we will see. Keep them visible while we will be presenting each example. |
| Stefania: I also want to warn you that I will be exaggerating the pronunciation of each word, so that you can hear how the accented syllable changes. OK listeners? |
| Becky: In our dialogue, we have some of these masculine nouns. |
| Stefania: One of them is “ο κύριος” |
| Becky: That means “gentleman” or “mister”. |
| Stefania: That’s right. We have “ο κύριος” in the nominative, but “του κυρίου” in the genitive. Then “τον κύριο” in the accusative and “κύριε” in the vocative. |
| Becky: And what about the plural cases? |
| Stefania: We have “οι κύριοι” in the nominative, but “των κυρίων” in genitive and “τους κυρίους” in accusative, while the vocative is the same as the nominative: “οι κύριοι”. |
| Becky: So remember everyone. The accent moves to the next syllable on the right when we use them in the genitive case, or in the plural accusative. |
| Stefania: Exactly! Thank you for mentioning this again. Our next example is “ο δάσκαλος” meaning “male teacher”. |
| Becky: So what is the genitive here? |
| Stefania: “του δασκάλου” in singular and “των δασκάλων” in plural. The accusative is “τους δασκάλους”. Did you get the difference in accentuation? |
| Becky: Yeah, I see how this works now. What’s the next word? |
| Stefania: “ο άνθρωπος”. |
| Becky: Meaning “human” or “man”. |
| Stefania: But not “male”. |
| Becky: Right. |
| Stefania: So in the genitive it becomes “του ανθρώπου” in singular, and “των ανθρώπων” in plural. In the accusative it becomes “τους ανθρώπους”. |
| Becky: There’s a certain musicality to it, or is it just me? |
| Stefania: Actually yes! It does sound less boring than saying “ο άνθρωπος”, “του άνθρωπου”, “τον άνθρωπο”, “άνθρωπε”... |
| Becky: Oh Gosh! It doesn’t sound that good to me. |
| Stefania: It doesn’t sound good to me either! And by the way, just scrap the examples I just said. These are the wrong versions of course. Please ignore them completely. |
| Becky: Will do! So what’s next? |
| Stefania: “ο έφηβος” that becomes “του εφήβου”, “των εφήβων” and “τους εφήβους”. Then we have “ο θόρυβος” that changes to “του θορύβου”, “των θορύβων” and “τους θορύβους”. |
| Becky: I see. And what’s the last one for this lesson? |
| Stefania: “ο δήμαρχος”, “του δημάρχου”, “των δημάρχων” and “τους δημάρχους”. |
| Becky: OK. I’ll go through them again with the lesson notes just to make sure. |
| Stefania: That’s a good idea! You will also find a few more examples there. |
Outro |
|---|
| Becky: Okay, that’s it for this lesson, everyone! Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time. |
| Stefania: Γεια χαρά! |
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