Vocabulary

Learn New Words FAST with this Lesson’s Vocab Review List

Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.

Or sign up using Facebook
Already a Member?

Lesson Transcript

Hi everybody, this is Stefania! Welcome to Greekpod101.com’s Alfaveeto made easy.
The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn the Greek alphabet: the alfaveeto!
In the previous six lessons, we managed to go through half of the Greek alphabet and even managed to tackle a couple of tricky, Greek-only letters like “Psee” and “Gama”. Do you remember them? Let’s move on with two more letters which will look familiar but may be a little tricky, pronunciation-wise.
Our first letter this time is the consonant “Ro”. Its sound is “r” and is exactly like the English “r”. Wouldn’t it be nice if the *shape* looked the same as the English R...nope! Unfortunately it looks like an English P. Close, but not close enough. You’ll just have to remember to pronounce this letter as an R.
Here’s the uppercase Ro.
It is handwritten like this:
Ρ
And this is what the lowercase “Ro” looks like. As you can see there is no real difference between the uppercase and the lowercase form; it’s the same shape but the lowercase is written lower on the line with its vertical line extending below it.
It is handwritten like this:
ρ
Let’s do it again- Here’s the uppercase form:
And here’s the lowercase form:
I would like to point out a very small detail that will make your writing of “Ro” perfect: because of its similarity to the English “p” you might be tempted to write it in a similar way: first the line and then the circle. It is better though, to learn to write it the correct way, that as a continuing line starting from the circle and going on to the line.
Let’s move onto our second letter for this lesson which, like “Ro”, looks familiar but sounds different. Its name is “Hee”, it is also a consonant and its sound is “h”. All this is wonderful except for the part where it looks like an X.
This is what the uppercase “Hee” looks like.
It is handwritten like this:
Χ
And this is what the lowercase “Hee” looks like. Again, same shape but extending below the line; actually the line cuts it in half.
It is handwritten like this:
χ
Let’s do it again- Here’s the uppercase form:
And here’s the lowercase form:
As you know, the only problem you might have with these letters are their similarity to other English letters; this may tempt you to write or read it that way, but there’s only three way to prevent this from happening. Practice, practice, practice!
Since these two letters are both consonants, there isn’t much we can do with them so we will use some help from the letters we learned in the previous lessons; thankfully we now have plenty of those! How about starting with something that we all use everyday after air, water and food? It’s “χρήματα” or “money” and we write it like this:
χρήματα
This was easy. Now how about the most common Greek female name? You might have heard its Italian and Spanish version: “Maria” and it’s exactly the same in Greek:
Μαρία
That will be it for this lesson. Just to make sure you haven’t forgotten them, let’s go through all the letters you know once again. They are “Alpha”, “Mee”, “Taf”, “Yota”, “Kappa”, “Omikron”, “Pee”, “Sigma”, “Eeta”, “Psee”, “Gama”, “Epseelon”, “Ro” and “Hee”. Got them all? Awesome.
Now it's time for Stefania’s insights.
These days, with computers and cellphones we rarely have the occasion to really write. Which is all fine and dandy but it makes us forget one of the most basic skills. So please, even if you have access to a Greek keyboard, don’t neglect actually writing by hand. This is what will make you really capable of writing Greek. I guarantee that you will learn it much faster and better if you do write. So until the next lesson, practice your writing as much as you can!
Did you know that there is one Greek letter whose name sounds like a part of your body? This letter also appears in the English alphabet but with a different name. Do you want to know what it is? Check the next Alfaveeto made easy lesson and find out!
See you there!
Ya hara!

Comments

Hide