| INTRODUCTION |
| Becky: Hello everyone and welcome to GreekPod101.com. This is Lower Intermediate, Season 1, lesson 1, Have You Done Something Wrong At Your Greek Job? I’m Becky. |
| Stefania: And I’m Stefania. And together we are going to explain to you some of the most basic and useful elements of my language, Greek. Join us and see how Greek is not that hard after all! |
| Becky: In this lesson, you’ll learn about onomatopoeic words in Greek. The conversation takes place at the office of the daily newspaper “Εliniká Néa” published in Athens, Greece. |
| Stefania: It is between the main character, the 26-year-old trainee reporter Antonia Georgiadi, and the editor Eleni Kalogirou. |
| Becky: The characters know each other well, so they will use informal Greek. |
| Stefania: Okay, let's listen to the conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Αντωνία: Καλημέρα! |
| Ελένη: Καλημέρα Αντωνία. Πώς και έτσι νωρίς σήμερα; |
| Αντωνία: Ήθελα να δω τι έγινε με το κομμάτι που έδωσα εχτές. |
| Ελένη: Ο Γιάννης το διόρθωσε και τώρα έχει πάει στη Σοφία για στήσιμο. |
| Αντωνία: Καλά, θα πάω να δω. Επάνω δεν είναι η Σοφία; |
| Ελένη: Τώρα; Από τις εννιά! (γέλια) |
| Αντωνία: Τι έγινε καλέ; Γιατί χαχανίζεις; |
| Ελένη: Γιατί σκέφτομαι τι μούτρα θα κάνεις όταν το δεις! |
| Αντωνία: Ε! Γιατί; Τι έγινε; |
| Ελένη: Τι κάνει νιάου-νιάου στα κεραμίδια βρε Αντωνία; Το αφεντικό έγινε. |
| Αντωνία: Μη μου πεις! Πάλι; |
| Ελένη: Εχτές το βράδυ γκάριζε μια ώρα για το κομμάτι σου. Και είπε στον Γιάννη να το «φτιάξει». |
| Αντωνία: Ωχ! Πάω! |
| Ελένη: Καλή τύχη! (γέλια) |
| Antonia: Good morning! |
| Eleni: Good morning, Antonia. How come you're so early today? |
| Antonia: I wanted to see what happened with the article I handed in yesterday. |
| Eleni: Giannis corrected it and now it has gone to Sofia for the layout. |
| Antonia: OK, I'll go and have a look. Sofia is upstairs, isn't she? |
| Eleni: Now? Since nine o'clock! (laughs). |
| Antonia: What's up? Why are you giggling? |
| Eleni: Because I'm thinking of the look on your face when you see it! |
| Antonia: Eh? Why? What happened? |
| Eleni: Oh, come on Antonia! What did you expect? The boss happened. |
| Antonia: Don't tell me! Again? |
| Eleni: Last night he was yelling for an hour about your article. And he told Giannis to "fix it." |
| Antonia: Ouch! I'm going! |
| Eleni: Good luck! |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Becky: So, the conversation took place in a newspaper office, right? |
| Stefania: Yes. An Athenian daily. |
| Becky: Do people still read newspapers in Greece? Don’t people get their news from the TV or the Internet nowadays? |
| Stefania: Younger people do. But for people over 50, reading newspapers is a habit that is hard to kick. |
| Becky: But I didn’t notice many people reading in buses or the metro. |
| Stefania: You know, for Greeks who love newspapers, reading them is like a ceremony. First, you make your morning coffee, and then you spread your newspaper out on the table and read it. |
| Becky: And usually, they’re also smoking a cigarette! |
| Stefania: Yes, I’m afraid there are still many smokers in Greece. But things are getting better. |
| Becky: Anyway, a newspaper office seems like a good place to hear some good everyday Greek, doesn’t it? |
| Stefania: It certainly does! |
| Becky: Okay, now let's take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Stefania: θέλω [natural native speed] |
| Becky: to want |
| Stefania: θέλω [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: θέλω [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: γίνομαι [natural native speed] |
| Becky: to become, to happen |
| Stefania: γίνομαι [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: γίνομαι [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: κομμάτι [natural native speed] |
| Becky: piece, part, article, copy |
| Stefania: κομμάτι [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: κομμάτι [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: στήσιμο [natural native speed] |
| Becky: setup, layout, setting |
| Stefania: στήσιμο [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: στήσιμο [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: χαχανίζω [natural native speed] |
| Becky: to giggle |
| Stefania: χαχανίζω [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: χαχανίζω [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: κάνω [natural native speed] |
| Becky: to do |
| Stefania: κάνω [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: κάνω [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: νιάου-νιάου [natural native speed] |
| Becky: meow |
| Stefania: νιάου-νιάου [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: νιάου-νιάου [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: κεραμίδι [natural native speed] |
| Becky: roof tile |
| Stefania: κεραμίδι [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: κεραμίδι [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: αφεντικό [natural native speed] |
| Becky: boss |
| Stefania: αφεντικό [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: αφεντικό [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: γκαρίζω [natural native speed] |
| Becky: to yell, to bray |
| Stefania: γκαρίζω [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: γκαρίζω [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. So what do we have first? |
| Stefania: We have the word “κομμάτι” literally meaning “piece”, as in “I’ll have a piece of cake”. |
| Becky: How would you say “I will eat a piece of chocolate cake” |
| Stefania: That would be “Θα φάω ένα κομμάτι κέικ σοκολάτα.” The word “κομμάτι” also means “part” as in “When he left he took a part of me”, but in our dialogue, it is used idiomatically by journalists to mean “article” or "copy". |
| Becky: In other words, a text or a video that is anywhere in the publication or broadcasting chain. |
| Stefania: We can also say “κομμάτι” to mean a piece of music –instead of saying “τραγούδι” meaning “song”. |
| Becky: Got it. What else? |
| Stefania: We have an idiomatic expression “Τι κάνει νιάου-νιάου στα κεραμίδια;” |
| Becky: Sounds a little weird! |
| Stefania: Actually it means “What is meowing up on the roof tiles?” |
| Becky: O…K… The answer is pretty obvious, isn’t it? |
| Stefania: Exactly. And this is how we use it in everyday conversation. When someone asks a question with a very obvious answer, we say “Τι κάνει νιάου-νιάου στα κεραμίδια;” as in “How can you possibly not know that?” |
| Becky: OK. This isn’t insulting in any way, is it? |
| Stefania: No, not really. |
| Becky: And last? |
| Stefania: The noun “στήσιμο” means “set up”, but when you are using it in a publication context like here, it also means “lay out”. |
| Becky: But in one of our sample sentences for this lesson, it means “set up”, right? |
| Stefania: Yes. “Το στήσιμο της σκηνής μου πήρε μια ώρα.” |
| Becky: “The set-up of the tent took me an hour.” |
| Stefania: Exactly! |
| Becky: Got it! Okay, now onto the grammar. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Becky: In this lesson, you’ll learn some Greek onomatopoeia. |
| Stefania: Did you know that this word itself is actually a Greek word? Onomatopoeia means the “creation of names”. That is words that phonetically imitate the source of the sound that they describe. |
| Becky: We also have words like that in English! |
| Stefania: Right! For example, we say “a cat meows”, right? |
| Becky: And it really sounds like the meow of a cat. |
| Stefania: Exactly! That is the way it was created. Now, since Greek cats don’t go “meow” but “niaou”, the verb in Greek is “νιαουρίζω”. |
| Becky: Once again? |
| Stefania: Nια-ου-ρί-ζω. |
| Becky: What about a dog? It barks, right? |
| Stefania: Yes. In Greek “to bark” is “γαυγίζω”. |
| Becky: And these are onomatopoeic verbs. Any others? Are they all related to animals? |
| Stefania: Many are, but not all. And we also have onomatopoeic nouns. For example, we call the sound of thunder “μπουμπουνητό”. |
| Becky: That’s a funny word! |
| Stefania: It is, isn’t it? The double “μπου” in there supposedly imitates the roar of thunder “μπουυυυυ”... |
| Becky: Isn’t there another noun in Greek to refer to the sound of thunder? |
| Stefania: There sure is, it’s “βροντή”. Also, two of the most common summer insects take their names through onomatopoeia. The cicada and the cricket. |
| Becky: And they are? |
| Stefania: The cicada is “τζιτζίκι”. Ji-jí-ki. |
| Becky: Jijíki. |
| Stefania: Right! And the cricket is “τριζόνι”. Please repeat: “tri-zó-ni” |
| Becky: Trizóni. Hmm… there’s another word for the cricket, though isn’t there? |
| Stefania: Oh, you mean “γρύλος”! |
| Becky: Right! Grílos! |
| Stefania: This also comes from onomatopoeia. People think it sounds like “τρι-τρι-τρι” or “γρι-γρι-γρι” and this is where the names “τριζόνι” and “γρύλος” come from. |
| Becky: What about the “garízo” and “hahanízo” that are used in our dialogue? |
| Stefania: Well, “γκαρίζω” means “bray”. |
| Becky: Like a donkey? |
| Stefania: Right. Donkeys in Greek go “γκα-γκα”. |
| Becky: And this is used? |
| Stefania: When a donkey brays. Or when someone yells or speaks really loudly! |
| Becky: Doesn’t sound very polite! |
| Stefania: It isn’t! So, please don’t use it too freely! |
| Becky: And “hahanízo”? |
| Stefania: Well, the sound of laughter is “ha-ha”, isn’t it? So “χα-χα-νί-ζω”. |
| Becky: Means “to laugh”? |
| Stefania: Not really. It’s closer to “to giggle”, actually. It is more of a silly laugh. In our dialogue, it is used as a question: “Γιατί χαχανίζεις;”, “Why are you giggling?” Nothing funny has been said so the character isn’t really laughing. |
| Becky: OK. Do we have anything else? |
| Stefania: Yes we do! These are the nouns “καρακάξα” meaning “magpie”, “φάπα” meaning “slap” and coming from the sound of a slap which is “φαπ” in Greek, “γαργάρα” which means “gargle” coming from the “γαρ-γαρ” sound of a gargle, “ζουζούνι” which comes from the “ζζζζζζζ” that some insects make. The word itself means “insect” or “bug”. Then we have the verbs “κακαρίζω”, “τουρτουρίζω” and “τσιρίζω”. Can you guess what they mean? |
| Becky: Kakarízo… sounds like “chicken cluck” to me. But I’m not sure! |
| Stefania: Well, you’re right! It means “to cluck”. Although the sound of a chicken in Greek is “κο-κο-κο”, the verb contains the sound “κα”, “κακαρίζω”. I am not sure why... But hey you got it! |
| Becky: I don’t know what the rest are though! |
| Stefania: “τουρτουρίζω” means “to shiver from cold” and “τσιρίζω” means “to shriek”. |
| Becky: Well, I will be downloading the lesson notes to review these! And listeners, make sure you download them too! |
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Outro
|
| Becky: That’s all for this lesson, everyone! Please feel free to leave us a post on the lesson page if you have any questions or comments. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time. |
| Stefania: Γεια χαρά! |
| Becky: Bye! |
36 Comments
HideWhich onomatopoeic words do you know in Greek?
Hi May,
Thank you for contacting us.
εχτές, εχθές, χτες, and χθες are all variations for the word "yesterday". It definitely does not mean "last year"!
As for the leap you feel, is that in terms of vocabulary or grammar? To be honest, the lower intermediate series focuses a lot on word production, word families, prefixes, and suffixes, so grammar-wise it might feel a bit different from what you've been doing so far because I feel it focuses more on vocabulary.
In the Intermediate series though, after it, we did make an effort to cover any gaps there might have been up to that point. We review verb conjugation, pronouns, adjective groups, and more, so feel free to have a look at it and see if the grammar section helps you cover that gap you feel there is.
https://www.greekpod101.com/lesson-library/relationships-and-first-impressions-intermediate-greek/
As for the cat example, you are right. There was a mispronunciation there, so I'll forward this to the content team for review. Thank you for letting me know.
All the best,
Stefania
Team GreekPod101.com
And another comment: in the vocabulary example, in the sentence about the cat, I seem to hear something like κάτει instead of κάνει.
Hi, one question to the vocabulary and one in general to the Greekpod101 method:
Is εχτές "yesterday", as stated in the lesson transcript, or "last year" as Google says? For yesterday, Google says "εχθές".
About the method: up till now, I had been working with the "Wedding in Crete" series, which was very much my level. Now I have moved to this series, and I feel there is a huge leap, so I don't know if I have skipped something important in-between.
Thanks in advance
Γεια σου Έντγκαρ,
Thank you for bringing up this topic and for your feedback.
I'll present my point of view about this because I do understand very well the problem you are facing. As you've realized, you can't always have equivalent translations that match, ex. having the verb "to be" in sentences like the ones you mentioned. And this happens quite often between Greek and English.
From my experience as a tutor, I feel it wouldn't be very learning-effective to be so detail-oriented and translate everything literally and then present the natural translation. Many students will tend to ask "Why (or how come) is it so different?" and deviate from the main point of the lesson (seeing the tree and missing the forest), others will just say there's too much information and it's confusing and difficult to retain the essential information (the actual natural translation) when there are so many things going on. And that's because sometimes a literal translation can't exist without further explanation. For example, to literally translate καλέ, I can't just do it with one word. It's untranslatable. I'd have to give a whole explanation about it. If you have a whole text to translate, the amount of explanations would definitely be overwhelming to most people.
But just like there are some folks that get overwhelmed by too much information to the point it becomes distracting and the learning experience feels a long frustrating road leading nowhere because they prefer to just memorize, learn something as it is (especially standard expressions such as "What's up?") and move on, so just like there are these kind of students, there is too a small fraction of students (from my experience again) who don't get overwhelmed by that or by complex grammar rules and actually seek that level of detail to better organize what they learn in their head. I myself am that kind of learner.
What I'm trying to say is that in the end, you can't always please every learner with whatever method you go for because everyone is different and everyone learns things more effectively in different ways and speeds. I think in a classroom (or a 1-on-1 lesson) it's easier to find a balance, depending on the group dynamics, and explain selectively the literal meaning *whenever* necessary but for an online course, such flexibility doesn't exist and you could say that's one of the drawbacks of e-learning in general. You don't get that same level of personal experience you would with a real teacher in front of you. But then that's why tutors and language academies charge so much per hour.
To be honest, going back to my language learning days, when I was studying French, German, and Italian, I really don't remember coming across learning materials such as textbooks that analyze and translate texts word by word for all the content. I feel that's not a tendency in general in language education and maybe for a good reason (what I explained above). You just want to learn to speak and understand the language. Breaking down everything is just going to make most people advance slower... I think.
Nonetheless, since I've been a language learner myself quite a few times and even recently, I understand your feeling. If you think you don't understand something and need help, always feel free to ask questions in the comments. I'm here to help! I can't change what kind of content gets to be presented on the website but I'll try my best to help learners whenever they ask me. :)
So ask away!
Best regards,
Stefania
Team GreekPod101.com
Για σας,
I always have a problem when I study Greek from English, it confuse me more.
For example, the translation of Τι έγινε καλέ; is not exactly "What's up?".
To avoid confusion, please translate it literally and then add: "can be interpreted as:..."
If the verb "to be" is not present in the question Τι έγινε καλέ; why the "is" is in the English translation?
Hi Vera,
Thank you for commenting. While it's true that Turks use a similar word, you'll be surprised to know that αφεντικό is a word of Greek origin 😁 , a medieval word, which was borrowed by Ottoman Turks!.
You can read more about its etymology here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effendi
The ΛΚΝ dictionary has the etymology as well under the adjective αφεντικός, -ή, -ό:
https://bit.ly/3mWmOQG
Also, keep in mind that the word αφεντικό is used more often rather than εργοδότης, especially when one talks about his boss to others.
Εργοδότης is a more formal word, usually used in a legal context. Αφεντικό also may have the meaning of "head manager", the person that overlooks your work in person, or it may mean "person in charge" when it comes to managing a restaurant, store, etc. Εργοδότης, on the other hand (lit. employment giver), is more like the owner of a company that doesn't necessarily mean he even knows you exist or overlooks your work if you work for him.
So:
εργοδότης = employment giver (an owner of a business)
αφεντικό = person in charge/manager but also owner of a business
All the best :)
Stefania
Team GreekPod101.com
'αφεντικό' - is a turkish word. Greeks use "ο εργοδότης".
Hi Peter,
Thank you for the comment and for the typo report. It has been fixed!
Cheers,
Stefania
Team GreekPod101.com
Great lesson!
Minor correction: γαργαριζω -- to gargle (not gurgle! -- that's onomatopoeia-ik for what 'τα μωρα κάνουν ' ;-)
Peter
Hi tigro11,
Thank you for your kind comment!
All the best,
Stefania
Team GreekPod101.com