Learn how to use prefixes in the composition of words, from a conversation with mixed levels of formality
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Becky: Hello everyone and welcome back to GreekPod101.com. This is Lower Intermediate, Season 1, lesson 12, Writing Well in Greek Is Hard Work! I’m Becky. |
| Stefania: And I’m Stefania. |
| Becky: In this lesson, you’ll learn more about word formation in Greek, with a focus on prefixes used in the composition of words. |
| Stefania: The conversation takes place at the office of the daily Greek newspaper, and it’s between Antonia and her supervisor and senior editor Kostas Giannoulatos. |
| Becky: Because of the difference in their status in the company, there is both formal and informal Greek in the conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Αντωνία: Κ. Γιαννουλάτε, μήπως κοιτάξατε το κομμάτι για το κοσμηματοπωλείο; |
| Κώστας: Ναι, το είδα. Δεν νομίζω ότι θα χρειαστεί να το ξαναγράψεις. |
| Αντωνία: Α, χαίρομαι! |
| Κώστας: Αυτό δεν σημαίνει ότι δεν έχει και τα προβληματάκια του, όμως! |
| Αντωνία: Δηλαδή; Αμέλησα ή παρέβλεψα κάτι; |
| Κώστας: Όχι ακριβώς. Αλλά... ας πούμε, στην πρώτη παράγραφο λες «Ήταν ευτύχημα που ο καταστηματάρχης δεν ήταν στο μαγαζί, γιατί έτσι αποφεύχθηκε η πιθανότητα βίας». |
| Αντωνία: Ναι. Υπάρχει κάτι άσχημο σ' αυτό; |
| Κώστας: Δεν είναι ακριβώς «άσχημο», αλλά είναι καλύτερα να αποφεύγεις εκφράσεις όπως «ήταν ευτύχημα». Δίνουν μια λαϊκίστικη διάσταση. Είπαμε: μόνο τα γεγονότα! |
| Αντωνία: Ναι, αλλά δε θέλουμε το κομμάτι να γίνει απάνθρωπο! |
| Κώστας: Δεν είπα αυτό! Όμως τώρα είναι κάπως ανισόρροπο. |
| Αντωνία: Χμμμ... Ο επίλογος πώς είναι; |
| Κώστας: Ο επίλογος είναι καλός. Νομίζω, ότι είναι καλύτερα αν θες να εκφράσεις την προσωπική σου άποψη, να το κάνεις εκεί. |
| Αντωνία: ΟΚ. Θα το ξανακοιτάξω άλλη μια φορά. |
| Κώστας: Καλό θα ήταν. |
| Antonia: Mr. Giannoulatos, did you by any chance check the copy about the jewelry shop? |
| Kostas: Yes, I saw it. I don't think you will need to rewrite it. |
| Antonia: Oh, I'm glad! |
| Kostas: This doesn't mean that it doesn't have its own small problems, though! |
| Antonia: So...did I neglect or overlook something? |
| Kostas: Not exactly. But...for example, in the first paragraph, you say "It was fortunate that the shop-owner was not at the store, thus the risk of violence was avoided." |
| Antonia: Right. Is there something bad with that? |
| Kostas: Not exactly "bad." But it's better to avoid expressions like "it was fortunate." They give out a populist aspect. Like we said: just the facts! |
| Antonia: Yes, but we don't want the story to become inhuman. |
| Kostas: I didn't say that! But now it's somehow unbalanced. |
| Antonia: Hmmm... How's the epilogue? |
| Kostas: The epilogue is good. I think if you want to express your personal opinion, it's better to do it there. |
| Antonia: OK. I'll go through it one more time... |
| Kostas: That would be good... |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Becky: So here we see editing in action, huh? |
| Stefania: Sort of… |
| Becky: Not surprising, this is a newspaper after all. |
| Stefania: You’d be surprised! Many people complain about the language used in media. |
| Becky: Well, people have high expectations. They should! I mean, with Greek being such an old language and such. |
| Stefania: That’s true. Many things in Modern Greek come from ancient Greek and the variations that it went through over the last 30 centuries or so. |
| Becky: Is modern Greek a mixture of all these variations? |
| Stefania: I would say it’s more like the result of a long and very dynamic process of language evolution. |
| Becky: That’s why it’s fun to learn! |
| Stefania: I agree! |
| VOCAB LIST |
| BBecky: Let's take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| Stefania: αμελώ [natural native speed] |
| Becky: to neglect |
| Stefania: αμελώ [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: αμελώ [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: παραβλέπω [natural native speed] |
| Becky: to overlook |
| Stefania: παραβλέπω [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: παραβλέπω [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: παράγραφος [natural native speed] |
| Becky: paragraph |
| Stefania: παράγραφος [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: παράγραφος [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: βία [natural native speed] |
| Becky: violence |
| Stefania: βία [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: βία [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: άσχημος [natural native speed] |
| Becky: ugly/bad |
| Stefania: άσχημος [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: άσχημος [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: γεγονός [natural native speed] |
| Becky: fact/event |
| Stefania: γεγονός [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: γεγονός [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: ευτύχημα [natural native speed] |
| Becky: fortunate/good luck |
| Stefania: ευτύχημα [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: ευτύχημα [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: έκφραση [natural native speed] |
| Becky: expression |
| Stefania: έκφραση [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: έκφραση [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: ανισόρροπος [natural native speed] |
| Becky: unbalanced, unstable |
| Stefania: ανισόρροπος [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: ανισόρροπος [natural native speed] |
| Stefania: επίλογος [natural native speed] |
| Becky: epilogue |
| Stefania: επίλογος [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Stefania: επίλογος [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. |
| Stefania: The first word is “άσχημο” meaning “ugly”. |
| Becky: So it’s an adjective. |
| Stefania: Yes. It also has a secondary meaning. It can also mean “bad”. |
| Becky: For example? |
| Stefania: Like in our dialogue. It is used in relation to an article “Υπάρχει κάτι άσχημο σ’ αυτό;” |
| Becky: Which means “Is there something bad with that?” |
| Stefania: Exactly! |
| Becky: Do you have examples with the meaning “ugly”? |
| Stefania: Let’s say you go to a gallery and you see a really ugly painting. Then you can say: “Ο πίνακας αυτός είναι πολύ άσχημος.” |
| Becky: Meaning “This painting is very ugly”. So we can use this in many situations. |
| Stefania: Yes, for food, places and so on. |
| Becky: OK. What else do we have? |
| Stefania: The noun “γεγονός” means “fact”, something that happened, or “event” just like in our sample sentence “Τα πρόσφατα γεγονότα τον ανάγκασαν να παραιτηθεί”. |
| Becky: Meaning “The recent events forced him to resign”. |
| Stefania: Right. And finally, we have the feminine noun “βία” literally meaning “violence”. In the expression “βίαιο έγκλημα”, which means “violent crime”, the suffix “-αιο” is added to the stem “βι-“ to create an adjective. |
| Becky: Anything special about this noun? |
| Stefania: We can use it metaphorically to denote “urgency” as in the expression “δεν υπάρχει βία” which means “there is no rush”, in other words, rush to do something specific. |
| Becky: Got it. Okay, now onto the grammar. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Becky: In this lesson, you’ll learn about various prefixes. |
| Stefania: And especially ones used in word composition. Remember derivation? |
| Becky: Of course! Words produced from other words, usually by adding suffixes at the end. |
| Stefania: Very good. But do you remember that words are also produced by composition? |
| Becky: Yes, this means they are created by combining words, right? |
| Stefania: You’re getting good at this! |
| Becky: It’s because I’ve been reviewing the lesson notes from the previous lessons! So what about composition? Do we just throw words together and see what sticks? |
| Stefania: (laughs) Of course not! There are many ways we can combine words, but in this lesson, we will deal with how we add prefixes to some words to create other words. |
| Becky: So it’s like the suffixes we saw in the previous lessons… |
| Stefania: Yes, but now we add syllables at the beginning, not at the end. |
| Becky: And what are these syllables? |
| Stefania: Most are prepositions and some others are particles. |
| Becky: OK. Give us some examples! |
| Stefania: Sure. The most common is the privative particle “α-“ |
| Becky: As in the first letter of the alphabet? |
| Stefania: Yes. If you put it in front of a word, it usually turns it into the negative or opposite thing. For example, “άσχημος”, which we saw previously, means “ugly”, right? |
| Becky: Yes. |
| Stefania: If you analyze this word, we have the privative “α-“ and the base word “σχήμα” meaning “shape” or “form”. The notion here is that something is without form. |
| Becky: So something has an ugly shape. |
| Stefania: Exactly! |
| Becky: This is easy. Another example of a prefix? |
| Stefania: Sure. The very common “ευ-“. |
| Becky: Where does that come from? |
| Stefania: In ancient Greek “ευ-“ meant “good”, so today, words that start with it, have that notion of “good”. For example “ευ-“ added to the noun “τύχη”, which means... |
| Becky: … "luck”! |
| Stefania: ...gives us the nouns “ευτυχία”, meaning “happiness” and “ευτύχημα”, which is in our dialogue, and it literally means “good fortune”. |
| Becky: So “eftihía” is not exactly “happi-ness”, but good-luck. |
| Stefania: Exactly! Ευ-τυχία. |
| Becky: I see. Are there many such prefixes? |
| Stefania: There are. And each gives a specific meaning to the word, just like “ευ-“ does. One prefix can mean “again”, another can mean “split”, “both sides”, “against”. They can have all kinds of meanings. |
| Becky: Can I find these in the lesson notes? |
| Stefania: Of course! With their meanings and everything! We have also included some more detailed examples. |
| Becky: OK. But can we have at least one more? |
| Stefania: Sure. The prefix “ξανα-,” means “again”. So, if you put it before almost any verb, you get a repeated action of that verb. |
| Becky: For example? |
| Stefania: “γράφω” means “to write”. “ξαναφράφω” literally means, “I write again”, so “rewrite”. |
| Becky: Can you… |
| Stefania: …say it again? Sure! “γράφω” and “ξαναφράφω”. |
| Becky: It isn’t hard. |
| Stefania: No. It just takes some time to get used to them. |
Outro |
|---|
| Becky: That’s all for this lesson, everyone! Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time. |
| Stefania: Γεια χαρά! |
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