# Language Base



## caju90212

goes greek have words that mean a whole frase or do u have to build a frase. thats what i dotn get. 
there is *Σ'αγαπω* for I LOVE YOU... like how do u know who is saying it? what if YOU is suposed to be plural?

What i am trying to understand is if you litteraly have to litteraly say a frase or do many frases alread have SINGLE words to say the whole frase...

thanx


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## remosfan

If I understand your question right, then Greek does build up phrases using separate words. 

To take your example σ' αγαπώ, it's actually two words σε and αγαπώ but the vowel of σε gets elided.

Αγαπώ means "I love," because of the -ω ending. Verbs in Greek always show who the subject is (by their endings) and so you don't have to explicitly say it. To list the entire present you have

αγαπώ - I love
αγαπάς - you (singular) love
αγαπάει - he/she/it loves
αγαπάμε - we love
αγαπάτε - you (plural) love
αγαπάνε - they love

There are pronouns like εγώ, which means "I", but you only use these when you want to emphasize the subject. For example εγώ σ' αγαπώ means "_I_ love you (as opposed to someone else)".

The σε means "you (singular)" and it's in the accusative case because it's the direct object. The other persons in the accusative form are:

με - me
σε - you (singular)
τον - him
την - her
το - it
μας - us
σας - you (plural)
τους - them (masculine)
τις - them (feminine)
τα - them (neuter)

So to answer your question, if you is plural it would be σας αγαπώ. Or for another example τις αγαπάμε means "we love them", where "them" is a group of girls.


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## caju90212

Oo ok so if there is a goup of girl with 1 boy in it, would you say Τους or Τα?

and if i would like to ask: Do you love me?
i would ask: σε αγαπασ?

and 1 last thing... how do u put the accent on top of a letter in the greek keyboard? and is that really even to place the stress? (thats my guess)

Σεγχαριστω


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## remosfan

caju90212 said:
			
		

> Oo ok so if there is a goup of girl with 1 boy in it, would you say Τους or Τα?



You would use τους. You use the masculine also for humans in general when their sex is not important or there are both males and females.



> and if i would like to ask: Do you love me?
> i would ask: σε αγαπασ?



Close. It would be με αγαπας;

Just to point out, the Greek question mark is ;, the English semicolon. And also (but I have no idea why  ) the letter σ is always written ς at the end of a word.



> and 1 last thing... how do u put the accent on top of a letter in the greek keyboard? and is that really even to place the stress? (thats my guess)



The way I do it using Windows is you press the semi-colon key and then the vowel.

And yep, it's to show where the stress is.



> Σεγχαριστω Σ' ευχαριστώ



Παρακαλώ. (Note it's the same σε again, so litteraly σ' ευχαριστώ means "I thank you")


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## caju90212

Damn this language is hard...

so when do you use τα? only when THEM is neither masculin nor feminine?

also does β sound like a B or a V?

Σ'Ευχαριστώ...


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## beatrizg

The greek "Β / β"  sounds like the English "V", caju.

Regarding the article "τα", you use it when the noun is neutral and plural, for example "ta παιδιά" (the children).

Αγαπάς τα παιδιά; Ναι, τα αγαπώ.


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## caju90212

Thanx Bea,
 now i should learn words and their genders hahahahah
thats gonna be the hard part... the conjugations wont be too hard.. that will come with time.. but i plan to live in greece soon so that wont be a problem to practice...

Well im off to work, i work at Μειθοσ, a greek restaurant... im sure by the end of the day i will have another question about greek haahahah
thanx for the help


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## remosfan

caju90212 said:
			
		

> now i should learn words and their genders hahahahah



Actually, I remember from my Greek school days, learning genders isn't that hard and there are rules for this kind of thing, and it depends on the way that the singular nominative form of the word ends. (And the singular nominative is how the word is listed in dictionaries and is what you'll get if you ask, what do you call this in Greek, and so on).

The rules are:

Ends in -η like αγάπη (love), always feminine
Ends in -ο like χωριό (village), always neuter
Ends in -ι like παιδί (child), always neuter

Ends in -α like γιαγιά (grandmother), most likely feminine, unless it ends in -μα like πράγμα (thing) which are most likely neuter. Two common exceptions are μαμά (mom) which is feminine and γάλα (milk) which is neuter.

Ends in -ς like άντρας (man), is mostly like masculine, BUT there are a lot of commonly used neuters and some feminines that end in -ος, and you have to just learn these on a word by word basis.

Hope this helps.

P.S. Not to discourage you, but the conjugations can get pretty nasty  Like the conjugations I listed above for αγαπώ, there's actually a bunch of alternate forms that are just as common, so that's something to watch out for.


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