Day 2 | Vowels

Back from work; it's Friday night and here I pick up where I left off for Day 2 of this Greek endeavour.  As promised today will be devoted to breaking down the 24 letters to more manageable chunks.  The natural subset exists in the Greek alphabet as it does in the English between consonants and vowels and it is the latter which will be explored today.  As mentioned in the last post there are multiple letters that are used for the same sounds, making the sequence more complicated than necessary.  Nevertheless, the 5 vowels we use here in merry lil' England are in close parallel with whats in Greece: the A, E, I , O and U which deviates with an "oo" rather than "u".  To my ears the sounds of the vowels are as follows:

α (alpha) sounds like apple             

ε (epsilon) αι (alpha-iota) sounds like exit

η (eta) ι (iota) υ (upsilon) ει (epsilon-iota) οι (omicron-iota) sounds like integer

ο (omicron) ω (omega) sounds like open

ου (omicron-upsilon) sounds like hook

Looks simple, right?  Well, not quite.  We can't just stick these vowel babies into any old word in any old place.  They come with their own rules and stipulations which need conforming to if you don't want to come across all novice-like.  So here is my limited understanding of these such policies:

the "A" is simply alpha α (just the one, good start) so there is no confusion what to use.  For example the word for love is agapi αγαπι (aww!).  

the "E" gets a little more complicated.  There is a single epsilon ε and a combined set alpha-iota αι which both sound as "e".  They use ε in all words except for the mysterious 'reflexive verbs' (things you do to yourself, such as "I eat" or "I wakeup") in which case you use αι.  For example, "I sleep" will be keemame κοιμαμαι with the ai at the end.

the "I" is the most confusing out of the 5 and is more than likely to be learnt from intuition than from reading textbooks, but nevertheless, lets have a crack.  

Eta η is used on feminine words (all those that did French at GCSE will remember this unhelpful nuance; learning the gender as well as the name of things!).  So for example "life" is of the female persuasion and is therefore known in Greek with an eta stuck comfortably to the end: zoe ζοη. 

Upsilon υ is - yes, you guessed it - for the big butch masculine words (although adjectives not nouns).  So for the commonly used term "many" is poly πολυ.  "very cold" would be πολυ κρυ.

Iota ι are for the neutral words.  Typical example is "child" which can obviously be male or female.  The Child "Pedhee" would use the "ee" variant Iota:  παιδι.

Epsilon-Iota ει should be used for conjugating verbs.  That is, stringing verbs (run, walk and sleep etc) with the primary actor (I, they, you or he etc) which are third person.  For instance: "he writes" would be αντοσ γραφει and "you write" would be εσυ γραφεισ.

Omicron-Iota οι is the last "ee" variant and can be an actual word in itself (the "the") when the noun is plural and not neutral (stay with me...).  So say we want to shout loudly "the ducks" (which is plural and female) we would say ee papyes οι παπιεσ.

the "O" is a lot simpler.  There is a more formal explanation in the text books but it seems to me that the de-facto rule is that if there is an "o" at the end  of a word, use an Omicron o; for example egg in Greek is avgho αuγο.  Omega (the last letter of the alphabet)  is usually kept for the verbs; the doing words: "play" for instance is pezo or παιζω.

the "U" represents the last of the vowels and isn't a U at all, but an "oo" sound.  The nicest way to exemplify this is to reach for the ooranos or ουρανοσ (if you hadn't guessed, the sky).

Well that was a challenge.  It's important to remember that all this will come with intuition and don't be disheartened if you find this a struggle to start with (well, this is what I've been told at this early stage of the journey at least).  The next post will be a gloss over the consonants, but please feel free to post a comment on the section below to help open up the floor to discussion and debate (I am expecting mistakes so please feel free to bring me up to score where needed). 

Time for some αλκοολ!


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