Day 6 | Gender & Family

As is always the case, work has a tendency of getting in the way of things you think are more important and hence a few days have passed since the last posting (one day I might get round to uploading a personal profile with this Blog to explain what I do & why I'm learning Greek!).  So today I'm looking at the use of Gender by using the simple example of family to tease out its special nuances.

It has already been mentioned that in the Greek language they use the dreaded gender system which means multiplying the learning process by 2 (or as you will find out, 3!).  If you are not familiar with this (Old English or Anglo-Saxon used to have this but now modern English has done away with it), it is simply that words have embedded within them a specific male or female type and based on this all of the other words that surround it (adjectives and articles etc) are changed as a consequence.  This can be show when calling out members of your own family.

Father is known as Πατέρας (pahtehras) and no prizes for what gender this belongs to.  Mother is known as Μιτέρα (Meetehrah) and is of the female persuasion.  What gender would you apply to the word "child" (or Παιδι, Peethee - remember "αι" make "ee") though since there is an equal chance of it being either a boy or girl.  That is where the third gender comes in which is called the "neuter".  So we have three words with three different genders, but what does that mean for those other words that surround it.  We can tease this out using the definite and indefinite articles (the former being "the" and the latter "a"):

Father (m)	Mother (f)	Child (n)
A father, ένας πατέρας     "enas patehras"	A mother, μία μητέρα   "meeah meetehra"	A child, ένα παιδί "ehna peethee"
The father, Ο πατέρας "oh patehras"	The mother, η μητέρα "ee meetehra"	The child, το παιδί "toh peethee"

So the bad news is that we're having to learn genders as well as words.  The good news is that there are clues in which we can get just from looking at the way the word is spelt.  Masculine words for example normally end with ς.  Female nouns end in η and α.  Whilst the neuter words close off using ι or ο.  As I said these are clues and not hard and fast rules to abide by but they should nevertheless give you a hint.  

So in summary there is no one word for "the" or "a" but changes depending on the gender of the noun it is applied to.  To make sure this sinks in, I'm going to put down the following words in English & Greek and want to see whether people can pick up whether they are Masculine, Feminine and Neuter.

Sister αδελφή (adelfee)

Baby μωρό (moroh)

Boy αγόρι (aghoree)

This αυτός (avtos)

This αυτή (avtee)

One of these is a "trick" question (as in what I expected it to be isn't what it is in reality!).  Please leave your attempts in the comments, I'd be interested if other people get the same responses as I did.



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