Day 5 | To Be

Today's entry might look short but that's intentional.  From my reckoning I view the "to be" verb as the most important component of a language as it drives sentences.  Once you get this nailed the task of conversing will be that much easier.  On that note, see below the various ways to be:

I am	εγώ είμαι	egho eemeh
You are	εσύ είσαι	esee eese
He is	αυτός είναι	aftos eene
She is	αυτή ειναι	aftee eene
We are	εμεις εί μαστε	emees eemaste
You are	εσείς είσαστε	esees eessaste
They are	αυτοί είναι	aftee eene

After devoting the first couple of posts looking at "combinations" you'll notice another one pop up out of the blue.  It looks like "αυ" in the they are statement at the bottom of the table somehow turns into "af" instead of "ahee" which is how you would expect to read it. 

That aside, with these sentance starters it will be possible to say where you're from, passing compliments and conveying you're emotions.  For me for example, I would say such things as:

εγώ ειμαι αγγλικά	εσύ είσαι Ομορφος	εμεις εί μαοτε κουρασμένοι
I am English	You are beautiful	We are tired!

A running theme you'll notice is that it can never be this simple.  For the "You are..." translation as shown above we are only stating a fact.  This would be different if you are describing someone as doing something.  For instance, "You are sleeping" is εσύ κοιμασαι (esee keemasee), which is very different from εσύ εισαι xxx (esee eese xxx).  

Short but nevertheless a little bugger to get right.  Next post I'll try and string some more substantial sentances together to exemplify the above points.  Thanks for the genuinely helpful comments of which I'm redrawing my own notes! 


Written by JuiceSoup.com