 | επειδη και γιατι...'o' & 'w'...many thanks! :o) |
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hello once again! i have been told by a native greek speaker to use the word giati to mean both why and because...but i know from the dictionary there is a word for because 'epeidi' please explain to me in which contexts we would use giati and epeidi and also if i was to use the wrong word (as in my earlier trauma with mazi and me!!) would it be very noticable to a greek speaker? also..please help me with one final thing...please explain why words sometimes translate with 'w' or 'o's for example moro μορω what is the rule for o and w...is it related to the position in the word or it is a completely different word..only they sound the same? ahh! thank you very much for whoever is kind enough to help me through! |
| Re: επειδη και γιατι...'o' & 'w'...many thanks! :o) |
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Γεια σου μελισσούλα, Επειδή means "because" but also with the sense of "since." For example: Επειδή με ρωτάς, θα σου πω. Since you're asking me, I will tell you. If you look closely at the word γιατί, you can see that it is made up of the words για ("for") and τι ("what"), so that may give you some insight as to its connotations. We should wait for a native speaker's confirmation, but I don't think there's ever a time when you can't use γιατί to mean "because." (P.S. I don't mean to confuse you further, but there's also the word διότι, which also means "because," and sometimes που can mean "because" as well! So the Greeks just have a lot of words for "because.") Ω is the lengthened version of Ο (O-mega = "long o"). Ο is the shorter version (O-mikron = "short o"). In ancient times the lengths of vowels were more pronounced, so these were basically two distinct vowel sounds. Nowadays they are pronounced exactly the same, but the words are still spelled the way they used to be when there was a difference. Other than some noticeable patterns (e.g., ω comes at the end of first-person present-tense verbs, ο comes at the end of neuter nouns, etc.), there is no rule about when they appear. (There may be some rare instances where ω is a predictable result of some sort of archaic vowel contraction, but it's really much easier at this stage just to memorize the modern spellings than it is to learn the ancient vowel contraction rules!) **Edit- Oh, if you're talking about transliteration into the Latin alphabet (e.g., μωρό -> mwro or moro), there's no real standard there, either. Sometimes people use 'w' to represent ω because they look similar, and sometimes they use 'o' because that's the sound it makes. |
