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Υεια Σας, Can anyone help me I am confused about the meaning of βρε. I hear it often and I have not been able to understand what it means! Σας ευχαριστώ πάρα πολύ!!! Victoria |
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It means something like: "Hey", "you there" or "well now" My dictionary gives two examples: τι κανείς εκεί΄; hey you, what are you doing? βρε τι λες "just fancy" Jim |
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In my experience it is usually used as you would use mate or pal, informal with the potential to be quite challenging. A few years ago a middle-aged Greek friend bemoaned its emergence (new to her at that time) as a blight on the language. |
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βρε or μπρε : I was told comes from "μωρέ", a vocative form of "μωρό" = baby. You can also hear "ρε". It can be used as an adjective to indicate familiarity with the person addressed. Or as a noun remplacing the name of the person addressed. Apart from the familiarity implied, it also carries an emphatic stress, changing as it does the equilibrium of the accentuation in the sentence. βρε = familiarity + emphasis Βρε Μιχάλη, τι κάνεις εδώ; Michali, what are you doing here mate? Άσε με ρε! Leave me alone for God's sake! Against the μώρε etymology, I should say that there is the same word in Hindi, "re" , which has a feminime, "ri", and both are attested in poetry as a familiar and tender way of address well before the 17th century (in languages anterior to Hindi which is a recent language). So maybe this is one of those timeless Indo-European things! Frequent in Indian poetry because of its convenient ability to complete a verse and modify the scansion. |
