[Course Forum] 5000 Important words in Greek

Is there a difference between γιατί and επειδή? If there is, could you explain it to me? If not, could you alt-cross them? :smiley:

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I don’t believe it would be appropriate to cross-alt them. Although both words can mean ‘because’, the primary definition of γιατί is ‘why’ and is often used as an interrogative. I have added a few extra definitions to επειδή (because, because of, for, since, owing to - but not why) and added ‘because’ as a 2nd definition for γιατί. Since they both mean because you can use επειδή the way you would use ‘because ?’ as a question in English. But, they are not the same just as ‘why’ and ‘because’ are not the same in English although they can be used in many similar ways.

Glosbe is a good place to find lots of usage examples:

επειδή
και
γιατί

Another good place to find examples is WordReference.com. Just go here and type in the Greek word (you can also look them up in English): www.wordreference.com/gren/ If you type in ‘why’, you’ll get 'γιατί, and if you type in ‘because’, you’ll get both words and examples of how they are interchangeable.

Awesome thanks a lot! I thought they were basically interchangeable.

I’ve just completed another round of updating/adding a number of new words and we’re now at 3,839 :checkered_flag:

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Nice one Neal! [quote=“neal.p.carey, post:313, topic:817”]
and then take a break for a while
[/quote]

I’ve been too busy to learn many new words from this course lately, but you may not get much of a break once I catch up :wink:

χα - για έλα!

Θα ταξιδέψω στην Ελλάδα τον Απρίλιο και έχω πολλές λέξεις να μάθει.

Hi everyone,

Just a couple of word updates for level 47:
Level 47: ο αυχένας - As Homppeli says in the meme, αυχένας means nape of the neck, right now it just says neck.
Level 47: η στεριά - I think “dry land, solid ground” would make this word clearer, since I only see examples that have to do with going from sea/air to solid ground. ‘στην στεριά,’ for example, means ashore.

Thanks!

OK, both have been corrected now.

η στεριά is now dry land, land
η γη - is earth, land, soil, ground - and is in Level 26
ο αυχένας is now nape (of the neck), neck and I’ve added ο λαιμός as neck, throat in Level 150

Thanks for reporting these! I wish people that take the time to write a mem clarifying what a word ‘really’ means would take the time to report the word to the course authors here in the forums. But sadly our participation is pretty low.

Shame, I remember that back in the day, when Memrise just started, you could report errors from the review section. Anyway, if I see any more ‘corrective’ mems, I’ll post them here.

On a different note, level 44 δρόμος and level 40 οδός, whenever these two pop in the review, I mix them up, as they both have road or street as primary meaning. From what I remember, οδός is used for more stately roads, but I could be wrong here. I sometimes see οδός designated as the more formal one or as the less-used one in dictionaries. Any thoughts on this? I guess you just have to feel intuitively and from use which one is needed in a sentence, but since you only get the English, maybe changing the English for οδός to “street (formal)” would clarify things?

Thanks

This is a bit challenging and confusing, so to keep it simple I have added (formal) to η οδός and both are now translated as (with context sentences in parens):

η οδός = road (formal); street; avenue; way; via (Η οδός αποτελεί από τα πλέον πολυσύχναστα μέρη της πόλης από νέους ανθρώπους.)

ο δρόμος = road; street; path; avenue; way (Είναι ωραίος δρόμος, με όλα αυτά τα κτίρια και τα δέντρα.)

However, as far as I’ve always understood they are not exactly interchangeable and although both are from Ancient Greek, they are used differently in the modern language (tho’ I’m no expert here!) with δρόμος being more common in speech and οδός frequently used for street/road names, names of famous ways/vias, etc.

There is also (much later on) the word for avenue/boulevard/thoroughfare/highway = λεωφόρος.

If anyone else reading this ‘thread’ has other thoughts/understandings about this, please chime in. I have put this on my list of ερωτήσεις for next week’s lesson.

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Greetings Neal, hope all is well.

Here we go then :wink:

  • Level 32 φύλο and Level 48 γένος could probably do with cross-alting, or perhaps having the latter’s primary changed to ‘genus’ or ‘lineage’ or something
  • Level 46 που could perhaps have οποίος as an alt
  • Level 8 φωτάκι might be better defined as ‘little light’ or ‘faint light’
  • Levels 4 and 6 both contain 26 words
  • Level 41 συμπάθεια and Level 59 παιδαγωγική both need unarticled alts
  • Level 40 τούτος. Strictly speaking, this is probably better defined as a determiner, not an adjective
  • Level 96, Level 103 and Level 133 - brunette appears in the course three times (twice as an adjective and once as a feminine noun)
  • Level 103 με αυτοπεποίθηση and με χιούμορ. Is it really correct to call these adjectives? I completely understand what you’re getting at, but they are really prepositions and nouns. If I learned these, forgot about them, and was later tested on what the adjective for confident was, I’d probably struggle, as neither are adjectives. I guess if you wanted to still call them adjectives - particularly seeing as neither noun seems to have an adjectival form - changing the English definition to something like ‘with confidence’ could help a little?

Anyway, thanks for all the work you’ve done to the course lately. I’m now splitting my Greek learning between all sorts of different methods - acquiring words here, adding to my own Memrise course, reading children’s books, formal classes/homework, practising with my wife, Duo, Clozemaster, watching Greek films etc - so my progress through the new elements of the course may not be particularly fast. But I’ll keep reporting anything I come across.

All the best,
Sean

I was wondering when you were thinking of stopping or at least pausing. I have pushed myself a bit harder with this, as I am in Greece anyway and that motivates me but the fact that the course is still growing means that I have to run faster to make headway (I am at 44% of the existing vocabulary, or 1655 words currently). I am noticing that I recognise enough vocabulary now to (more or less)) read newspaper articles in modern Greek.

I thought φύλο referred to the anatomical sex, and γένος apart from race and class meant gender (grammatical and/or social)?

[quote=“SteveKaczynski, post:321, topic:817”]
when you were thinking of stopping or at least pausing
[/quote] Steve, I can’t say for sure . . . I plan to get to 4,000 soon, then I may pause for a while. But, ultimately I want to get to 5,000 - a nice round number. You’ve made a lot of progress if you’re now @ 44%, and at last report you were @ 26% and prior to that @ 14%. And I’ve added a lot of words in the past few weeks.

Once I’m at 4000 I will pause at least long enough to spend several weeks actually working on all vocabulary myself. I will be going to Greece later in April. So much to learn, so little time. Look through the later Levels if you haven’t already, there are many terms you may find more relevant to daily life in Greece. I’m getting 150-200 words/week just from one of the books I’m working through with my teacher. Are they all practical? or necessary?

In the meantime I have a bunch of ‘reports’ from @spdl79 to process!

I have added translations for both, φύλο - primarily sex (gender) and γένος primarily gender;genus;sex. I am also cross-Alting them as they can largely mean the same thing, although not in a grammatical sense AFAIK. There you should use γένος.

Thank you!

I try to do two levels every day. If the course were not constantly growing, I would probably be content with one. I do some of the later ones - I generally check a level for general suitability before starting to work on it. I sometimes put on ignore words I don’t think I need - for example there was one level that dealt with music records and I put on ignore a few of the words in that. More often, though, I ignore the words that are just too damn easy, so they don’t keep coming back in Review.
I almost invariably do at least 45 minutes a day, sometimes more, and tend to do fairly long streaks, so one way or another I get through it.

I think this could also perhaps be better defined in English as “this (rare/formal)”, or something similar. I’d never actually come across it before yesterday, and I was also marked incorrectly for answering αυτός when it first came up for review.

OK - First 6 bullets are done. For Level 40 εκείνος also changed to 'determiner’
I knew brunette was duped. I have big list of dupes (of one type or another) that I’m working on. But these are challenging to fix and will take some time as I have to maintain the quantities in each level as well as keep the worksheet up to date! Anyway, I’ve removed brunette from 133 and substituted it with πολυέλαιος.

For Level 103 I have simply called them “prepositional phrase”, ok? and added another English def. for each.

I will discuss this issue at my lesson on Friday.