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- "Ένα αγόρι και ένα κορίτσι."
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Is the indefinite article in Greek like the "bir" in Turkish, where they can be interchanged as "one" and "a/an"?
2065
I'm not sure how "bir" works in Turkish, but in Greek the indefinite articles "ένας", "μία", "ένα" can mean both "a"/"an" and "one". :-)
Yes. Most languages either don't have an indefinite article (Icelandic, Latin, Chinese...) or make no distinction between it and the numeral 1 (Italian, Greek, German, Norwegian...) English is odd.
Wait, aren't the German indefinite articles "ein" and "eine," while the word for one is "eins"?
You can't say eins Ding for "one thing". You have to say ein Ding whether it would be "one thing" or "a thing" in English.
There is a special form of the nominative/accusative neuter (eins) for counting, and that is a slight move towards the way English does it, but it's not quite the same. If you want to say "not one", meaning not a single person, you have to say nicht einer. Gender and case determine the form (which will be ein, eine, eins, einen, einem, einer, eines) much more than any distinction between article and numeral, which is almost entirely absent.
I'm not an authority, but I just checked on my greek keyboard, and it looks like that's how they accent a capital letter - so instead of spanish or similar, where the accent goes on top, it just goes before the letter :D
Here's the short list: Έ Ύ Ί Ό Ή Ά Ώ
I read somewhere that 'ο' in Greek is pronounced as a short o like in "dog" and 'ω' as a long o as in home. Assuming this is true (so I hope), why is αγόρι pronounced with a long o instead of a short one?
That is not true. Ο & Ω sound exaclty the same (Greek lost its vowel length by -100 BC to 100 AD). It just sounds that way because the ο is accented.
κορίτσι sounds like the word for chicken in Russian -I'm just saying. It can be a mnemonic device for those studying both languages, notwithstanding the extreme stretch to darwinian etymology.
That's actually grammatically incorrect to use the full form of "and" here. It must be contracted to κι if the next word starts with ε. So it should be "κι ένα" instead of "και ένα".
Ενα was underlined as I'd missed the accent off the capital E, but the accent wasn't displayed.
There is an accent on "Ένα" but it isn't very visible. What kind of exercise was this so we can check to be sure there isn't some kind of internal error? Or perhaps find a way to make the accent more prominent.
Missing or incorrect accents are identified by the system but sentences are not rejected. (expect in the few cases where the meaning of the word is changed, but that's for later in the course.)
When you translate something you translate what's there.
If you do it the wrong way round it's wrong.
You need to show you know the meaning of the words.
