"This is the ocean."

Translation: Αυτός είναι ο ωκεανός.

[JadeLight2]

Why can't το be used instead of ο?

[LaSpagnola]

Hi, I had "αντό είναι ο ωκεανός". Why does it have to be αντός?

[D_..]

Hello! Firstly, it is αυτό or αυτός (or αυτή), spelled with a υ=Υ not a ν=Ν. :) 'Ocean' is a masculine word in Greek, so you have to use αυτός. Αυτό is used for neutral words and αυτή for feminine ones. So, you need to learn every word with its grammatical gender and then have the articles/pronouns/adjectives agree with that!

[LaSpagnola]

Hi D, αυτό, of course. Ok so αυτός for masculine, αυτή for feminine and αυτό for neuter. Thank you!

[Jamieson702913]

how do you type in greek on this?!!!

[Scott152465]

If you have a windows computer, you can activate the greek option so that you can switch between typing in english or greek. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17424/windows-change-keyboard-layout

[colen35]

I have a greek keyboard in a separate browser and size them so I can see both to make it easier to see the letters to type. You can switch keyboards by using the windows key and the space bar.

[ChrisHall182905]

Hi Jamieson on windows you can add another keyboard to your computer and to switch you press win key-spacebar and it switches the language

[LaSpagnola]

Hi Jamieson,
I use this website: http://greek.typeit.org/
I type it in there and then copy and paste to duolingo. It's cumbersome but I haven't found anything better yet. Hopefully someone else will have a better suggestion.

[TwiggyHarmony]

I hope that you have discovered a technique that isn't so troublesome

[CannedMan]

Is there a difference between είναι and είμαι?*

• Except, of course, the spelling. Do they signify something about gender and/or case? I suppose that is my question.

[D_..]

Είμαι and είναι only signify first person singular and third person singular or plural, respectively. Nothing about gender, nothing about cases (cases are used in articles, nouns, adjectives and participles but not verbs).

[CannedMan]

Is there something about various conjugations to keep in mind then? I thought first person singular ended in -ω, such as τρώω.

[D_..]

Verbs end either in -ω (active voice) or in -μαι (passive voice - in Greek this means a different thing than it does in English). There are several verb types with distinct conjugation patterns within each voice, but they sort of follow the same overall idea.
You can review the Tips and notes at https://www.duolingo.com/skill/el/Verbs%3A-Present/tips-and-notes to see how the two conjugation tables differ in general. The best thing to do is learn the endings and figure out how to add them to each verb stem. This might not work every time, but you'll learn to recognise the patterns more easily. :) For the active voice for example:

ending	example 1	example 2	example 3
-ω	κάνω	διαβάζω	τρώω
-εις	κάνεις	διαβάζεις	τρως
-ει	κάνει	διαβάζει	τρώει
-ουμε	κάνουμε	διαβάζουμε	τρώμε
-ετε	κάνετε	διαβάζετε	τρώτε
-ουν(ε)	κάνουν	διαβάζουν	τρώνε

[CannedMan]

Thank you for your excellent answer. I see there are some elisions going on, but apart from that, there is nothing surprising. I recognise the -ουν in 3p pl. from Latin -(u)nt, the -εις from Latin 2p sg -(ā/ē/i/ī)s and of course the 1p sg -ω exactly matches the Latin -ō. I still am a bit confused by -ναι/-μαι, but I’m sure that confusion will be cleared once I’ve read the link you provided.