"ο θρόνος"

Translation: The throne

[MateiIonit]

Why is this not το θρόνος?

[D_..]

It's a masculine word, therefore its article is ο. Words in -ος are mostly masculine, some are neuter and even fewer are feminine. See here http://www.foundalis.com/lan/grknouns.htm

[Isioni]

I said 'the throne' and I got it wrong, when the answer was 'The throne' Why did I get that wrong?

[hishteym]

Are there any tricks for guessing whether to use 'ο' or 'ω'? I wrote 'θρώνος' and I want to see if there is a way to stop making such mistakes — other than practice and rote memorization, of course!

[mizinamo]

In the stem of the word, it's basically just memorising.

It's like "ee" versus "ea" in English -- they used to be pronounced differently, which is why they are spelled differently, and then the pronunciation merged but the spelling stayed separate. And so you have to memorise that "meet" (= encounter) and "meat" (= flesh) are spelled the way they are, and similarly in Greek with nouns such as χώρος (place) versus χορός (dance).

In a grammatical ending, you can use grammar to help you; for example, the verb ending for εγώ is spelled with -ω, while the masculine (second declension) noun ending is spelled with -ος, and so on.

So while you can't guess the vowel in the θρόν- part (you simply have to memorise it), you can be pretty sure that the -ος has an omicron.

You may encounter similar difficulties with ε, αι and with η, ι, υ, ει, οι -- but there, sometimes it can help to know how English spells the appropriate loanword. (For example, knowing the κοιμητήριον is spelled "cemetery" in Greek lets you know that the first three syllables can't contain ι or υ, because otherwise English would have spelled them with "i" or "y".)

[hishteym]

Thanks so much! The tip on grammatical endings is really helpful.

[InnocuousLearner]

Is the o supposed to be capitalized?

[mizinamo]

This is not a complete sentence, but just a phrase that could occur in the middle of a sentence, so the ο is not capitalised here.

(Though the capitalisation of individual phrases is a little bit inconsistent in the course, I'm afraid.)

[fwaaaah]

Can someone pleane explain all the "the"s?

[Groovy_Kaneda]

Is it me or does sigma sound like a "SH" sound?

[D_..]

It sounds like a sh sound and that's because you're familiar with a sh sound. :) In fact it is not, it's a sound between s and sh, and replacing it with sh sounds really weird to natives' ears. Stick with a simple s as you would when pronouncing mass and you'll be fine. :)