Thematically Grouped Concepts in Modern Greek

This page is part of the author's set of pages on the Greek language.

The following sets of concepts in Greek are included in this page.

• Colors (some common ones)
• Days of the week and temporal specifications
• Months and seasons of the year
• Nations / countries / geographical regions, their people, and their products
• Oceans and Seas
• Planets, other astronomical objects, and zodiac constellations
• States of the U.S.A.

Some common colors

Notes:
Those colors that are declinable adjectives are shown as neuter / feminine / masculine (the latter two with their distinctive endings only; e.g., το κόκκινο πάτωμα, η κόκκινη πόρτα, ο κόκκινος τοίχος). The rest (indeclinable adjectives) appear with the same form in all three genders, cases, and numbers (e.g., το καφέ πάτωμα, η καφέ πόρτα, ο καφέ τοίχος).
It is not certain that all Greeks would distinguish between γαλάζιο and μπλε, or between γαλάζιο and κυανό. Κυανό or κυανούν meant simply “blue” in older Greek, but with the introduction of computer terminology it is now sometimes used to translate “cyan”, which derives from the Greek root “κυαν-”. Most Greeks would agree that the sky (ουρανός, masc.) is γαλάζιος, or γαλανός (another form of the same adjective), and the sea (θάλασσα, fem.) is γαλάζια or γαλανή. Both the sky and the sea can take on various hues of cyan/blue, hence the confusion.
The qualifiers ανοιχτό / -τή / -τός (light) and σκούρο / -ρη / -ρος (dark) can be applied to any color (see them above and below “gray”).

Days of the week and temporal specifications

Notice that in Greek the listing of days traditionally starts from Sunday. This explains why Monday is called Δευτέρα, which means “Second”, Τρίτη means “Third”, and so on up to Thursday (“Fifth”). Παρασκευή (Friday) means “Preparation”, and Σάββατο comes from the Hebrew root for Sabbath. Finally, Κυριακή does not mean “First”, but “Lord’s Day”.

Some temporal nouns follow:

How to tell the time in Greek:

Note: Time can also be announced as if reading it off digital clocks: six forty-nine = έξι και σαρανταεννιά, etc.

Some adverbs of time follow:

Months and seasons of the year

Note the two columns, formal and colloquial. Generally, the formal forms are used in writing, whereas the colloquial ones in speech; however, the distinction is not so clear-cut. Often the formal names are used in speech, too, whereas one can find the colloquial forms in politically leftist texts. Indeed, there exist the forms Ιούνης and Ιούλης (for June and July, respectively), which are used almost exclusively by the publications of the communist party, and sound rather artificial to the average Greek ear. (The month of August is the only one that has no such artificially colloquialized form.)

Nations / countries / geographical regions, their people, and their products

Greek differs from English when referring to nations, their people, and their products. In English, the word “German” might mean either the language, or a person, or a product from Germany. In Greek there are different forms for each of these cases: γερμανικά is the German language, Γερμανός / Γερμανίδα is the German (man/woman), and γερμανικό / γερμανική / γερμανικός is the adjective for anything that originates from Germany (in neuter / feminine / masculine forms). Note that only the adjectives for people are capitalized in Greek. As in English, there is a different form for the country itself, which, being a proper name, is capitalized; thus, Germany is Γερμανία. The following table lists the Greek words for the most common nations, their people, and their products. Where two alternative forms exist, the first is the more common one. Note that in some cases the adjective for the man from a location is given, but not the adjective for the woman; in such cases the adjective for the woman from that location is not in use. The same might apply to the language or product from the given place: what this table lists is the forms that are in actual use (even rarely) in Greek, rather than what should be the form; i.e., this table gives descriptive, rather than prescriptive information. Some exceptions exist in cases where the Greek grammar dictates a single obvious choice (e.g., Σουαζιλανδέζος / -ζα, should be the obvious choice for the person from Swaziland, although the term cannot be found in use on the web ca. 2006). When more than a couple of languages are in use at a place, or when a language is designated as “official” but not spoken natively, no name for language is supplied.

1. The word “America” (Αμερική) in Greek, as in English, refers both to the U.S.A. and the following continental parts: North America (Βόρειος Αμερική), Central America (Κεντρική Αμερική) and South America (Νότιος Αμερική). Similarly, “American” (see Greek adjectives) refers both to the citizen of the U.S.A. and the inhabitant of the American continent. However, the strongest association (i.e., out of context) is with the U.S.A. and its people and products.

2. F.Y.R.O.M. (the Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia) is the country that is often referred to in short as “Macedonia” in English. In Greek, the term “Macedonia” (Μακεδονία) refers to a geographical region (this one), which includes the northern prefecture of Greece that goes by the same name, as well as F.Y.R.O.M., and a small part of Bulgaria. Caution: it is inappropriate (politically incorrect) to use the term Μακεδονία among Greeks to refer simply to F.Y.R.O.M., or Μακεδόνας and Μακεδόνισσα for F.Y.R.O.M.’s people, since these terms refer to Greeks born in Greek Macedonia, and they were in use long before F.Y.R.O.M. even existed as an entity (i.e., for thousands of years; F.Y.R.O.M. was established only in 1991). The adjectives in Greek for the inhabitant of F.Y.R.O.M. are borrowed from its capital Skopje, hence Σκοπιανός/-νή. Sometimes the term Σλαβομακεδόνας (slav-macedonian) is used for the people of Slavic origin of F.Y.R.O.M., to distinguish them from Greeks born in Greek Macedonia, or from citizens of F.Y.R.O.M. of different ethnic origin (e.g., ethnic Albanians). Similarly, the adjectives μακεδονικό, μακεδονική, μακεδονικός refer to products from Greek Macedonia.

3. Note: the existence of such a region is disputed by Turkey, Iran, and Syria. However, the adjectives for the people (Kurds), their language (Kurdish), and their products, are part of the Greek language, so they are included here.

4. A search of the web (ca. 2006) did not return a single hit for these terms. However, because the word “Micronesia” is of Greek origin (μικρο + νησία = “small-islands group”), the adjectives for people and products from Micronesia follow naturally and effortlessly in Greek; hence they are noted in the above table. A similar reasoning applies to “Polynesia” (from πολυ + νησία = “many-islands group”).

Oceans and Seas

Note: the names of oceans and seas precede the nouns “ocean/sea”, thus: Ειρηνικός ωκεανός, Ερυθρά θάλασσα, etc.

Planets, other astronomical objects, and zodiac constellations

1. The plural of this term is: διάττοντες αστέρες, οι (“shooting stars”). The adjective διάττων does not comply with any of the Modern Greek patterns for noun endings. It is an obsolete/ancient word, now used only in this stock phrase.

States of the U.S.A.

The right-hand column of the following table lists the names of the 50 states of the U.S.A. as they appear in Greek, first as they are actually seen in Greek texts, and next as they could/should be spelled (somewhat closer to the American pronunciation, as much as the Greek phonetic system allows). Traditionally, some of the names of the American states have been incorporated into the Greek declinational system (e.g., Μασαχουσέτη for Massachusetts). Others have simply been pronounced wrong (e.g., Αρκάνσας for Arkansas, Ιλινόις for Illinois), but the wrong forms have prevailed, or are changing but still appear in older texts.

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