Useful Greek Phrases - Lesson 3

Hello! Welcome to My Athens TV. Once again, we are going to look at some Greek words and phrases that will help you get the most out of your stay in Athens. This time we are going to look at numbers. The first thing you need to know is that in Greek there are two words for 1. In Greek, each word has a gender so you would use ena for male or neutral words and meea for female words. We are not going to get into when it is appropriate to use which word, just know that either word can be used to say one. Now we will teach you Greek words for numbers. Using these words and a simple method of adding them together, you can count to 100 in Greek! We will divide the numbers into two groups. In the first group, the numbers one through twelve are: meea or ena for 1, theeo for 2, treea for 3, tesera for 4, pede for 5, exee for 6, efta for 7, ochto for 8, eneea for 9, theka for 10, edeka for 11 and thotheka for 12. In the second group, the multiples of ten from ten to a hundred are: theka for 10, eekosee for 20, triada for 30, sarada for 40, penida for 50, exida for 60, evthomida for 70, ogthoda for 80, enenida for 90 and ekato for 100. Out of all the numbers after ten, only eleven and twelve get their own name. All other numbers are said by saying the multiple of ten implied by the first digit and the number of the second digit, much like in English. Let's translate a few numbers to practice. Let's translate the number 25. The Greek word for twenty is eekosee and the word for five is pede. So you put those together and we'll get 25: eekosee-pede which is the Greek word for 25. All right, now let's do 47. The Greek word for forty is sarada and the Greek word for seven is efta. We add those together and we get sarada efta which is the Greek word for 47. Okay, let's do one more! Let's translate the number 16. The Greek word for ten is theka and the Greek word for six is exee. So you put those together and you get theka-exee which is the Greek word for 16. There you go! Once you've learned those two groups of numbers, you will be able to count to 100 in Greek without any trouble. Stay tuned for our next video, which will help you utilize what you've learned today to tell time in Greek! And make sure to check out our other videos on myathens.tv or on Facebook which offer all sorts of helpful information about Athens. Thanks for watching!