Από πού είσαι; (Where are you from?)

You know how you ask how someone is doing, and what their name is.

To ask where they are from, or where they live, we need another question word: πού.

Από πού είσαι;

To ask where someone is from, we say Από πού είσαι; (literally ‘from where are you?’)

The response is Είμαι από την___ (I’m from ___.)

You will have heard these phrases before, in the Καλώς Όρισες! conversation.

The word την doesn’t have an exact equivalent in English. It means something like ‘the’, but it’s used in situations that ‘the’ is not required in English.

In English, we might say ‘I’m from the United States’, but not ‘I’m from the Greece’. In Greek, however, this would be phrased Είμαι από την Ελλάδα.

Την is the article used for countries with feminine names – and most countries have feminine names.

Here are some of the countries with the most speakers of Modern Greek, outside of Greece (Ελλάδα) and Cyprus (Κύπρος):

1. Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες (United States)
2. Γερμανία
3. Αυστραλία
4. Καναδάς
5. Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο (United Kingdom)
6. Αλβανία

Note how Ελλάδα, Γερμανία, Αυστραλία, and Αλβανία all end with –α, a typical feminine ending, just like the name Μαρία.

To say I’m from Germany, you would simply say Είμαι από την Γερμανία.

What about Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες? It’s feminine too – it just ends with –ς because it’s in the plural (just like United States in English).

To say I’m from the US, you need the plural feminine article: Είμαι από τις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες.

Even Κύπρος is feminine.

To say I’m from Cyprus, you would say Είμαι από την Κύπρο. (Note how the ς is dropped since Cyprus is the object of the phrase).

But there are exceptions. Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο doesn’t end with an –α or an –η like Μαρία or Ελένη. Nor does it end with an –ς, like Γιώργος.

The names of places and things have a third gender: neuter.

Neuter words often end with –ι or-ο, like βασίλειο (kingdom), but words and names borrowed from other languages, like Ισραήλ which do not have a typically ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ ending in Greek, are also generally classed as neuter.

To say I’m from the UK, you need to use the neuter article: Είμαι από το Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο.

Finally, Καναδάς is masculine. Why? Because Greek borrowed the name from French, and in French, Canada is masculine.

To say I’m from Canada, you need to use the masculine article: Είμαι από τον Καναδά. (Note how, just like Κύπρος the ς is dropped since Canada is the object of the phrase).

Unless the country you come from has one of the plural, masculine, or neuter names listed above, you don’t need to worry about this too much at this stage. The phrase Είμαι από την ___ will work for most countries.

You can find a comprehensive list of countries on pages 319-320 of Ελληνικά Τώρα (Greek Now) 1.

You can practice answering where you come from with another learner in this video:

Note that Sara is also learning Greek, and sometimes makes mistakes, but she corrects them in her videos. Seeing if you can spot them is also good practice for you!

Bonus! Πού μένεις;

Once you know where someone is from, you might want to ask where they live – either to narrow down where in that country they are from, or to find out where they currently live, which may be different to their place of birth.

Μένω is the verb for ‘live’. The stem is μέν-, and the ending –ω tells us that ‘I‘ live somewhere.

To ask where do you live, we need to change this ending, either to –εις or –ετε:

Here are the names of the largest cities in Greece:

1. Αθήνα
2. Θεσσαλονίκη
3. Πάτρα
4. Πειραιάς
5. Ηράκλειο

The first three of these city names end with –α and –η, and, like the personal names Μαρία and Ελένη, are feminine. They appear with the article την.

Πειραιάς ends with an –ς, and like Γιώργος is masculine. It appears with the article τον.

Ηράκλειο ends with an –ο and is neuter. It appears with the article το.

The Greek word for ‘in‘ as in ‘I live in ___’ is σε. When combined with articles (τον, την, and το), σε becomes σ+article:

You can practice talking about where you live with Sara in this video:

You can listen to some friends meeting in the street talk about their origins on the Nostos website. You’ll find the transcript of their conversation, and some activities, on page 33 of Ελληνικά Τώρα (Greek Now) 1.