Time: χρονός/καιρός/ώρα

Remember how to ask how much something costs? Or how many years old someone is?

Both of these questions use versions of πόσος (how much/many)

Πόσο κάνει; (How much is it?)

Πόσων χρονών είσαι; (How old are you?)

To ask how much time someone has spent in a place (like Greece), you can ask Πόσον καιρό είσαι εδώ; (How long have you been here? lit. ‘How much time you are here?’)

See how similar Πόσον is to Πόσο and Πόσων? In fact, in Modern Greek, Πόσον and Πόσων are pronounced exactly the same.

Time

You’ve now encountered several words for ‘time’:

• χρονός (which appears in the genitive plural in Πόσων χρονών είσαι;), and
• καιρός (which appears in the accusative singular in Πόσον καιρό είσαι εδώ;)
• ώρα (as in Τι ώρα είναι;)

The last of these, ώρα, is relatively straightforward. It can mean ‘hour’ or ‘time’, as in Η ώρα είναι δύο (The time/hour is two.)

Let’s take a look at the other two words, χρονός and καιρός.

In English literary discussions, chronos is used to refer to clock-time. You may be familiar with words that have chron- as a prefix, such as chronology or chronometry, which relate to orderly, measured time.

Kairos is used in a much more poetic way to describe moments that may seem as if they stretch for hours, or contract to feel like nothing at all.

In Modern Greek, χρονός can be translated as either ‘time’ in a general sense, or ‘year’ in a specific sense (as in the example of Πόσων χρονών είσαι; literally ‘How many of years are you?’)

Καιρός in Modern Greek translates to either ‘time’ or ‘weather’, similar to how the word ‘season’ in English designates both a period of time, and a kind of weather.

Take a look at the third and fourth lines of the dialogue on page 42 of Ελληνικά Τώρα (Greek Now) 1+1.

When Victoria asks Πόσον καιρό είσαι εδώ; Maria answers Ένα χρόνο.

Here, we can see καιρό being used to mean ‘time’, and χρόνο to mean ‘year’.

In the third from last line, Victoria asks Maria the time. Notice what word she uses.

Now, listen to the dialogue, keeping an ear out for those three lines.

Take a look at the lists of vocabulary on page 9 of Λοιπόν, τι λες; (Well, what do you say?), and choose the odd ones out. In particular, make sure you understand all of the pairs of family member terms in the central column. Look up anything you don’t know.

Listen to or read the dialogue between Maria and Victoria again – which of these words did you hear?

Now, try to answer the questions at the bottom of page 42 in the Ελληνικά Τώρα (Greek Now) 1+1 textbook – don’t worry if you need to use a dictionary again! In particular, make sure you know the correct number to describe how many years (or months) you have lived where you are.

Again, the numbers 1-12 come in especially handy. You will also need the plural versions of the words for month (μήνες) and year (χρόνια):

If you’re interested in understanding in more detail the differences between the words χρόνος, ώρα, and καιρός, Difficult Greek has an excellent video on the topic. As the name of the channel suggests though, this is quite advanced, and you certainly don’t need to stress about understanding or remembering everything that is covered:

As George explains in the video, χρόνος is not used to describe how long you do something, or how long something happens. It is not associated with action. That’s why we can use it to ask how old you are, but not how long you have actively been in a place.

For describing the duration of actions and events, καιρός is used for long amounts of time, and ώρα for short amounts of time. In summary:

• χρονός (not used for describing duration of activity)
• καιρός (describes activities with a duration of days, weeks, months, etc.)
• ώρα (describes activities with a duration of hours, minutes, seconds, etc.)

Finally, have a go at constructing Martin’s half of the dialogue on page 43 of Ελληνικά Τώρα (Greek Now) 1+1 by answering Yianni’s questions, using the conversation between Maria and Victoria as an example.