Προσωπικές Αντωνυμίες (Personal pronouns)

Remember how to ask ‘Who is it?’ in Greek?

The most commonly-used phrase is Ποιος είναι;

Ποιος is masculine, but can be used to refer to unknown people of any gender.

To answer Ποιος είναι; you can give a name, like Η Μαρία, or Ο Γιάννης. Or, you can answer with a personal pronoun.

Personal pronouns are small words like ‘I’, ‘you’, or ‘he/she/it’ which stand in for proper nouns like ‘Maria’ or ‘Yiannis’.

You may even already know the Greek word for ‘I’ – εγώ, from which we get the English word ‘ego‘ meaning a sense of self.

Here is the full set of personal pronouns in Modern Greek:

Notice the relationships between these words:

• the first and second person forms all begin with ε–
• the first and second person plurals all end with –είς
• the third person forms are inflected for gender, like ποιος/ποια/ποιο

You can use these pronouns to answer questions like Ποιος είναι; (Who is it?) or Ποιος θέλει παγωτό; (Who wants an ice cream?): Εγώ!

Listen to Zoi pronounce all of these pronouns, and give examples of them, in this video:

As Zoi says, it is generally not necessary to use these personal pronouns with a verb, since the ending of the verb already indicates who is doing something. They are typically only used when you want to emphasize who is doing something, such as in response to a question with starting with Ποιος: *I* will go. *You* should do it. *He* is the one who plays guitar.

Even though these pronouns are often optional, it is useful to remember new verbs along with the personal pronouns. Try matching the personal pronouns you’ve just learned with the correct forms of είμαι on page 34 of Ελληνικά Τώρα (Greek Now) 1+1.