Expert: Maria - 11/7/2008

Question
Hi!

Could you help me translate "servant girl" in ancient Greek?

thank you!

Answer
Hello,

The ancient Greek noun for "servant girl"  is  “therápaina” (Latin transliteration), i.e. "θεράπαινα"  (ancient Greek letters) .
This noun belongs to the 1st.declension.

Anyway there are also “therapainís “ / “θεραπαινίς“, which belongs to the 3rd.declension, and " hè diákonos” (η  διάκονος ), 2nd.declension, which however is less common.

All these nouns are in the nominative singular, i.e.  the case of the subject of a sentence .

Note that Ancient Greek is an inflected language with three declensions and five cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative) whose endings change according to the role of a word in the context.

As for Latin transliteration, it  is nothing but the Greek text written in Latin alphabet we use still today.

Best regards,
Maria