GREEK INFLECTIONEndings of the Noun and VerbThis highly compacted listing of the Inflectional Endings of Greek has a dual purpose: it can be used to check and review your sense of Greek grammar at the base level, and it can be printed out to have beside your Greek text as your start to read. It is elementary and does not cover irregular formations, many of which have to be learned as you go along. I am firmly opposed to transcribing Greek to Roman letters, mainly because it is completely unnecessary. Ten and a half of the letters are virtually identical to Roman characters (a B d z i k and final s) while Pi is familiar from school math, Omega from common use if not electrical circuitry, chi as X from Xmas for Christ-mas, and probably Phi as symbol for a diameter. Thus sixteen of the letters are clearly accessible, leaving only eight to 'learn'. Note also that the Capitals are used only with proper names, and you can learn them as needed. Of the Accents only the 'rough breathing' or 'h' will be needed, since the others are voice pitches, which have been traditionally been misunderstood as Stresses in prose, to be ignored in verse. This is a confusion which you can avoid by forgetting about them now while learning basic grammatical forms. Or you can intone the rising 'acute', up-and-down 'circumflex', and base-level low 'grave", with the understanding that reading verse you will apply these pitches atop the long-short metrical cadence of the lines. This is not recommended for a beginner, later there will be time. One of the problems which has confronted Greek studies on the web is the use of the characters which require special programs on your computer to read and write Greek. So it is common practice to use Transcription and convert the Greek letters to Roman characters. Since this paper is aimed at beginning students of Greek, who are probably familiar with transcription a la Perseus , I will use a modified system with '-e: ' for eta, '-o:' for omega, X for chi to avoid wrong pronunciation, and but 'ph' for phi rather than 'f', and 'th' for theta since there is no suitable character. For iota subscript, the vowel is followed by a comma e/g/ 'o:,' for omega + i-sub. THE NOUNNominative 'subject' Sing: -a Plur: -ai Sing: -e: Plur: -ai Sing: - os Plur: -oi Sing: on- Plur: -a Sing: - ? Plur: - es Genitive 'possessive' Sing: -as or -ns Plur: -o:n Sing: -ou Hom. oio Plur: -o:n Sing: -os Plur: -o:n Dative 'to -- for' Sing: -a, (= -a with subscript -i) or -n, (=eta with subscript -i,as explained above) Plur: --ais Hom -aisi 'xo:ra, xo:rais Sing: --o:, (omega with iota subscript) Plur: -ois Hom -oisi Sing: --i Plur: -si Hom -ssi Decl III: Many stems classses in this group, but these endings predominate 'daimoni daimosi ' Accusative 'direct object' Sing: -an -e:n (as above defined) Plur: -as Sing: -on Plur: -ous Sing: -a Plur: -as Sing: -os Plur: -a THE VERBPresent Active Sing: -o: Plur: -omen Sing: -eis Plur: -ete Sing: -ei Plur: -ousi Imperfect Active Sing: -on Plur: -omen Sing: -es Plur: -ete Sing: -e Plur: -on Future Active Sing: -so: Plur: -somen Sing: -seis Plur: -sete Sing: -sei Plur: -sousi Aorist Active Sing: -sa Plur: -samen Sing: -sas Plur: -sate Sing: -se Plur: -san Perfect Active (reduplicated first syllable) Sing: -ka Plur: -kamen Sing: -kas Plur: -kate Sing: -ke Plur: -kasi There exists a Pluperfect Active, which is an augmentsed Perfect with special endings, but rarely used so not neceesary to note here. Present Mediopassive Sing: -mai Plur: -metha Sing: -n, (eta with subscript i) Plur: -esthe Sing: -etai Plur: -ontai Imperfect Mediopassive Sing: -me:n Plur: -metha Sing: -ou, contr from -oo Plur: -sthe Sing: -eto Plur: -onto Future Mediopassive Sing: -somai Plur: -sometha Sing: -sei or sn, Plur: -sesthe Sing: -setai Plur: -sontai Perfect Mediopassive (with reduplicated First syllable) Sing: -mai Plur: - Sing: -sai Plur: -metha Sing: -tai Plur: -ntai Aorist True Passive Sing: -the:n Plur: -the:men Sing: -the:s Plur: -the:te Sing: -the: Plur: -the:san There is also a true Future Passive based on the Aorist stem, with forms 'luthe:somai etc.'which will be found in Attic prose. This is a combination of mediopassive endings with the true aorist passive forms. The Active InfinitivesThere are four active infinitives of a luo-type verb: Present Inf.: luein Future Inf.: lusein Aorist Inf.: lusai (luo) or the Aorist Inf.: lipein (leipo) Perfect Inf.: lelukenai The Mediopassive InfinitivesThe Passive infinitives are also just four:
Present Inf: luesthai Future Inf.: luesethai Perfect Inf.: lelusthai True Aorist Inf: luthenai Future Aorist Inf: luthesasthai Fut. Perf Pass. Inf: lelusthasthai Of these Infinitives the ones you see most often will be the Present and Aorist in the active forms, and the Present mediopassive as well as the Aorist Passive. Future are easy to recognize with their inserted sigma. The ParticiplesThe Greek participles generally follow the formation of the Tenses to which the belong, so only a few which are basic need be listed here: Present Participle is a Decl III noun type, with a Nom Sg. in -o:n, Gen. -ontos, Nom Pl. ontes. The Future Ppl is based on this with inserted sigma, e.g. luso:n beside the Pres. luo:n, easily recognized and regular.
Aorist Participle will be of the luo type, with sigmatic inflection: Nom sg. lusas, Gen. lusantos, Nom Pl lusantes. But verbs of the reducing leipo type with have the same ending as the Present, e.g. leipein as a Present Inf contrasts with Aorist Inf. lipein. There is a Perfect Active Ppl. which retains the reduplication of the Perfect system, but uses a special ending: Nom Sg -o:s, Fem. -uia, Neut os, and the Genitive shows the dental stem: -otos, Dative -oti etc. This is easily recognized by the reduplication and the noun endings, and it often is used with a present-type meaning. The Mediopassive participles use the endings Masc.-menos, Fem mene, Neut menon attached to whatever stem the verb has at that point, and these are clearly distinctive and easy to remember. But the True Aorist Passive (which curiously bears active endings e.y. eluthen) has endings which look active but carry passive meaning, e.g. N Sg. lutheis, Gen. luthentos with a dental -t- which will carry through the declension. Nota bene! The IRREALIS: Subjunctive and OptativeAfter one has mastered the general ranks of the Active and Mediopassive forms, one could be stunned by the learning that all these various forms in their proper tenses have to be duplicated twice, in the Subjunctive and Optative 'Moods'. That means pages and pages of forms which lie ahead, but there are things to say first which will restore a little confidence. First, many of these 'grammarbook' forms are hardly ever used, some in fact can not be found in any ancient text. Overzealous grammarians have tried to make everything regular and patent, and the rigor of Classical teaching in the l9th century use these pages as a punishment if not a test to weed out the lazy students from the ranks of the assiduous. But for reading Greek one does not memorize forms now, we know more about language learning and teaching and the function of the brain as a super-computer which under proper conditions can file word-data in ten thousands instantly. Accessing one's mind-power is the way to learning a new language, but teaching methods in the Classical languages has not kept up to date. Learning your grammar from the text you read will be much a more useful path to a Reading Knowledge, and for this you have to decide how much to learning BEFORE starting to read. If you try to learn it all first, you will not be in a proper attitude to read ancient Greek. Verbum sapientibus!Now back to the Subjunctive and Optative. If you know your regular (Indicative) forms fairly well, you can recognize a Subjunctive when you see a vowel in the terminal inflection which is inexplicable lengthened. A lengthened vowel (eta or o-mega) is sign of the Subjunctive and indicates a first degree of Irreality, a suspicious cast of the eye on a situation which is not positively factual. For example if you find 'luo:men'' beside the Present Act. Indic. 'luomen', you will understand that to be a subjunctive. (In the case of 'luo:' 1 Sg Pres, you cannot see a difference which is why I cites the plural.) This works for all the tenses, look over the tables and you will see this works as a simple recognition Rule. Now for the Optative, which is in a general sense a Secondary Subjunctive often pointing back to a previous time or a less clear reality, you can apply a similar rule of recognition. If you find an unexpected -ei -ai or -oi, you have an Optative. For example beside the Present 'luei' you may see the form 'luoi' --- an Optative. You might be surprised at 'luoimi' with a different ending beside 'luo:', but the other endings of the list are normal. The main thing is to know the Indicative forms, then the variants will stand out clearly. William Harris |