Modern Greek/Lesson 03.1
Lesson 3.1: Case, Number, Gender, and Article
[edit | edit source]This lesson outlines the basics of case, number, gender, and article in Greek grammar. Greek pronouns, adjectives and articles must have endings that agree in case, number and gender, with the noun they describe.
Case
[edit | edit source]In English, only pronouns have a case (i.e. I/me/my), but in Greek all nouns have a case. The Greek word for case is πτώσεις. The cases are usually formed by changing the ending of the noun. They help identify how a noun is being used in a sentence.
Cases
| ||
|---|---|---|
| Αγγλικά | Ελληνικά | Description |
| Nominative | Ονομαστική | The noun is the subject of a verb |
| Genitive | Γενική | The noun is in possession of an object |
| Accusative | Αιτιατική | The noun is the object of a verb or preposition |
| Vocative | Κλητική | The noun is being addressed |
Ancient Greek had a separate case for direct objects (Accusative) and indirect objects (Dative), but modern Greek uses the Accusative case for both, except in some instances where the Genitive case is used for indirect objects.
In the following example, "the bag of the girl" could also be written "the girl's bag", but the form used below is closer to the way the Genitive case is used in Greek.
Example | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| The woman | has | the bag | of the girl. |
| Nominative | (verb) | Accusative | Genitive |
Number
[edit | edit source]Just like in English, Greek nouns can either be singular or plural.
Gender
[edit | edit source]Greek has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
Only in the case of animals or people does the grammatical gender correspond to the normal use of the word gender. For all other nouns, it is best to simply think of their gender as a way of classifying them into different categories.
Greek uses articles that are similar to those present in English. There are definite and indefinite articles in English, but Greek has definite articles only. In English, the definite article is: the (singular and plural, countable and uncountable). The definite article refers to a specific object or person. The indefinite articles are: a before a consonant or consonant sound and an before a vowel or vowel sound. The indefinite articles refer to a generic object or person. The definite articles in Greek are ο, η, and το. There is no indefinite article in Greek.
Summary
[edit | edit source]This lesson introduced the concept of case, gender, number, and article in Greek. Case is a way of expressing the grammatical purpose of a noun. The cases in Greek are Nominative, Genitive, Accusative, and Vocative. Number is a way of identifying the quantity of a noun. Number can either be singular or plural. Gender is best seen as a way of categorizing nouns into groups. The genders in Greek are masculine, feminine, and neuter. An article is a way of further identifying how a noun is being used in a sentence. Greek has both a definite and indefinite article.
Exercises
[edit | edit source]There are exercises available here.