Hi-I’ve belatedly realized that, in reading Greek, it isn’t necessary to worry about all the forms of the new verbs you encounter, since you probably won’t see them. What I mean is-right now I’m reading in Herodotus and Homer, sometimes glance through Pausanias, & maybe the poets. Well, with most of these writers, (and most other Greek authors) it seems to me that the tenses you are likely to encounter are 1. Imperfect 2. Aorist & 3. Present Indic. (Maybe Present Subjunctive too). If that’s correct-why not just try to learn these tenses well, and just ignore forms like the perfect middle or second perfect passive, etc., since you will very rarely see these? I am seriously trying to streamline my study of Greek, because learning vocab. (& grammar) takes SO much time. Does this sound like a good idea? Thanks for any suggestions.
As far as I can tell, you can do pretty well in Herodotus. I cannot say about Homer, not having studied Homeric Greek in detail yet. I have gone through Athenaze book 1, and there are no such exotic tenses there. I find that I can go through the Herodotus histories at a rather slow pace, mainly because of vocabulary and the Ionic dialect. Once in a while I get a tense or other construction that is hard to decipher. Usually, the complex sentence structure is more difficult than anything else to grasp.
In a sense, you are trying to apply the rule of Pareto, which states that with only 20 percent of the knowledge one can decipher 80 percent of the texts…
In any case, i concur with your choice of Herodotus. He is a fascinating author. I have read it in translation 12 or 15 years ago, and I rejoice in reading it as it was written.
I would not suggest this approach if you are just beginning to learn Greek. Pharr and Gildersleeve recommend learning as many forms as possible when first beginning to learn Greek then progressing into syntax. I would also suggest along with Annis, having made the mistake already of learning the Attic dialect first, that you begin with Ionic Greek since most of the forms used in Attic are also used in Ionic and since there are several variations in noun and pronoun declension and in verb conjugation.
The idea is to read some real Greek by great authors as soon as possible. Of course, in due time, one cannot escape learning all the subtleties of the grammar. But one can go a long way after the basics are covered.
It becomes tiring to learn all the complicated rules that may be used extensively by certain authors and not by others.
So learn the basics, read some Greek, and keep learning grammar.
Vocabulary is especially important, since going through all the meanings of a single word can easily take three columns or more in a detailed dictionary.
Gang-Thank you for the replies-I have actually been studying Greek for about 4 years, I’m just sometimes overwhelmed by the endless amount of vocab. & the endless possibilities of verb forms. When somebody first showed me that old “LUW” verb chart, with all the forms, I almost burst into tears. I seriously thought about leaving my books on the desk, and walking out. Somebody who is good at Greek grammar please tell me this-out of curiosity-has anybody made an analysis of what tenses the major authors tend to use? I don’t know, but I imagine somebody has done it. If so, I am betting that the ratio (or whatever) for MOST authors (Homer, the historians, the dramatists, etc) would be something like: imperfect, present, aorist=95%, all other forms=5%. Has anybody done an analysis like this & do these figures sound reasonable? Thank you again. I love Textkit-I am going to post a “thank you” message to the moderators soon-I haven’t found anything remotely like this group on the 'net.
I do not know the statistics…
I do know it is easy to feel overwhelmed…
There are specialized dictionaries (lexicons or would it be lexica?) for Herodotus and Homer, which may be of help when reading these autors.
Herodotus uses few of these exotic tenses, at least in what I have read so far.
There actually are statistics, which will prove you right on concentrating on the present, imperfect and aorist in the first instance. This means that in memorizing principal parts, for instance, you’re much the best off learning by heart the first and third (or first through third) principal parts, and, for morphology, the indicative, participle and infinitive forms. Will post details within the next few days (they’re from Duhoux’s book on the Greek verb).
In addition, though, you’d definitely want to learn all forms of eimi (be AND go), fhmi, oida (which accounts for much of the statistical presence of the perfect) and eidon.
After that - back to the drawing board for the rest of the forms.
as promised, frequency data as given in Duhoux, Le verb grec ancien, 2nd ed., 2000, pp. 502-504:
Note that these are aggregate data for samples of Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, and a mix of Attic works (poetry and prose), but I don’t think other counts would lead to significant differences. Most amusingly, in some late historians, pple.s become serious rivals to the indicative:-)
Moods:
- 49% indicative
29% participle
13% infinitive
… (that makes 91%!)
3% subjunctive
3% optative
2% imperative
Tenses (in the indicative):
- 23% present
32% imperfect
34% aorist
… (that makes 89% for the first and third -OK, and 6th!) principal parts..)
6% perfect and pluperfect (oida included)
5% future
0% (rounded) future perfect
Tenses (outside indicative)
- 49% present
40% aorist
… 89% again..
7% perfect
3% future
0% future perfect
Conclusions for learning verbal morphology and syntax: Anyone who introduces (or learns, as a student) the subjunctive and optative before the participle and the infinitive is not taking the most efficient route toward learning the language. I care less about the timing of the future, since it requires practically zero effort (probably is beneficial in showing a bare stem without present infixes), but clearly a textbook that prioritizes the subjunctive and optative is wrong-headed.
wow, very impressive. i must try to find this book.
So far, Athenaze is thus OK, since volume 1 does not deal with optative, subjonctive, perfect and pluperfect. These are introduced in volume 2. But again, after volume 1, it is possible to read Herodotus…
Pharr puts some of this in the introduction to his text. He has some tables of verb form occurrences and summarizes thus: “one might conclude that the student should as soon as possible be put in command of the present, imperfect, first and second aorist, perfect, and future indicative, the present and first and second aorist, infinitive and participle, at least the active present optative, subjunctive, and imperative, εἰμί in full, and some forms of φημί; with these mastered, he will have to depend on the teacher or notes in the textbook for only a quarter of the verb forms he sees, and of course this proportion will be cut down as he progresses.”
It doesn’t sound quite as reassuring as I think he intended, though.
Herodotus doesn’t use the optative, subjunctive, perfect or pluperfect?
I have not read too much, my reading skills are not terribly advanced, and I am often stuck with vocabulary, and deciphering sentence structure is difficult. I am still in Histories 1 , and not too far at that. I am not hindered by these tenses very much. However, further reading might prove me wrong…
The point is that, if you look at the stats, you are not missing much if you don’t know these forms, especially if you do add the full paradigms of eimi and oida. Of course Hdt. uses these forms, but a student who knows present, impf., and aorist indicatives well, and knows how subj.s, opt.s and perfects are formed, is in very good shape. Typically the only thing that will go unrecognized is (plu)perfect passives.
I think what the poster meant by “Athenaze is OK” is that Athenaze prioritizes indicative, inf. and pple over subj and opt. – precisely as suggested was the correct order to learn things in. Doesn’t mean you will be perfect if you skip them forever; just that you can move on to real texts earlier if you learn by such a method, instead of learning 6 principal parts immediatly, but only of regular verbs and the subj and opt before the pple.
Hello Canadian Girl,
I think your idea isn’t actually that bad, but I must offer a couple of caveats. First, I think if you are going to take this approach, you should at least work on learning all of the principle parts of 10-15 of the most common irregular verbs like λεγω, οιδα, αι?ω, εσθιω, λαμβανω, etc. You are going to run into those all over the place, and it really helps to just plain know them, so that when you see them they are obvious.
My other caveat is that this approach will work pretty well, but it will really only be effective in narrative literature. I would guess that’s a reflection of the impressive chart Helma provided. I would venture to guess that most Greek literature is of a narrative nature. When you get into epistolary literature, or philosophical literature, I would guess that you are going to see a larger variety of tenses.
I know in the NT you run into a lot of tenses often. With the exception of the pluperfect and optative (which is rare), you pretty well see every tense regularly. It becomes very important for understanding these works to know your tenses.
But like I said, if you are simply wanting to read narrative (Homer, Herodotus, etc.) you’re probably going to be ok for the most part.
All this talk of tense reminds me of my first year Greek prof. He would ask us often “what tense is that verb? A little tense, really tense, on Prozac?” It would elicit chuckles when he did it, especially since he always did it with a “Anyone, Bueller, Bueller?” tone of voice. Good times that was!
Wow…I just looked in my Wallace’s grammar about tenses…here are the stats he offers for tenses in the NT.
The specific breakdown of each tense is as follows: Present—11,583; Aorist—11,606; Imperfect—1682; Future—1623; Perfect—1571; Pluperfect—86.6
I guess even there Present and Aorist are hands down the most common.
Present =41%
Aorist = 41%
Imperfect = 5%
Future= 5%
Perfect =5%
Pluperfect = 2%
And yes, I know, for all you math people, that’s only 99%, but I did the Math rather roughly (plus, I hate math, so you’re lucky I even did that much!)
86.6
Gotta love statistics.
Must have been a contract verb.
That’s great! I can’t think of a come-back for that one.
Seriously, though! A lot of us are using books from the 19th century, which have two advantages: They’re free; and they’re from an era when a Classical education was the norm, and therefore should be suitable for their purpose. In the modern world, if someone is writing a language text, and you’re paying for it, shouldn’t they be introducing you to grammatical points in order of prevalence, so you can ease your way into reading the most common tenses (for example) first? Really, that’s their job! Why am I paying for a book that just reproduces the 19th-Century methods I can get for free? It makes you wish that someone who cut their teeth on the Army or Foreign Service Institute Language Courses would tackle Ancient Greek as well!