“I am carrying” would be φέρω, not “εἰμί φέρει”, which would mean “I am. He carries.”
You have the same problem in 1.
Accent on σπεύδεις is wrong in 4.
ἀργός does not have a circumflex.
ἰσχυρός does not have a circumflex.
δοῦλος doesn’t have two accents (normally). The only time that a word will ever have a second accent is when it is followed by a enclitic word that sticks to the back of it, like ἐστι or τε. There is probably discussion of this in your book.
What I’m getting at is there should be no circumflex over the α in αργος (not ἀγρός=field) All you should place there is a breathing mark. There are occasions when you can have two accents in a word, but this is not one of them, so you should write ἀργός, not ἆργός. The same goes for αγρος; it should be written ὁ ἀγρός. You are quite right about placing an acute (instead of a grave accent) on the last syllable of a word when it’s followed by a mark of punctuation, such as when it comes at the end of a sentence, but only if that’s where the word is normally accented.
Sentences:
Unlike English, the continuous aspect of a verb can be supplied in one form of the verb (the present). If you look in the Grammar section, you’ll see there’s more than one way of translating the verb λύω -I loosen, do loosen, am loosening
So, remembering this, how would you rewrite this sentence?
See sentence 1.
Remember there is normally only one accented syllable in a word, so if the 1st per. singular is σπεύδω, how do you write the 2nd. person singular? If you placed the circumflex on the last syllable because the word came at the end of the sentence, see above. If you placed it there to indicate a long syllable, there is no need: diphthongs are long, with just 2 exceptions, which you’ll see later. I would suggest not trying to mark the long syllables with a circumflex, it’s confusing me!
See my remarks above about the circumflex. How should you accent αργος ?
Normally οὐ precedes the word it negates, so how would you rewrite this sentence?
Generally, to express an English indefinite article(in this case “a”) in Greek, you simply omit the definite article (ὁ, ἡ, το )
For placement of οὐ, see sentence 6.
There is no need for the grave accent before the enclitic. In fact, when there is a need for an accent, it’s the acute. This occurs when the antepenult has an acute or the penult has a circumflex and then word is followed by an enclitic. What form of οὐ do you use before a word beginning with a consonant?
There are several errors here which we have already talked about. What gender is ἄροτρον ? (ὁ, ἡ, or τό ? )
Ok. So argos doesn’t have a circumflex, so why did this copy of Athenaze 2nd Edition give argos a circumflex above the ‘a’ in Vocabulary2A? I copied from there in good faith thus all the argos I wrote has a circumflex.
Wait, is this because of a special circumstance with regards to this particular word? Or just an error by the publisher?
Also, ugh. The medicine has a kick. Headaches and sleepiness the whole day, and its supposed to be normal side effects. Trying to think of Attic is harder than usual.
I wish I could see the page. In my edition, ἀργός-ἀργή-ἀργόν does not appear in 2A. It is however listed in the vocabulary at the back of the book. The adjective ῥᾴθῡμος is used instead for lazy. AFAIK, there is no special circumstance that would have one place a circumflex over the α in ἀργός. Here’s the entry for ἀργός in the Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek Lexicon: https://logeion.uchicago.edu/ἀργός
The accent will go back during elision, but won’t ever become circumflex. (Schol. Ven. Λ 160 says that Didymus contradicts this, but nobody accents like that.)
Ah! That explains it-the mark above the α is a macron (used to designate a long vowel), not a circumflex. As I’ve suggested, it’s probably best not to mark the long vowels when typing your posts.
P.S. Thanks for providing the picture, it truly had me perplexed!
Much better on the exercise! There are a just a few errors. I’ll leave it to Joel to point them out. It takes me a lot longer to type out replies when I’m frequently shifting between Greek and English and I’m afraid my answers are seldom very concise.
Oh, better with both of us. I’m not careful, and I missed τὸ ἄροτρον last time. For switching quickly between Greek/English, a hotkey is useful. I use ctrl-space.
οὐ only needs -κ before the consonant. [EDIT: “only needs -κ before a vowel”]
φέρω
You wrote that he is a field.
ἰσχυρός needs a breathing and your text has ῡ macron to indicate the long vowel, not ῦ circumflex.
Thank you, Joel. I should set up a special hot-key specifically for GR-EN. Right now, I have 6 different keyboards installed, so everytime I want to switch between EN and GR, I have to either use the mouse ( 2 clicks) or press alt+shift 6 times!
Malo,
Joel has covered just about everything. The only other thing I want to mention is that Greek is a language that demands attention to detail, which is why it’s easy to confuse a word meaning “lazy” with one meaning “field” (ἀργός - ἀγρός). There’s more to it (like ἀργός is an adjective, and ἀγρός is a noun), but I think you get the idea. Aside from the letter, the other markings can make a big difference. Here’s an example:
ἡ - nominative feminine article singular (the)
ἥ - relative pronoun, feminine nominative singular (who)
ἥ - article, feminine nominative singular before an enclitic (the)
ἤ - or, than, either
ἦ - imperfect 1st person singular of εἰμί (I was)
ᾗ - relative pronoun, feminine dative singular (whom)
and believe it or not, there are actually a few more!
Thanks for the tip, Joel! I already use ctrl-space for toggling Chinese IME/nonIME, but I set up Ctrl 1 for Greek and Ctrl 2 for English. That still saves me a lot of keystrokes.
Ok. I see. Thanks. Regarding the He is a field mistake, what is the answer to it? I had a brain fart that I should cut down on as much words as I should if the verb forms will do away with having to use estin or eimi or ei most of the time.
Ugh, funzela is really making it hard to think. Normal side effects include dizziness.
Damned fungal infections, and more damn to bacterial infections, and damn my teeth they are too sharp.
In sentence 5, you wrote ἀγρός ἐστιν. This translates as “he(or she or it) is a field”. You know the words for ‘lazy’ and ‘is’. How do you write “he is lazy”?
Let’s talk about making translations. As you progress along in Greek, you’ll see that you cannot translate English sentences word for word. Greek is structured differently from English and uses different constructions to convey meaning. What this means is when you translate, you have to take a thought, statement or an idea and try to express it the way an ancient Greek person would. I think you see this, because your Greek to English translations are very good. Let’s have a look at this business of ‘he carries, he is carrying, he does carry’. In English, these three forms of the verb in the present tense represent 3 different aspects: he carries (indefinite, we just know he carries), he is carrying (continuous action), he does carry (emphatic- he does carry it, he doesn’t drop it). In Greek, in the present indicative, the verb (φέρει) can have any one of these 3 meanings. In English, for momentary action in the present, you leave the verb as it is or you add an ‘s’ for the 3rd person sing; for continuous action, you use a helping verb (is) plus the present participle, a verbal adjective (carrying). In Greek, you don’t use a helping verb for this and participles are not used this way. They’re used in many ways (and it’s amazing just how many ways), but they cannot be used to solely denote continuous action the way they do in English.
So when you translate, think about expressing an idea in Greek, rather than converting a string of words from English to Greek. This may seem somewhat abstract right now, but it’s going to become more and more important as you progress.
P.S. Hopefully, your medicine will start alleviating some of your discomfort.
Hi Malo,
For this exercise, it was probably better to write it out by hand, so that you could show the labelling, but don’t give up on typing! Translations look good, but we need to work on the labelling. The good news-you identified almost all the imperatives (missed 3) correctly! Now, areas for improvement-basic grammar. You need to be able to recognise these basic elements of the sentence. I suggested a little while back that you review basic English grammar-I’m going to suggest it again. For now, I’ll list the elements of the sentences you need to relabel:
ἐκ τοῦ οἴκου
ὦ δοῦλε (what case?), πόνει
μή does go with ἴσθι, but the word itself is a negative particle. ὦ δέσποτα (what is case is this?)
αἶρε-τὸ ἄροτρον-πρὸς τὸν ἀγρόν.
κάλει
Review the vocative case, prepositional phrases (what are they and how they used?), transitive and intransitive verbs, direct and indirect objects, and complements.
Hi Malo,
Sentence 1: Correct.
Sentence 2: Although δοῦλε ends in ε, that does not make it an imperative! Also, μή is used with other forms of the verb, not just with the imperative. As I pointed out in the previous post, μή is called a negative particle, so we can’t really label it as an imperative. The imperative (which you’ve been correctly translating) is a “mood” of the verb. You know two so far: the indicative and imperative. The indicative, as the name shows, indicates that someone is performing an action on something or an action to or for someone or simply exists (there is more to this, but so far this is what you’ve seen in your book). The verb forms associated with the imperative mood are used to issue a command . There are two other moods which you’ll learn about much later.
Sentence 3: ὦ δέσποτα - What case do you think this noun may be? When do we use that case? Is there a transitive verb in this sentence requiring a direct object? If you don’t know or can’t figure it out, google these terms: transitive verbs, intransitive verbs, direct objects, indirect objects
Sentence 4: Perfect!!
Sentence 5: Also Perfect!
Getting closer!
P.S. I think you’re equating μή with “don’t” which in English is the contraction for “do not”. μή is like the “not”, not the “do”. I hope that’s not too many nots!!
This is a first declension masculine noun: ὁ δεσπότης, τοῦ δεσπότου, τῷ δεσπότῃ, τὸν δεσπότη-ν, ὦ δέσποτα. I know they haven’t given you all the forms of first declension nouns yet, but another clue is the ὦ before δέσποτα. What kind of verb is ἴσθι (transitive, intransitive, or linking)? Which one of these types could have a direct object?
P.S. Malo, don’t worry about ‘getting them all right’ . Mistakes are how we learn - the more we make, the more we learn! The most important bit is the process of identifying the mistakes, figuring out why we made them, and how to avoid making them in the future.
