Ok. I’m going to put all my Attic Greek Lesson related questions in here so I don’t clutter up the board with several threads related to said lessons, so please pardon me since I will post questions again and again here.
My first question here is in regards to Lesson 8 and 9 of John William White’s “First Greek Book”
In lesson 8 White is showing the O-Declension nouns. Then all of a sudden he jumped into adjectives and said these about it “The masculine and neuter of the adjectives thus far given follow the O-Declension, the feminine the A-Declension. The nominative singular, therefore, ends in ος, η or ᾱ, ον (Latin us, a, um), as follows”
And then next lesson he jumps all the way onto declensions of the definite article, divided into male, female and neuter and further subdivided into single, dual plural, nominative etc. etc.
I’m confused at this point. What is he saying here?
1)That all masculine and neuter adjectives end in “o” and all feminine adjectives end in “e”? And that nominative singular…all adjectives are in nominative singular?
2)Is the declension of the definite article is still included in the lesson about O-Declensions? Or should this be a completely separate section?
…is the problem only a problem with the formatting by the publisher so long ago? Or is this deliberate on White’s part?
I understand this can be confusing. As you know, nouns are grouped into different declensions which tell you how they decline. With adjectives it is a bit different, but similar. Since they can have all genders, you have to learn how to decline them in each gender. Luckily very many adjectives follow the same pattern: They follow the o-declension for masculine and neutral, and the a-declension for feminine, so: masc: καλός, fem: καλή, neut: καλόν. There are many important adjectives that follow different patterns, but you don’t need to worry about them yet, I guess.
It is probably on purpose, since the definite article declines almost like the adjectives you have learned. The exception is that you must know when the τ is there, and in sg. masc. and neut. the final ς and ν are gone. (I don’t remember the dual right now…)
Then to your idea of not cluttering the forum with lots of threads. I think you will have much more success if you create a separate thread for each question, with a good subject line, giving people some idea of what you are asking. Then people will know if they are interested in your question or know how to answer it. Otherwise they will not know when you have asked something new, or if it is the same question being discussed when new comments arrive. It will also be much more helpful for anyone who searches through the forum to see if their question has been asked before. So I propose that you should not be shy and hide all your interesting questions deep down in one thread.
It’s difficult to give categorical recommendations about when to open a new thread and what to write on one single thread. If you have many questions of one text book, one passage, or even one textbook, they may be most logical and easiest to browse in one thread. For example, some time ago a user read some of the Aeneid and opened separate threads for Aeneid 1, 2 and 3 as he progressed. It was very logical and easy to use. But if you have separate questions on grammar, for instance, they may work best as threads of their own.
As to quoting, I hope you don’t mind my saying a small matter as you’re new here. It’s not generally needful to quote long portions of earlier replies in the thread, as they are easily seen there on the thread. Shorter snippets will normally suffice for readers to know to which point the reference is. Here, for example, we now have polemistes’s (good) answer in its entirety twice on consecutive messages.
A small point on the Greek article. It doesn’t make much difference in practice, but actually τό hasn’t lost a ν but a δ from the end. It’s an ending peculiar to some Indo-European neuter pronouns. We have the same -d preserved in Latin (aliud, id, illud, istud, quid) and some other Indo-European languages, and even the -t in English words it and that is originally the same (*d > t by Rask’s law [erroneously known as Grimm’s law]). Other examples in Greek are the neuters αὐτό, ἄλλο, and τί.
The ς-less ὁ is interestingly Indo-European, as we have something similar in Sanskrit. There the corresponding pronoun is saḥ (the visarga -ḥ coming from original *-s), but when a consonant follows, it becomes sa, which is not a normal sandhi (i.e. assimilation on word boundary) in Sanskrit.
Don’t hesitate to post your questions on the forum. Generally someone will answer.