Question about definite articles

Greek Learning Greek
1

This is the table of paradigms in chapter 9 of “First Greek Book”


ὁ, ἡ, τό. (Masculine Definite Article)

Masculine Nominative Singular ὁ
Masculine Genitive Singular τοῦ
Masculine Dative Singular τῷ
Masculine Accusative Singular τόν
Masculine Nominative and Accusative Dual τώ
Masculine Genitive and Dative Dual τοῖν
Masculine Nominative Plural οἱ
Masculine Genitive Plural τῶν
Masculine Dative Plural τοῖς
Masculine Accusative Plural τούς


ὁ, ἡ, τό. (Feminine Definite Article)

Feminine Nominative Singular ἡ
Feminine Genitive Singular τῆς
Feminine Dative Singular τῇ
Feminine Accusative Singular τήν
Feminine Nominative and Accusative Dual τώ
Feminine Genitive and Dative Dual τοῖν
Feminine Nominative Plural αἱ
Feminine Genitive Plural τῶν
Feminine Dative Plural ταῖς
Feminine Accusative Plural τάς


ὁ, ἡ, τό. (Neuter Definite Article)

Neuter Nominative Singular τό
Neuter Genitive Singular τοῦ
Neuter Dative Singular τῷ
Neuter Accusative Singular τό
Neuter Nominative and Accusative Dual τώ
Neuter Genitive and Dative Dual τοῖν
Neuter Nominative Plural τά
Neuter Genitive Plural τῶν
Neuter Dative Plural τοῖς
Neuter Accusative Plural τά

My question…my questions here are the following.

  1. Is the table saying all “To” is for any neuter noun, all “Eh” is for feminine, and all “O” is for masculine nouns?
  2. Can I safely ignore the additional paradigms given right after the tables, since all I wanted to do was to construct simple sentences, albeit moderately butchered with modern Greek words because of certain reasons in my story?
  3. In the vocabularies given in the chapters before chapter 9, well…is White giving out two different definite articles that are equally valid when used with the noun? Such as κραυγή, ῆς, ἡ and φυλακή, ῆς, ἡ?
2

I can’t find a table like this in chapter 9 of First Greek Book, by John Williams White, so it is difficult to answer your quetions, but I will try, and ask for clarification where I don’t understand what you mean.

  1. I think the answer is “no”, but your question is quite unclear to me.

  2. Since I can’t find your tables in the book, I don’t know which paradigms come after it, but in principle, even if you want to construct very simple sentences, and you want them to be correct, you need to know the paradigms of all the words you want to use – and most importantly – how the different forms in each paradigm is used.

  3. No, he gives only one definite article, so you will know the gender of the noun. In “κραυγή, ῆς, ἡ”, this comes last “ἡ”, while the “ῆς” is the genitive singular of the noun. If you know both of these, you’ll be able to tell which declension the noun belongs to, and also be able to decline it (when you have learned all the declensions, that is).

3

…but this website says it is based on “First Greek Book”

http://daedalus.umkc.edu/FirstGreekBook/

I think a link to here was also advertised in textkit? Anyways, this is the chapter in question: http://daedalus.umkc.edu/FirstGreekBook/JWW_FGB9.html

4

I see, I looked in the actual “First Greek Book”, which is quite different:

http://cdn.textkit.net/JWW_First_Greek_Book.pdf

Still, I don’t really understand your first question. This might answer much that you already know, but it is simpler to explain from the start than guessing where you are stuck: What the table says is that the definite article has to correspond with the gender, number and case of the noun it belongs to. So if you have a masculine, singular, nominative noun: “οἶνος”, you need to use the masculine, singulare, nominative form of the definite article: “ὁ οἶνος”. But if your noun is feminine, plural, dative: “ὁδοῖς”, then you must use the corresponding article: “ταῖς ὁδοῖς”. You also need, of course, to know the paradigms of the nouns you want to use, and when to use the different cases, and verbs are a whole other story, even for quite simple sentences.

So the short answer is: No, you can’t ignore any paradigms, no matter how simple sentences you want to form, unless you just want to say “A is B” in every sentence, and even then there are some rules to follow about how to use the articles.