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I believe that Mindy is asking about this section from Crosby:
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Let’s take the example sentences in Crosby one by one:
The nominative forms of the verbs are ἀδελφός, στρατηγός.
- ἀδελφὸν ἔχει He has a brother.
In this sentence “He has a brother,” “he” is the subject. “A brother” is the object. The direct object of a verb is generally accusative in Greek, so ἀδελφός → ἀδελφόν.
- οἱ στρατηγοὶ ἦσαν ἀδελφοί. The generals were brothers.
In this sentence, everything is nominative, because the verb “is” takes nominative on both sides. However they are plural not singular, so στρατηγός → στρατηγοί, and ἀδελφός → ἀδελφοί.
- ὁ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ ἀδελφός The brother of the general.
Here “the brother” is the subject and remains nominative. But to express “of something” the Greeks used the genitive. So ὁ στρατηγός → τοῦ στρατηγοῦ.
- τῷ στρατηγῷ πέμπει τὸν ἀδελφόν He sends the brother to the general.
“He” is the subject. “The brother” is the direct object (so accusative as in #1). The indirect object “to the general” is expressed by the dative in Greek.
ὁ ἀδελφός → τὸν ἀδελφόν
ὁ στρατηγός → τῷ στρατηγῷ
- ἀδελφὸν πέμπει He sends a brother
“A brother” is the direct object again, so accusative.
ἀδελφός → ἀδελφόν
So in the Exercise, “What use of the noun do the heavy type endings suggest?”
- ἀδελφοῦ. Check the table on page 1. What form is this? Answer: genitive. What is the genitive used for in Greek? An “of” relationship. So “of a brother”
And so on.
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The point is that the endings are positively loaded with information about the word’s function in the sentence, how the individual word relates to other words in the sentence. Very different from English, which depends more on word order to convey this kind of info. Consider the difference between Παυλος Πετρον τύπτει and Παυλον Πετρος τύπτει. (τύπτει = “hits”.) So when reading Greek you always have to pay attention to the word endings.
I think Mindy’s native language is Chinese. I don’t know Chinese, but I think English and Chinese have a lot in common here in not loading information in word endings, unlike Greek.
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Hi Mindy. Look back at the chart on page one:
Παῦλος = Paul
Πέτρος = Peter
Good, these are both Nominative. The equivalent in the chart is: ὁ ποταμός (the river)
Παύλου = Paul’s
Πέτρου = Peter’s
Good. These are both Genitive. The equivalent in the chart is: τοῦ ποταμοῦ (of the river).
Now look at what’s left over:
Dative (indirect object of a verb, “to” or “for” relation in English) = τῷ ποταμῷ
Accusative (direct object of a verb) = τὸν ποταμόν.
Before going on with the exercise, can you write out the Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative of ὁ ποταμός in the singular. And then please write it out in the plural.
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Very good! You’ve correctly identified all of them. Let’s go on to the next exercise and see how N/G/D/A work in Greek sentences.
If you want to make a recording of yourself reading these aloud, feel free to post it to this thread, or email me with it, and I can post it.
Strike that. There are some small errors with the use of articles. See where I’ve corrected below. I’ve also corrected your accents here, but let’s ignore those for now:
τοῦ αδελφoῦ = of > the > brother Genitive
ἀδελφοί = brothers Nominative
ὁ ἀδελφός = > the > brother Nτοὺς στρατηγούς = > the > generals Accusative
τῷ στρατηγῷ = to the general Dative
τῶν στρατηγῶν = of > the > generals G.τὸν ποταμόν = > the > river A.
τοῖς ποταμοῖς = to the rivers D.
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I won’t be able to listen to them until tonight. Maybe someone else can comment? However, if you write the English translations, I can comment on those now.
I hear very little wrong in your reading, very good! Two points however:
- ἦν στρατηγός. You translate, “He was the general.”
- τῷ στρατηγῷ — —. I hear you pronounce these endings differently from each other. Pronounce the ending in τῷ the same way you pronounce the ending in στρατηγῷ, and this will be hunky-dory.
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He was a general.
Or
There was a general.
It was a river.
- ω is pronounced like a long ο. I believe that most Cantonese vowels have a long and a short version.
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