Hi-This has probably been posted before at some point: Does anybody know of a small vocab. book, or even a list of something like “The 100 Most Common Classical Greek Verbs”-? Or something of that sort. It occured to me that in most authors I’ve read, you tend to use & re-use a few basic verbs, like eimi-be, oida-know etc. It makes more sense to learn thoroughly the forms of the most used verbs & look up new ones when necessary, instead of just having a very loose grasp on a lot of verbs, as I do now. Any thoughts on this-and any advice? Thanks. Paige.
Yes, Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek by James Morwood includes two lists of principal parts of verbs. A list of the most common 101 and an additional list of less common “irregular” verbs. I’d prefer a classified list of verbs divided by their “rules” of irregularity, rather than alphabetical order, though.
The 101 list is also available at the end of the Oxford Pocket dictionary of Classical Greek, which is a huge step forward toward a more modern approach in ancient Greek lexicography.
Hello, I remember seeing a thread on the CLASSICS-L mailing list on this, and there were several replies, as I recall.
http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu/mailing_lists/CLA-L/2007/03/0218.php
There is also one here:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2007-March/042317.html
I didn’t have the chance to look at these references yet because I bought such a book from Greece (it is in Modern Greek), and because I’ve just started my personal studies concerning Attic Greek using Mastronarde. Good luck!
hth
Here is a free list by eton. Since this is a general word list, you will have to scan for the verbs. This list is similar to the one created by J.R. Cheadle.
http://www.etoncollege.com/eton.asp?di=1714
The classics list mentions the “Complete handbook of Greek verbs” by Marinone. That is the closest you can come to those 501 verb books.
For Homeric Greek there is “Homeric vocabularies” by Owen and Goodspeed. This time, the verbs are separated in a different section. I like that they separate it by word occurences as well. Most word lists should be something like this book.
Gang-Thank you all-this is useful. What about my basic idea-isn’t it better to know- say 100 verbs- well, instead of vaguely recognizing, say 200 or more verbs, the way I do now? Don’t you think you would have more success at underestanding a text with this type of preparation? Thanks again! Paige.
The best thing is to keep reading and then you’ll know 200 or more verbs well.
Well, I’m very new to the study of Attic Greek, but it seems very strange to me that there are not a slew of aids for helping the student look up verb forms; there were a great many of these books in Greece, so why should they be absent here? Reading without proper aids can be frustrating for me, green beginner that I am.
In any case, here is what I’ve found so far:
a) Direct lookup: Complete Handbook of Greek Verbs, on the CLASSICS-L list, and mentioned by 1%homeless. It can be found here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0877740011/ref=pd_bbs_sr_olp_1/104-6773757-3931922?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176586132&sr=8-1
b) Direct lookup: A software program which was mentioned on the CLASSICS-L list, but which I have not yet tried, can be found here:
http://www.kalos-software.com/
c) Reverse lookup: All the Greek Verbs. This book does not have conjugation tables, but allows one to perform a “reverse lookup”, say from a “weird” aorist passive form to its indicate form (e.g. ησθην το ηδομαι sorry for no accents, I’m very new to polytonic Greek). You can find it here:
http://www.amazon.com/All-Greek-Verbs-Language/dp/0715617729/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-6773757-3931922?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176586963&sr=1-1
I have c) above and it’s helped me so far, probably all the more so because I’m getting my feet wet and reading some Xenophon before having finished basic lessons. I can do so because I’ve long since known the alphabet, and many forms in Attic Greek because I know some καθα?ευουσσα (“puristic” Greek, which is no longer actively used in Greece- newspapers used to use it).
In any case, I hope these aids help you with your reading.
Hi, 1%: (Some time you have to tell me what your user-name means!) I followed the link and printed out the vocab. list @ 42 pages. Then i marked the verbs with a pink marker-as i get time i will write in the future, aorist, etc forms. I will keep this in my binder-it helps. Thanks! Paige.
Well, let’s not forget perseus: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu
It is down right now, but you can look up the most common words for just a paticular work. Also it has a similar verb tool to Kalos.
Regarding my name… I just didn’t like the ring of 99%homeful. 
Textkitty Skylax interpreted it pretty well: nearly not homeless. 
But the mirror site in Germany seems to be up and running.