Log inSign up

Greek Grammar Guide

Welcome to the Elon.io Greek Grammar Guide. 755 topics across every area of Greek grammar, tagged by CEFR level so you can find the right page for your level.

A1106 pagesA2260 pagesB1233 pagesB2106 pagesC145 pagesC25 pages

Start Here (A1)

New to Greek? These are the foundation topics every beginner needs.

  • A1 Path: Absolute Beginner — An ordered route from the Greek alphabet through articles, common noun endings, the present tense, and first everyday dialogues.
  • How to Use This Guide — Choose an ordered CEFR path or a focused themed track through this 750-plus-page Greek grammar reference.
  • Path: Tourist Survival Greek — A two-week, situation-first route for reading signs, getting around, eating, shopping, requesting help, and handling basic courtesy.
  • How Greek Adjectives Work — The map of the Greek adjective system — a describing word that agrees with its noun in gender, case and number and declines just like a noun, the dominant καλός/καλή/καλό pattern, the smaller classes it fans out into, and why an English speaker has to start inflecting a word that in English never changes at all.
  • Adjective Agreement — The one reflex every Greek adjective demands — copy the noun's gender, number and case onto the adjective, in the attributive slot (ο μεγάλος κήπος → του μεγάλου κήπου) and in the predicative slot after είμαι (το σπίτι είναι μεγάλο) alike — and the two English-speaker errors, leaving the adjective bare and agreeing in gender but not case.
  • Adjectives in -ος / -η / -ο — The full paradigm of the largest and most regular Greek adjective class — καλός, μικρός, ψηλός, όμορφος — declined across all four cases, both numbers and all three genders, with the useful shortcut that each gender copies a noun declension you already know, plus the vocative -ε and why these adjectives keep their accent fixed where the matching nouns shift it.
  • Greek Adverbs Overview — An introduction to invariable Greek adverbs of manner, place, time, quantity, and degree, with formation and question-word previews.
  • Adverbs of Place — Use essential Greek place adverbs for here and there, position, distance, direction, and negative location.
  • Adverbs of Time — Place events on a Greek timeline with essential time adverbs, understand their aspect cues, and use ποτέ, ακόμα, and πια with the right polarity.
  • Dialogue: Ordering at a Café — Follow a natural polite café order and see how accusative objects, articles, παρακαλώ, pro-drop, and Greek price questions work turn by turn.
  • Dialogue: Meeting Someone — Follow an informal first meeting and annotate Greek name questions, με λένε + accusative, familiar versus polite address, pro-drop, and vocatives.
  • Definite and Indefinite Articles — The map of the Greek article system — a definite article ο/η/το that agrees in gender, case and number, an indefinite ένας/μία/ένα that is the number 'one' and has no plural, and the many places where Greek says 'the' and English says nothing at all.

Learner Paths

Level Paths

  • A1 Path: Absolute BeginnerA1 — An ordered route from the Greek alphabet through articles, common noun endings, the present tense, and first everyday dialogues.
  • A2 Path: ElementaryA2 — An ordered A2 route through past viewpoint, two verb stems, να-clauses, remaining noun patterns, and clitic placement.
  • B1 Path: IntermediateB1 — An ordered B1 route through subordination, the perfect, middle/passive voice, conditionals, reported speech, and connected discourse.
  • B2 Path: Upper IntermediateB2 — An ordered B2 route through information structure, stance particles, idiom, learned register, participles, and annotated texts.
  • C1 Path: AdvancedC1 — An ordered C1 route through diglossia, learned syntax, formal registers, dialect recognition, and implicit pragmatic meaning.
  • C2 Path: MasteryC2 — An honest C2 route through poetic license, mixed historical layers, Pontic recognition, and proverb-level cultural allusion.

Overview

  • How to Use This GuideA1 — Choose an ordered CEFR path or a focused themed track through this 750-plus-page Greek grammar reference.

Themed Tracks

  • Path: Tourist Survival GreekA1 — A two-week, situation-first route for reading signs, getting around, eating, shopping, requesting help, and handling basic courtesy.
  • Path: Mastering the Verb and AspectB1 — A five-pass spiral through Greek viewpoint, stem formation, aspect across environments, diagnostics, and the perfect system.
  • Path: Reading and Writing GreekB1 — A text-first route through Greek spelling, punctuation, written cohesion, learned forms, register, and annotated reading.

Adjectives

Basics

  • How Greek Adjectives WorkA1 — The map of the Greek adjective system — a describing word that agrees with its noun in gender, case and number and declines just like a noun, the dominant καλός/καλή/καλό pattern, the smaller classes it fans out into, and why an English speaker has to start inflecting a word that in English never changes at all.
  • Adjective AgreementA1 — The one reflex every Greek adjective demands — copy the noun's gender, number and case onto the adjective, in the attributive slot (ο μεγάλος κήπος → του μεγάλου κήπου) and in the predicative slot after είμαι (το σπίτι είναι μεγάλο) alike — and the two English-speaker errors, leaving the adjective bare and agreeing in gender but not case.

Comparison

  • Comparative With πιοA2 — The everyday way to say 'more X' in Greek — the invariable little word πιο placed in front of any gradable adjective (πιο ψηλός, πιο εύκολο) — why it never changes while the adjective still agrees with its noun, how to attach the thing you're comparing to with από, and how to say 'less' (λιγότερο) and 'as…as' (τόσο…όσο, εξίσου).
  • Synthetic Comparative in -τεροςB1 — Greek's one-word comparative — ψηλός → ψηλότερος, ακριβός → ακριβότερος, βαθύς → βαθύτερος — built from the adjective's own stem with -ότερος / -ύτερος, why it declines like an ordinary -ος/-η/-ο adjective and takes a fixed accent on the suffix, how it trades off against the everyday πιο, and the one rule you must never break: don't use both.
  • Relative SuperlativeB1 — How to say 'the most X of a group' in Greek — ο πιο ψηλός, η ψηλότερη, το πιο έξυπνο — built on the single insight that the superlative is just the comparative with a definite article, why the article is obligatory and agrees with the noun, how to name the group with από or the genitive, and how it differs from the 'very X' elative.
  • Absolute Superlative (Elative)B2 — How Greek says 'very / extremely X' with no comparison in sight — the everyday spoken πολύ / πάρα πολύ / υπερβολικά + adjective and the learned one-word elative in -τατος (ωραιότατος, ταχύτατος, θερμότατα), why -τατος is emphatic and formal rather than wrong, how it declines, and the lexicalized top-degree adjectives (άριστος, υπέροχος, έξοχος) that already carry the meaning.
  • Irregular ComparativesB1 — The small set of everyday adjectives whose one-word comparatives you have to memorise — καλός → καλύτερος, κακός → χειρότερος, μεγάλος → μεγαλύτερος, μικρός → μικρότερος, πολύς → περισσότερος, λίγος → λιγότερος — and how those forms coexist with standard analytic πιο + positive alternatives.

Declension Classes

  • Adjectives in -ος / -η / -οA1 — The full paradigm of the largest and most regular Greek adjective class — καλός, μικρός, ψηλός, όμορφος — declined across all four cases, both numbers and all three genders, with the useful shortcut that each gender copies a noun declension you already know, plus the vocative -ε and why these adjectives keep their accent fixed where the matching nouns shift it.
  • Adjectives in -ος / -α / -οA2 — The vowel-stem variant of the -ος adjective — ωραίος/ωραία/ωραίο, νέος/νέα/νέο, κρύος/κρύα/κρύο — where the feminine ends in -α (not -η) and lands on the same spelling as the neuter plural.
  • Adjectives in -ύς / -ιά / -ύB1 — The small, high-frequency class of physical-quality adjectives — βαθύς, βαρύς, πλατύς, φαρδύς, μακρύς — with its -ιά feminine, its -ιοί / -ιές / -ιά plural, and the synizesis that squeezes -ιά into one syllable ('vathyá').
  • Two-Termination Adjectives in -ης / -ης / -εςB1 — The learned class where masculine and feminine share one form — ο/η διεθνής — and only the neuter differs (το διεθνές), with its distinctive -ούς genitive and -είς / -ή plural; common in news and academic Greek.
  • Participial Adjectives in -ων / -ουσα / -ονC1 — The learned present-active-participle class — ενδιαφέρων / ενδιαφέρουσα / ενδιαφέρον, μέλλων, παρών, ο διευθύνων σύμβουλος — with its -οντ- oblique stem (του ενδιαφέροντος), the everyday survivors like το μέλλον and το περιβάλλον, and an honest account of a register you should recognise but rarely build yourself.
  • The Irregular Adjective πολύςA2 — Greek's word for much/many — πολύς / πολλή / πολύ — the one adjective with a single-λ singular (πολύς, πολύ) and a double-λ everywhere else (πολλή, πολλοί, πολλά), plus the invariable adverb πολύ ('very').
  • Indeclinable Adjectives (Colors, Loans)B1 — The adjectives that never change form — loan colours μπλε, καφέ, ροζ, γκρι, μοβ and the -ί colours πορτοκαλί, plus loans like σικ and ρετρό — set against the native colours (κόκκινος, μαύρος) that decline normally.

Detail

  • Accent in Adjective DeclensionB2 — Where the stress sits as an adjective declines — and the good news that, unlike nouns, the everyday -ος/-η/-ο adjective keeps its accent fixed (όμορφος → του όμορφου, not ×του ομόρφου). The oxytone and -ύς classes, the learned -ής/-ές genitives that carry the stress, and the handful of formal doublets (του άγιου vs του Αγίου).
  • Color AdjectivesA2 — The practical vocabulary and grammar of Greek colours — the native ones that decline and agree (κόκκινος, μαύρος, πράσινος, γαλάζιος, καφετής) versus the loan and -ί colours that never change (μπλε, ροζ, μωβ, γκρι, καφέ, πορτοκαλί), the καφέ/καφές trap, and how to build light and dark shades (ανοιχτό, σκούρο, ανοιχτογάλαζο).
  • Passive Participles as AdjectivesB1 — The passive perfect participle in -μένος / -μένη / -μένο used as an everyday adjective for resultant states — κουρασμένος (tired), χαλασμένος (broken), κλεισμένος (shut), αγαπημένος (beloved) — how it's built from verbs, how it declines and agrees, why the accent is glued to the -μέ-, and how it differs from the -τος verbal adjective (κλειστός) and the eventive passive.

Usage

  • Adjective PositionA2 — Where a Greek adjective sits and what that choice means — the default before the noun (ένα ωραίο σπίτι), the emphatic doubled-article order after it (το σπίτι το ωραίο), the affective ο καλός ο άνθρωπος, and the predicative position after είναι that asserts rather than describes.
  • Predicative AdjectivesA2 — The adjective after a linking verb — Ο καφές είναι κρύος, Η σούπα είναι κρύα, Τα παιδιά είναι κουρασμένα — where it drops the article, takes the nominative and agrees in gender and number with the subject, plus the object-predicate twist (Τη βρήκα αλλαγμένη) that agrees with an accusative instead.
  • Adjectives Used as NounsB1 — Put an article on an adjective and it becomes a noun — ο μικρός (the little one), οι πλούσιοι (the rich), ένας ξένος (a stranger), τα ελληνικά (the Greek language), το κινητό (the mobile) — with gender and number choosing whether you mean a man, a woman, a class of people or a thing, and the everyday words that have frozen into the dictionary this way.
  • Stacking Multiple AdjectivesB2 — Putting several adjectives on one noun — ένα μεγάλο κόκκινο αυτοκίνητο, ένα ωραίο ελληνικό νησί, ένα μεγάλο και φωτεινό δωμάτιο — with the rule for when to link them with και and when to simply stack them, the ordering gravity that pulls classifying adjectives next to the noun, and the reminder that every single adjective in the pile must agree.

Adverbs

Comparison

  • Comparing AdverbsB1 — Compare Greek actions with πιο + adverb, established synthetic forms in -ότερα, irregular καλύτερα and χειρότερα, and equality or maximum-degree patterns.

Formation

  • Deriving Adverbs SystematicallyA2 — Form Greek manner adverbs with the productive neuter-plural pattern, recognize learned -ως forms, and master important doublets and irregular comparisons.

Interrogative

  • Interrogative AdverbsA2 — Understand Greek question adverbs outside direct questions: free relatives with όπου and όποτε, exclamations with πώς and πόσο, and accented forms inside indirect questions.

Overview

  • Greek Adverbs OverviewA1 — An introduction to invariable Greek adverbs of manner, place, time, quantity, and degree, with formation and question-word previews.

Semantic Sets

  • Manner AdverbsA2 — Use common Greek manner adverbs to say how something happens, place them naturally, and distinguish true adverbs from agreeing μόνος μου.
  • Adverbs of PlaceA1 — Use essential Greek place adverbs for here and there, position, distance, direction, and negative location.
  • Adverbs of TimeA1 — Place events on a Greek timeline with essential time adverbs, understand their aspect cues, and use ποτέ, ακόμα, and πια with the right polarity.
  • Adverbs of FrequencyA2 — Talk naturally about Greek routines with always-to-never adverbs, repeated-time phrases, flexible placement, aspect, and ποτέ polarity.
  • Adverbs of Quantity and DegreeA2 — Use Greek quantity and degree adverbs such as πολύ, λίγο, αρκετά, τόσο, σχεδόν, περίπου, μόνο, and καθόλου without confusing them with agreeing quantifiers.
  • Intensifiers and DegreeB2 — Choose among Greek degree words from λίγο and αρκετά through πάρα πολύ, υπερβολικά, τελείως, and expressive colloquial intensifiers.

Sentence Adverbs

  • Yes, No, MaybeA2 — Reply, affirm, deny, hedge, and assess probability in Greek with ναι, όχι, μάλιστα, ίσως, μάλλον, πιθανόν, σίγουρα, ευτυχώς, and δυστυχώς.
  • Sentence and Stance AdverbsB2 — Use Greek sentence adverbs to evaluate an entire claim, express certainty or attitude, and organize an argument with appropriate position, punctuation, and register.

Syntax

  • Adverb PositionB2 — Place Greek manner, time, frequency, and sentence adverbs by scope and information structure while keeping weak pronouns attached to their verb.

Annotated Texts

Dialogues

  • Dialogue: Ordering at a CaféA1 — Follow a natural polite café order and see how accusative objects, articles, παρακαλώ, pro-drop, and Greek price questions work turn by turn.
  • Dialogue: Meeting SomeoneA1 — Follow an informal first meeting and annotate Greek name questions, με λένε + accusative, familiar versus polite address, pro-drop, and vocatives.
  • Dialogue: At the ShopA2 — Follow a polite market exchange and learn Greek quantity phrases, prices per unit, demonstratives, and common ways to request goods.
  • Dialogue: Asking for DirectionsA2 — Follow a natural street exchange using υπάρχει, polite route imperatives, direction adverbs, and Greek place expressions.
  • Dialogue: At the TavernaA2 — Follow a polite taverna meal from recommendations and shared dishes to the bill, with accusative orders and neutral-Standard recipient clitics.
  • Dialogue: At the Doctor'sB1 — Follow a formal medical consultation and learn natural pain frames, body-part possession, background states, onset expressions, and impersonal advice.
  • Dialogue: Making PlansB1 — Arrange an evening out with deliberative να, decisive bare plurals, hortative ας, future arrangements, time phrases, and correctly placed clitics.
  • Dialogue: A Job InterviewB2 — Follow a formal Greek job interview using consistent εσείς address, present-perfect experience, conditional hypotheticals, and professional subordination.

Everyday Texts

  • Text: A Greek RecipeA2 — Make a traditional χωριάτικη σαλάτα while learning the Greek instructional present, sequencing markers, and quantity expressions without an English-style ‘of’.
  • Text: A Messaging ExchangeA2 — Read a current Greek-script message exchange with casual particles, elision, clitics, and variable eye abbreviations without treating unstable spellings as universal.
  • Text: An Official NoticeC1 — Read a realistic public notice built from agentless mediopassives, formal requests, learned participles, and their clear everyday paraphrases.

Folk & Song

  • Text: Φεγγαράκι μου λαμπρόA2 — Read a traditional Greek children's rhyme through its affectionate diminutive, direct address, imperative, and chain of purpose clauses.
  • Text: A Folk Song VerseB2 — Scan an anonymous folk-ballad passage in the fifteen-syllable political verse and read its elision, narrative tense, poetic compression, and direct address.
  • Text: A Cretan MantinadaC1 — Read one traditional Cretan mantinada by separating its dialect forms from its fifteen-syllable rhyming architecture and image-driven meaning.
  • Text: A Folk Tale OpeningB1 — Read an original Greek folk-tale opening through its fixed once-upon-a-time formula, character introductions, past viewpoints, and narrative word order.

Literary

  • Text: A Literary Prose ExcerptC1 — Read Papadiamantis sentence by sentence, separating narrative aspect from his learned morphology, stacked subordination, marked order, and older lexical layer.
  • Poem: Καβάφης, ΙθάκηC1 — Read selected public-domain lines from Kavafis's Ιθάκη through exhortative να, negative advice, second-person address, aspect, contraction, and learned-demotic register mixing.
  • Poem: ΣεφέρηςC2 — Analyze four nonconsecutive lines from Seferis through verbless predication, suspended word order, nominalization, and imperfect–aorist narrative viewpoint without exceeding quotation limits.
  • Poem: ΕλύτηςC2 — Read four short lines by Elytis as a showcase of Greek compounding, poetic derivation, verbless imagery, and elevated demotic diction.

News & Formal

  • Text: A Weather ReportB1 — Read an original broadcast-style Greek forecast through its impersonal weather constructions, future viewpoints, temperature ranges, wind directions, and semi-formal register.
  • Text: A News ArticleB2 — Read an original Greek news paragraph through source framing, agentless passives, nominalization, reporting verbs, learned vocabulary, and layered subordination.
  • Text: News HeadlinesC1 — Decompress original Greek headlines by restoring omitted articles and verbs, interpreting headline presents, and unpacking nominalization, colons, and dashes.

Proverbs

Articles

Basics

  • Definite and Indefinite ArticlesA1 — The map of the Greek article system — a definite article ο/η/το that agrees in gender, case and number, an indefinite ένας/μία/ένα that is the number 'one' and has no plural, and the many places where Greek says 'the' and English says nothing at all.
  • Definite Article: Full DeclensionA1 — The complete singular-and-plural grid of the Greek definite article, drilled one form at a time — the three overlaps that trip everyone up (του for two genders, οι for two, το doubling as neuter subject and object), and the split τον/τη(ν) final-ν rule.
  • Indefinite Article: ένας, μία, έναA1 — Greek's word for 'a' is literally the numeral 'one' — ένας/μία/ένα declines for gender and case, has no plural at all, and is left out far more often than English 'a', especially before professions and in predicates.
  • Preposition + Article: στον, στη, στοA1 — σε is the one Greek preposition that fuses with the article, and it fuses obligatorily — the full grid στον/στη(ν)/στο/στους/στις/στα plus the genitive στου/στης/στων, and why από, για and με only elide instead.

Syntax

  • Article + Adjective + Noun OrderA2 — The frame [article – adjective – noun] and what it means to be inside it: why το άδειο σπίτι and το σπίτι άδειο say different things, how the doubled article of ο άνθρωπος ο καλός works, and why the article alone is what turns καλύτερος into 'the best'.
  • The Article as NominalizerB1 — Greek's most productive syntactic trick — put an article in front of an adjective, an adverb, a preposition phrase, a να-clause or a quoted word and it becomes a noun: το καλό, το αύριο, τα υπέρ και τα κατά, το να λες ψέματα, το «όχι».
  • Articles With όλος, Numbers, QuantifiersB1 — The double-determiner pattern — όλος ο κόσμος, όλη τη μέρα, όλα τα παιδιά — plus definite numbers and demonstratives, restricted articleless uses, and the final-ν detail in όλο τον χρόνο.

Usage

  • When Greek Uses 'the' (But English Doesn't)A2 — A systematic map of the ordinary contexts where Greek uses the definite article and English often uses none — names, countries, abstract nouns, whole categories, body parts, days and seasons, institutions and means of transport — together with the main licensed omissions.
  • Articles With Names and PlacesA2 — Why Greek says ο Γιάννης and η Ελλάδα where English says bare 'John' and 'Greece', what the article buys you as a case marker, and the licensed bare-name contexts: direct address, naming, telegraphic labels and headlines, and colloquial destinations.
  • Article + Noun + PossessiveA2 — Greek says 'the house my' — the possessive clitic sits after the noun and the definite article stays in front, so 'my house' is το σπίτι μου, not σπίτι μου; with the invariable clitic, the accent rule that follows, and why dropping the article is one of the most persistent beginner errors.
  • Using the Indefinite ArticleA2 — When Greek actually says ένας/μία/ένα and when it says nothing at all — why Είμαι γιατρός takes no article, why Τι ωραία μέρα! takes none either, how ένας still means 'one', and why the commonest learner error on this page is putting an article in.
  • When to Omit the ArticleB1 — The other half of the article story — role predicates (Είναι δικηγόρος), verb+bare-noun activities (βλέπω τηλεόραση), manner phrases (με προσοχή), the article-less institutional πάω σχολείο, and compressed registers where Greek can omit predictable articles.
  • Generic vs Specific ReferenceB2 — Why Greek marks a statement about a whole class — coffee as such, Greeks as such, the human being as such — with the definite article, singular or plural, exactly where English strips it off; the fine line between the generic ο καφές (coffee in general) and the specific αυτός ο καφές (this coffee); and the register difference between the gnomic singular and the everyday plural.
  • Articles in Titles and GeographyB1 — How the definite article behaves with titles, place names and works — ο κύριος Παπαδόπουλος with both words declining, the genitive-apposition street (η οδός Ερμού, η πλατεία Συντάγματος), seas and mountains and rivers with their fixed genders, the plural-only place names (τα Ιωάννινα, τα Χανιά, οι Δελφοί), and book and film titles that keep their own article.

Cases

Accusative

  • Accusative: The Direct ObjectA1 — The accusative is the case of the thing the verb acts on — Βλέπω τον Γιάννη, Τρώω το μήλο — marked by the article (ο→τον, η→τη(ν), οι→τους/τις) rather than by position, which is exactly why Greek word order can be much more flexible than English word order.
  • Accusative After PrepositionsA1 — Every preposition you use in daily Greek — σε, από, με, για, μέχρι, χωρίς, προς — puts the following noun into the accusative, and σε fuses with the article to give στον, στη, στο; the genitive-taking prepositions are a small formal club you can safely postpone.
  • Accusative for Time and DurationA2 — Greek often says την Κυριακή, το πρωί, δύο ώρες and τρεις φορές την εβδομάδα with a bare accusative where English uses on, in, for or per — and this page maps the neutral bare patterns against meaningful σε and για alternatives.
  • Accusative for Extent and MeasureB1 — Distance, weight, price and height all stand in a bare accusative with no preposition — Περπάτησα πέντε χιλιόμετρα, Ζυγίζει δύο κιλά, Κόστισε δέκα ευρώ — plus the one measurement that escapes it (age takes the genitive: τριάντα χρονών) and the colloquial article-less destination accusative behind πάμε σπίτι and πάω δουλειά.

Choosing Case

  • Indirect Object: Genitive vs σεB1 — The decision page for recipients — genitive clitic for pronouns (Της τηλεφώνησα), σε + accusative for full nouns (Έδωσα το βιβλίο στον Γιάννη), when each rule bends, how the two combine in clitic doubling, and why northern Greek does it with the accusative instead.
  • Two Objects: Case AssignmentB1 — What happens when a verb has both a thing and a person — the thing is always accusative, the person is genitive or σε — plus the fixed genitive-before-accusative order of a double clitic, the second accent in Δώσε μού το, and the word-order trap that turns an indirect object into a possessor.

Dative Survivals

  • The Lost Dative and Its ReplacementsB2 — Why Modern Greek has four cases instead of five — what the ancient dative did, how its work was split between the genitive, σε + accusative and με + accusative, why the north and the south divided the estate differently, and why the overloaded modern genitive is the direct consequence.
  • Fossilized Dative ExpressionsC1 — The ancient dative endings still embedded in modern Greek phrases — εν ολίγοις, εν μέρει, εν γνώσει, τω όντι, εν προκειμένω and the whole εν-family — how to recognise a fossil by its ending, what register each one belongs to, and why you must never build a new one.

Genitive

  • Genitive: PossessionA1 — Greek has no apostrophe-s and no word for 'of' — possession is built head-first, with the possessed thing coming before the genitive possessor (το σπίτι του Γιάννη), and everyday 'my/your/his' handled by the unstressed clitics μου, σου, του that trigger a second accent on the noun.
  • Genitive: The Indirect ObjectA2 — A high-frequency job of the genitive in neutral Standard Greek — marking the person something is given, said, sent or shown to — and the tiny unstressed pronouns μου, σου, του, της, μας, σας, τους that carry it.
  • Genitive After Learned PrepositionsB1 — The closed set of formal prepositions — εναντίον, υπέρ, λόγω, μεταξύ, εντός, εκτός, μέσω, αντί, πλην, διά — that take the genitive instead of the accusative, why they all come from the written language, what the everyday σε-alternatives are, and the one place where a preposition can swallow a weak pronoun.
  • Genitive of Quantity and PartitiveB1 — How Greek says 'a glass of wine' and 'one of my friends' — with juxtaposition (ένα ποτήρι κρασί) and από + accusative (ένας από τους φίλους μου) doing nearly all the work, the genitive surviving in group nouns and set phrases, and the neat trap that το ποτήρι του κρασιού means a wine glass, not a glass of wine.
  • Genitive With Adjectives and AdverbsC1 — The formal-register corner of the genitive — άξιος προσοχής, ένοχος φόνου, κατώτερος των προσδοκιών, κάτω των δώδεκα ετών — why γεμάτος now prefers the accusative, which adjectives really still govern the genitive, and the everyday adverbs (μαζί μου, δίπλα μου) that quietly do the same thing.
  • Genitive of TimeB2 — The small, mostly frozen set of time expressions Greek puts in the genitive — του χρόνου for next year, των Χριστουγέννων and του Αγίου Γεωργίου for feast days, στις 25 Μαρτίου for dates, ένα παιδί δέκα χρονών for age — plus the honest warning that της Κυριακής is not how you say 'on Sundays'.

Mechanics

  • Case Agreement Within the Noun PhraseA2 — Why Greek inflects three or four words where English inflects none — ο καλός άνθρωπος → του καλού ανθρώπου → τον καλό άνθρωπο — how to decline a whole phrase as one unit, why the endings need not look alike, and what this concord buys you in word-order freedom.
  • Case With NumbersA2 — What a numeral does to the case of the phrase around it — why τρεις μέρες but τρία παιδιά, why πέντε never changes yet στα πέντε βιβλία still shows case, and why χιλιάδες counts like a feminine noun (τρεις χιλιάδες, never τρία).
  • Case in ComparisonsB1 — How to say 'than' in Greek and what case follows — everyday από + accusative with a nominal standard, the learned genitive of comparison (ψηλότερος του αδερφού του) in formal writing, απ' ό,τι before a clause, and the narrow job that παρά still does.
  • Case in AppositionB2 — When one noun renames another it copies its case — Είδα τον Γιάννη, τον δάσκαλο — and when it merely modifies it, the case changes to genitive; plus the apposition rules for titles, place names, ως and σαν, and pronouns like σ' εμάς τους δασκάλους.
  • Case Forms of the Weak PronounsA2 — The neutral Standard decision behind clitic pronouns — accusative με/σε/τον/την/το for what the verb acts on, genitive μου/σου/του/της for who receives or undergoes it — with regional case contrasts and the verb lists that decide it for you.
  • Case Reference: Consolidated TablesB1 — The whole case system on one page for looking things up — a function-to-case index with links to the page that teaches each one, three fully declined noun phrases side by side, the prepositions sorted by the case they govern, and the weak-pronoun decision grid.

Nominative

  • Nominative: The SubjectA1 — The case of the doer — how the nominative marks the subject, why the verb ending lets Greek drop it altogether, why the subject can sit after the verb without confusion, and the verbs like μου αρέσει where the English subject turns out not to be the Greek one.
  • Nominative: Predicate and NamingA2 — Why both sides of είμαι share the nominative — Ο Γιάννης είναι δάσκαλος, Εγώ είμαι — how γίνομαι, φαίνομαι and μένω behave the same way, why Greek says Είναι γιατρός with no article, and the neat reason Με λένε Γιάννη is accusative instead.

Overview

  • The Greek Case SystemA1 — The master map of Greek cases — nominative, genitive, accusative and vocative, what each one is for, why the ancient dative is gone and what took its place, and why the article and the adjective carry the case more visibly than the noun does.
  • How Cases Show on the ArticleA1 — Greek noun endings are often ambiguous, so the little word in front does the real work — the full ο/του/τον, η/της/την, το/του/το grid, why ο φίλος and τον φίλο are read as subject and object at a glance, and the one place where the article can't save you.

Vocative

  • Vocative: Calling and AddressingA2 — The social half of the vocative — when Greeks use εσύ and when εσείς, who is allowed to say ρε to whom, the very Greek middle gear of κύριε Γιώργο, how to open an email, and the difference between a vocative that summons and one that softens.

Choosing

Adjectives

  • πιο + adjective vs -τεροςB1 — Choose between productive πιο + adjective and an established one-word comparative according to the adjective and phrase, not a rigid speech-versus-writing rule.

Orthography

  • πού/που, πώς/πως, πότε/ποτέA2 — Choose accented πού for a missing place—including inside indirect questions—and unaccented που for relative or complement clauses.
  • ότι vs ό,τιB1 — Choose complementizer ότι for a reported proposition and free-relative ό,τι for whatever or everything that, using syntax rather than pronunciation.

Overview

Prepositions

Verbs & Clauses

  • να vs θαB1 — Choose θα for projected, intended, predicted, or inferred situations, and να for unasserted actions that are wanted, required, purposed, proposed, or deliberated.
  • Imperfect vs AoristB1 — Use one compact decision flow to choose an internal or open past viewpoint versus an occurrence or finite series packaged as bounded.
  • πρέπει vs χρειάζεταιB1 — Choose πρέπει να for obligation or requirement, χρειάζεται να for practical necessity, and personal χρειάζομαι for a needed thing—especially under negation.
  • ας vs να (Suggestions)B2 — Use one compact decision grid to choose a bare first-person plural, να, or ας for proposals, permission, and concession.

Vocabulary

  • ξέρω vs γνωρίζωB1 — Choose everyday ξέρω or overlapping γνωρίζω for knowing, then distinguish the state γνώριζα from the meeting or coming-to-know event γνώρισα.
  • ξέρω να vs μπορώ ναB1 — Use ξέρω να when learned know-how is the point and μπορώ να for ability, circumstances, possibility, or permission, while allowing their natural overlap in skill contexts.
  • μου αρέσει vs αγαπάωA2 — Choose μου αρέσει for ordinary liking and αγαπάω for love, attachment, or deliberately strong enthusiasm.
  • λέω vs μιλάωA2 — Choose λέω for words and content, and μιλάω for the activity, language, partner, or topic of speaking.

Collocations and Phraseology

Overview

  • Collocations OverviewB1 — Learn why Greek words prefer particular partners, how to store those pairings as chunks, and where to study each major collocation type.

Structure

Types

  • Verb + Noun CollocationsB1 — A practical reference to the Greek verbs conventionally used with everyday activities, decisions, exams, promises, calls, and photographs.
  • Adjective + Noun CollocationsB2 — Choose conventional Greek adjective–noun pairings for strength, weather, color, food, friendship, and expressive feeling without turning preferences into false rules.

Common Mistakes

Articles

  • Dropping Required ArticlesA2 — Diagnose English-driven article omission with Greek names, generic and abstract subjects, and ordinary definite possessive phrases.

Cases

  • Wrong Case After a PrepositionA2 — Repair nominative forms after everyday Greek prepositions, apply compulsory σε contractions, and recognize learned genitive-governing prepositions.

Constructions

  • The μου αρέσει MistakeA2 — Diagnose English-style subject and object choices in Greek experiencer constructions such as μου αρέσει, μου λείπει, and μου φαίνεται.
  • Trying to Use an InfinitiveA2 — Repair English-style infinitive transfer by replacing bare second verbs with να plus a fully conjugated Greek verb.
  • Aspect Choice ErrorsB1 — Diagnose Greek aspect only in contexts that clearly require an internal or open viewpoint or package an occurrence or finite series as bounded.
  • Wrongly Avoiding Double NegationB1 — Diagnose English-driven omission of δεν when Greek negative-concord words express nobody, nothing, never, or nowhere in a declarative clause.
  • have vs be Idiom ErrorsA1 — Diagnose English have/be transfer in Greek expressions for age, physical needs, being right, and weather without rejecting grammatical alternative readings.

Morphology

  • Gender MistakesA2 — Diagnose Greek gender errors by checking the stored article, ending class, and agreement across the whole noun phrase instead of guessing from meaning or final letters alone.
  • Vocative ErrorsA2 — Diagnose nominative forms, articles, and malformed endings used where Greek requires a vocative in direct address.

Orthography

  • Using '?' Instead of ';'A1 — Diagnose the English question-mark transfer and replace ? with the standard Greek question mark ; while keeping the raised ano teleia · distinct.
  • Misspelling ι/η/υ/ει/οιA2 — Diagnose /i/-sound misspellings by checking grammatical endings and learned word forms instead of guessing from pronunciation.
  • Missing or Misplaced TonosA2 — Diagnose missing, misplaced, and enclitic-triggered tonos errors by checking each word's lexical stress and stress unit.
  • Verb-Ending Spelling ErrorsB1 — Diagnose homophonous Greek verb endings by identifying person, number, and morphological voice before correcting the letters.
  • Final-ν ErrorsB1 — Diagnose final-ν by separating the live feminine and μη(ν) alternation from the retained modern defaults δεν, masculine τον/στον, and έναν.

Overview

  • Common Mistakes OverviewA2 — Use the visible symptom in a Greek sentence to route recurring English-transfer errors to the diagnostic page and underlying rule that fixes them.

Prepositions

  • Wrong Preposition (Transfer)B1 — Diagnose English-driven preposition choices by learning each Greek verb together with the frame selected by its intended meaning.
  • Nominative After από in ComparisonsA2 — Repair nominative pronouns after comparative από by using the strong accusative forms across the full person paradigm.

Pronouns

  • Clitic Placement ErrorsA2 — Diagnose English-style object-pronoun placement and repair proclisis before finite verbs and enclisis after positive commands and gerunds.
  • Clitic Order ErrorsB1 — Repair reversed Greek clitic clusters by placing the genitive recipient before a third-person accusative object in every clause type.

Vocabulary

  • Greek–English False FriendsB2 — Distinguish current Greek meanings from tempting English cognates while preserving genuine overlaps in words such as μεταφορά, τραγικός, and ιδιωτικός.

Word Order

  • Possessive in the Wrong PlaceA1 — Diagnose English-style possessive order by checking the Greek article, the clitic's stressed host, and the few contexts that license an article-less phrase.
  • Overusing Subject PronounsA2 — Diagnose paragraph-wide repetition of Greek subject pronouns and learn when an overt pronoun genuinely helps the reader.

Conjunctions

Coordinating

  • και / κι: andA1 — Use και to coordinate, add a focused ‘also/even,’ build και…και ‘both…and,’ and link events; κι is its common unstressed reduction before a vowel.
  • Coordinating ConjunctionsB1 — Coordinate equal Greek words and clauses with και, ή, ούτε, αλλά, όμως, παρά, and λοιπόν, including the paired forms both…and, either…or, and neither…nor.
  • Contrast: αλλά, όμως, παράB1 — Choose αλλά or μα for ordinary opposition, mobile όμως for ‘however,’ and negative-frame παρά for corrective ‘not X but rather Y.’

Overview

  • Conjunctions OverviewA1 — Greek conjunctions either coordinate equal words and clauses or introduce dependent clauses of fact, possibility, time, cause, purpose, and condition.

Subordinating

  • That-Clauses: ότι, πως, πουB1 — Choose factual ότι or πως after saying and thinking, and factive που after emotions or direct perception, while keeping ότι distinct from ό,τι ‘whatever.’
  • Subordinating Conjunctions OverviewA2 — Navigate Greek dependent clauses by function: complements, time, cause, purpose, result, concession, and condition, with the mood and aspect patterns each linker interacts with.
  • Cause: γιατί, επειδή, αφούA2 — Express reasons with everyday γιατί and επειδή, given-cause αφού or the μια και/μιας και and μια που/μιας που families, and formal alternatives.
  • Time: όταν, μόλις, ενώ, πριν, αφούA2 — Choose Greek temporal conjunctions by the relationship between events, and learn why future ‘when’ normally takes a perfective dependent form rather than θα.
  • Purpose: για να, να, ώστε ναB1 — Greek purpose clauses use a conjugated subjunctive: everyday για να, plain να after motion verbs, and more formal ώστε να for a stated intended outcome.
  • Result: ώστε, έτσι πουB2 — Greek distinguishes asserted consequences from contemplated results with ώστε, ώστε να, έτσι που, με αποτέλεσμα να, and τόσο/τέτοιος…που.
  • Concession: αν και, παρόλο που, μολονότιB1 — Greek concession presents a fact or possibility that might have blocked the main event but did not, using αν και, παρόλο που, μολονότι, ενώ, and even-if expressions.
  • Condition: αν, εάν, άμα, σανA2 — Choose Greek conditional linkers by register: standard αν, formal εάν, colloquial άμα and σαν, plus unless and whenever expressions.
  • Comparison: όπως and σανB1 — Use όπως for correspondence with a manner or model, σαν for resemblance, and σαν να or λες και when something merely appears to be true.

Countries

Countries

  • Country Names and Their GenderA1 — Learn current Standard Greek country names with their ordinary articles, gender, number, and the case forms needed after common place prepositions.

Geography

  • Continents and DirectionsB1 — Use Greek continent names, compass-point nouns, directional adverbs, and agreeing geographic adjectives to locate places precisely.

Greece

  • Greek Cities and RegionsA2 — Use major Greek city, island, region, and sea names with their fixed articles, gender, number, case forms, and place prepositions.
  • The Greek-Speaking WorldA2 — Use the gender, case, articles, demonyms, and agreement patterns needed to describe Greek in Greece, Cyprus, diaspora communities, and historic centres.

Nationalities

  • Nationalities and LanguagesA1 — Distinguish capitalized nationality nouns from lowercase nationality adjectives and language names, with the gender forms and article patterns needed in everyday introductions.
  • Forming DemonymsB1 — Recognize recurring Greek demonym families while learning each nationality's feminine, adjective, and language form as a verified lexical set.

Overview

Usage

  • Prepositions With PlacesA2 — Choose and inflect Greek place phrases for location, destination, origin, and travel routes with σε, από, and για.

Determiners

Demonstratives

  • Demonstratives: αυτός and εκείνοςA1 — Greek needs only two demonstratives where English has four — αυτός/αυτή/αυτό for whatever is near or in focus, εκείνος/εκείνη/εκείνο for whatever is further off in space, time or attention — with the full declension, the accompanying article (αυτό το βιβλίο), the same words standing alone as pronouns (Θέλω αυτό), and the regional τούτος.

Interrogative

  • Interrogative Determiners: ποιος, πόσος, τιA2 — Three question words attach directly to a noun in Greek — ποιος (which, from a known set), πόσος (how much / how many) and invariable τι (what kind of) — and two of the three decline, so you must fix the noun's gender before you can even ask. This page gives both paradigms, the ποιος-versus-τι line that English blurs, and the rule English speakers break first: an interrogative determiner takes a bare noun, never the article.

Other Determiners

  • τέτοιος and τόσοςB1 — Greek points at kinds and quantities the way it points at objects: τέτοιος is 'that sort of' and τόσος is 'that much', and both decline and agree — τέτοια προβλήματα, τόση ζέστη, τόσα λεφτά. The hard part is that τόσο is also an invariable adverb, so Είναι τόσο ωραία never agrees while Τόση ζέστη! always does.
  • άλλος: 'other/another'A2 — άλλος / άλλη / άλλο is 'other' and 'another', but its most useful job is the one English never predicts — with a mass noun or in an offer it means more: Θέλεις άλλο κρασί; The article decides everything else: άλλος καφές is another coffee, ο άλλος καφές is the other one, and την άλλη βδομάδα is next week.
  • ο ίδιος: 'same' and '-self'B1 — One Greek word covers both English 'the same' and the emphatic '-self', and the only thing separating them is how many definite articles you use: ο ίδιος πρόεδρος is the same president, ο ίδιος ο πρόεδρος is the president himself. Also the possessive frame η ίδια μου η μητέρα, the adverb Μου κάνει το ίδιο, and why ο ίδιος is not the reflexive ο εαυτός μου.

Overview

  • Determiners OverviewA1 — Greek determiners are inflected words, not frozen ones — αυτός, όλος, πολύς and ποιος all copy the noun's gender, number and case, and several of them sit on top of the definite article instead of replacing it (αυτό το βιβλίο). This page sorts the whole class by the one test that predicts most of its behaviour — does the word take the article, refuse it, or follow the noun — and routes you to the page for each member.
  • Combining DeterminersB2 — English allows one determiner per noun; Greek queues them up — όλα αυτά τα παλιά γράμματα is four words in front of one noun, all four carrying the same gender, number and case. This page gives the ordering template, works one phrase through the nominative, accusative and genitive so you can watch every element shift together, and settles where a numeral, a possessive clitic and 'both' land in the queue.

Possessives

  • Possessive Determiners (μου, σου, του)A1 — Greek marks possession with seven unstressed little words placed after the noun — το βιβλίο μου, η μητέρα σου, το σπίτι τους — none of which changes for the thing owned. This page gives the forms, then answers the question the beginner pages skip: why the same clitic can also land in front of the noun (ο καλύτερός μου φίλος) or even in front of the article (όλη μου τη ζωή).

Quantifiers

  • Quantifiers: πολύς, λίγος, αρκετόςA2 — Greek's graded quantifiers — πολύς (much/many), λίγος (little/few), αρκετός (enough and 'quite a lot'), plus informal κάμποσος — all of which agree with their noun, so that a single word covers both English 'much' and 'many': πολύ νερό but πολλά παιδιά, λίγη ζέστη but λίγες μέρες. Includes the question word πόσος and the zero-quantity καθόλου.
  • Some: μερικοί, κάποιος, κάτιB1 — The three ways Greek says 'some' — plural-only μερικοί/μερικές/μερικά for a handful of countable things, the fully declined κάποιος for a single unidentified one ('some man or other'), and invariable κάτι, which is 'something' but also, in speech, a vague plural quantifier (κάτι παιδιά) — plus why κάτι and κάποιος must become τίποτα and κανένας under negation.
  • κανένας: 'no/any' and NegationA2 — κανένας / καμιά / κανένα is Greek's 'nobody' and its 'any' in one word, and it never works alone: Δεν ήρθε κανείς needs both δεν and κανείς, because Greek stacks negatives instead of cancelling them. Full paradigm, the κανείς/κανένας doublet, the obligatory δεν even in Κανείς δεν ήρθε, and the friendly spoken reading in Πάμε για κανένα ποτό;

Universals

  • όλος: 'all' and 'whole'A2 — One Greek word covers English all, whole, everybody and everything — and the noun's number decides which: όλο το βιβλίο is 'the whole book' but όλα τα βιβλία is 'all the books'. Full paradigm of όλος (including the single genitive plural όλων), the floating use in Τα έφαγε όλα, and the idioms όλο και πιο, πάνω απ' όλα, είμαι όλος αυτιά.
  • κάθε and καθένας: 'each/every'A2 — κάθε is the one determiner in Greek that never changes shape and never takes an article — κάθε μέρα, κάθε άνθρωπος, κάθε δύο ώρες — and it forces a singular noun and a singular verb where English says 'everyone… their'. Its pronoun partner does decline (ο καθένας, του καθενός, της καθεμιάς), and with the article it is the everyday word for 'everyone'.
  • Distributives: ανά, ο καθέναςB2 — How Greek says per, apiece and one by one — the learned preposition ανά (ανά κιλό, ανά άτομο), the everyday accusative article that replaces it in speech (δύο ευρώ το κιλό), distributive από (πήραμε από δύο), the appositive ο καθένας, and reduplicated pairs like ένας ένας and λίγο λίγο. The point of the page is the register split: ανά and το κιλό say the same thing in two different worlds.

Discourse Markers

Connectors

  • Text Connectors OverviewB1 — Choose Greek connectors by discourse function and register to build coherent spoken explanations and written arguments.
  • γι' αυτό: That's Why / ThereforeA2 — Use everyday γι' αυτό to point from an established cause to its real-world consequence, and distinguish it from logical inference.
  • Contrast Markers: όμως, ωστόσο, αντίθεταB1 — Signal contrast between Greek sentences with markers that reverse expectations, oppose positions, balance considerations, or limit a claim.
  • Additive ConnectorsB1 — Add parallel information or reinforcing reasons in Greek, choose an appropriate register, and build positive and negative correlative pairs.
  • Causal and Consecutive ConnectorsB1 — Connect Greek sentences by presenting a real-world consequence, logical inference, practical conclusion, or formally stated result.
  • Sequencing and OrderingA2 — Order Greek events and arguments with register-appropriate markers, and distinguish a final list item from an eventual outcome.

Interactional

Overview

  • Discourse Markers OverviewA2 — Use the small Greek words that guide transitions, reformulate ideas, manage turns, and express a speaker's attitude.

Particles

Reformulation

  • δηλαδή: That Is, I MeanB1 — Use δηλαδή to restate, specify, infer a practical meaning, or ask another speaker to clarify what they mean.
  • Reformulation and ExemplifyingB2 — Restate, correct, specify, and illustrate ideas in Greek with markers chosen for their function, position, and register.

Exclamations

Interjections

  • Emotional InterjectionsA2 — Recognize and use common Greek interjections for surprise, pain, relief, praise, doubt, impatience, and sympathy, with spellings and force shaped by context and intonation.
  • The Address Particles ρε / βρε / μωρέB2 — Use ρε, βρε, and μωρέ as relationship-sensitive spoken address particles whose warmth, insistence, or aggression depends on stance and context.

Overview

  • Exclamations OverviewA2 — See how Greek reuses question words, interjections, address particles, and intonation to express surprise, admiration, pain, impatience, and other reactions.

Patterns

  • Τι...! and Πόσο...!A2 — Build Greek exclamations with indeclinable τι, adverbial πόσο, and the agreeing determiner πόσος, and distinguish them from genuine questions.
  • Intensifying and Sarcastic ExclamationsB2 — Use productive σιγά μη + subjunctive to dismiss an expectation, and recognize how context and delivery turn an otherwise positive evaluation ironic.

Expressions

Functions

  • Giving OpinionsB1 — Choose Greek opinion frames from tentative impressions to firm judgments while controlling complementizers, evidence, and interpersonal force.
  • Politeness and Courtesy FormulasA2 — Move from familiar courtesy to professional service language with formulas for willingness, appreciation, apology, and gracious repair.
  • Agreeing and Disagreeing ExpressionsB1 — Choose Greek agreement and disagreement formulas by strength and register, from ακριβώς and συμφωνώ απόλυτα to όχι ακριβώς and διαφωνώ.
  • Conversational Fillers and ConnectivesB1 — Use Greek conversational markers to open, hold, redirect, clarify, soften, and close turns without forcing one English gloss onto each expression.
  • Exclamatory Set PhrasesB2 — Recognize and use fixed Greek exclamations for delight, regret, disbelief, impatience, praise, and defensive surprise with appropriate register.

Idioms

  • Common ProverbsB2 — Recognize and use well-established Greek proverbs while understanding their literal images, current functions, and recurring grammar.
  • Idioms With Body PartsB2 — Understand current Greek body-part idioms for fear, control, certainty, annoyance, pain, vigilance, and bad predictions.
  • Idioms With AnimalsB2 — Decode current Greek animal idioms through their literal images, real meanings, grammar, and conversational register.
  • Idioms With FoodB2 — Use common Greek kitchen and eating idioms for dismissing boasts, making a mess, mental overload, evasiveness, gullibility, and going broke.
  • Religious and Fate ExpressionsB2 — Interpret Greek formulas of relief, hope, alarm, protection, and goodwill without assuming that their use always declares personal belief.
  • Similes and Fixed ComparisonsB2 — Use conventional Greek σαν-similes for cold, hunger, sleep, speed, colour, and hard work while preserving their stored articles, agreement, and register.
  • Colloquial Everyday ExpressionsB2 — Understand current casual Greek expressions for refusal, praise, reassurance, dismissal, greetings, and interruption while tracking slang strength and social risk.

Overview

  • Everyday Expressions OverviewA1 — Learn why common Greek formulas and light-verb expressions work best as meaningful chunks rather than word-for-word translations.

Social

  • Greetings and Everyday WishesA1 — Use a compact phrasebook of Greek greetings, welcome formulas, check-ins, and everyday good wishes with literal glosses and register labels.
  • Wishes, Toasts, and CelebrationsA2 — A practical phrasebook of Greek birthday, holiday, journey, recovery, condolence, encouragement, and drinking formulas with literal structure and register.

Themes

  • Talking About the WeatherA2 — Ask about Greek weather and combine subjectless weather verbs, κάνει-phrases, έχει-phrases, seasonal time expressions, and simple forecasts.
  • Time ExpressionsA2 — Use high-frequency Greek time phrases for soon, ago, continuing duration, gradual change, punctuality, temporary states, and story openings.
  • Common Fixed PhrasesA2 — Understand high-frequency Greek phrases whose conversational meanings go beyond their literal words, from εντάξει and δεν πειράζει to έλα ντε and στο περίπου.
  • Expressing Emotions and ReactionsA2 — Build natural Greek reaction moves for joy, surprise, annoyance, sympathy, relief, and enthusiasm, including the follow-up each response invites.

Verb Families

  • Expressions With κάνωB1 — Master five uses beyond the productive κάνω light-verb inventory: weather, pretence, social norms, greetings, and control.
  • Expressions With έχωB1 — Organize high-frequency έχω expressions by appetite, mood, intention, ability, and evaluation instead of memorizing an unrelated list.
  • Expressions With βάζω and παίρνωB2 — Use the put–take axis behind Greek idioms, including σβάρνα, φόρα, and the context-sensitive παίρνω πάνω μου family.

Negation

Commands

Concord

Overview

  • Negation in Greek: OverviewA1 — Choose δεν for indicative statements and μη(ν) for subjunctive clauses and prohibitions, place clitics correctly, and understand Greek negative concord.

Particles

  • όχι: No and BeyondA1 — Use όχι as an independent ‘no,’ a polite refusal, and a focused negator before nonverbal elements, while δεν negates an ordinary finite verb.
  • Partial and Scalar NegationB2 — Greek softens absolute negatives with όχι πολύ, όχι ακόμα, σχεδόν καθόλου, όχι και τόσο, δεν…παρά, and expressions meaning ‘barely.’
  • μη(ν) and μήπως: Lest and DoubtB2 — Use μη(ν) after fear and caution expressions for an unwanted possibility, while μήπως introduces a doubtful or suspected possibility and is not itself negative.

The Two Negators

  • Negating With δενA1 — How δεν negates whole indicative clauses, including clauses with noun, adjective, and prepositional predicates, and how όχι isolates a single contrasting constituent.
  • δεν vs μη(ν)A2 — Choose δεν for indicative facts and μη(ν) inside command, subjunctive, purpose, warning, and fear frames.

Nouns

Cross-cutting

  • Forming the PluralB1 — One reference for the main Greek plural endings — masculine -οι / -ες / -άδες / -ηδες, feminine -ες / -άδες / -ούδες / -εις / -οι, neuter -α / -ια / -ματα / -η — with strong cues for the split -ας and -ης classes, their lexical or regional variation, and the classic trap where neuter plural τα παιδιά is mistaken for a feminine singular.
  • The Vocative Case (Direct Address)A2 — How to change a noun's ending when you call or address someone: masculine φίλος → φίλε; common short names Γιώργος → Γιώργο but longer names Αλέξανδρος → Αλέξανδρε; Γιάννης → Γιάννη; Θωμάς → Θωμά; feminine and neuter usually stay put. The everyday address κύριε / κυρία and the dropped article.
  • Accent Shift in DeclensionB1 — Why stress often moves forward when you decline a noun — άνθρωπος but του ανθρώπου, αυτοκίνητο but του αυτοκινήτου, κυβέρνηση but των κυβερνήσεων. The recurring patterns are shown gender by gender, together with the lexical and register-sensitive forms that preserve their stress.
  • Forming the Genitive SingularB1 — The genitive singular ending for every regular noun class — masculine -ος→-ου, -ας→-α, -ης→-η; feminine -α→-ας, -η→-ης; neuter -ο→-ου, -ι→-ιού, -μα→-ματος, -ος→-ους — with the article του/της/του and the classic trap of over-keeping the -ς on masculines.
  • The Genitive Plural (-ων)B1 — The plural 'of the…' form ends in -ων for almost every Greek noun (των ανθρώπων, των παιδιών, των πόλεων→-εων), and the article is always των — but the stress is the trickiest in the language, so natives often sidestep the awkward ones with από + accusative.

Feminine

  • Feminine Nouns in -αA1 — The most common feminine pattern — η γυναίκα, η ώρα, η μέρα, η θάλασσα — with its plain paradigm, the -ας genitive singular, and the one tricky cell: the accent-shifting genitive plural (η θάλασσα → των θαλασσών).
  • Feminine Nouns in -ηA1 — The second great feminine class — η αγάπη, η νίκη, η τέχνη, η ζάχαρη — declined in full, with its -ης genitive singular, its plain -ες plural, and the warning that a big learned subgroup (η πόλη → οι πόλεις) breaks the pattern.
  • Learned Feminines: η πόλη → οι πόλειςB1 — The Ancient-derived feminine class — η πόλη, η δύναμη, η τάξη, η λέξη — that ends in -η like an ordinary feminine but takes the plural -εις and the distinctive genitive plural -εων (των πόλεων). Ultra-common words you cannot avoid.
  • Feminine Nouns in -οςB1 — The counterintuitive class that looks masculine but isn't — η οδός, η μέθοδος, η άμμος, η Κύπρος. They take feminine articles and adjectives (η κεντρική οδός) yet decline exactly like masculine -ος nouns (της οδού, την οδό).
  • Imparisyllabic Feminines (-άδες, -ούδες)B1 — Oxytone feminine nouns that grow a syllable in the plural — η γιαγιά → οι γιαγιάδες, η αλεπού → οι αλεπούδες — versus the look-alike η αγελάδα that stays the same length. Home of grandmothers, mums and loan words.

Gender & Number

  • The Three GendersA1 — Every Greek noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter — and that gender, shown by its article ο / η / το, controls the adjectives and pronouns around it, so you learn each noun together with its article, not on its own.
  • Predicting Gender from EndingsA2 — A decision table for guessing a Greek noun's gender from its nominative ending — -μα and -ση/-ξη/-ψη are near-certain, -ας/-ης point masculine, -ι/-ο neuter, while -ος is the one ending that can be all three genders.
  • Number and the Four CasesA1 — Every Greek noun inflects for number (singular/plural) and for one of four cases — nominative, genitive, accusative, vocative — with the article often carrying the case even more visibly than the noun itself.

Masculine

  • Masculine Nouns in -οςA1 — The largest masculine class — nouns like ο δρόμος, ο ουρανός and ο άνθρωπος — with its full singular and plural paradigm, the common but lexically variable accent shift of antepenult-stressed nouns, and the -ε vocative.
  • Masculine Nouns in -αςA2 — The two -ας masculine types: parisyllabic nouns like ο άντρας and ο πατέρας (plural -ες) versus imparisyllabic occupational nouns like ο ψαράς and ο παπάς (plural -άδες), with the genitive singular in bare -α that trips up learners.
  • Masculine Nouns in -ης and -εςA2 — Masculine agent and family nouns like ο μαθητής, ο ναύτης and ο πολίτης — singular in -ης, plural in -ες, with an oxytone genitive plural in -ών, the -η vocative, the rival -ηδες plural of surnames and trade words, and a warning not to confuse this noun ending with the -ης two-termination adjective.
  • Contracted Masculines: ο καφές, ο παππούς, ο νουςB1 — The contracted singular of ο καφές, ο παππούς, ο μπαμπάς and ο νους — nouns whose genitive, accusative and vocative are nothing but a bare stressed vowel (του καφέ, του παππού, του νου), so the article alone carries the case.
  • Imparisyllabic Masculines (-άδες, -ούδες)B1 — A large family of masculine nouns — ο ψαράς, ο καφές, ο παππούς, ο μπακάλης — that grows an extra syllable in the plural (οι ψαράδες, οι καφέδες), a pattern English has almost nowhere.

Neuter

  • Neuter Nouns in -οA1 — The friendliest noun class in Greek: neuter -ο nouns (το βιβλίο, το νερό) where the nominative, accusative and vocative are always identical, so in the singular only the genitive -ου stands apart.
  • Neuter Nouns in -ιA1 — Neuter nouns like το παιδί and το σπίτι, whose genitive -ιού and plural -ια are pronounced as a single glide (παιδιά = 'pedhyá'). Home of the everyday diminutive -άκι.
  • Neuter Nouns in -μαA2 — The productive -μα class (το πρόβλημα, το όνομα, το γράμμα) whose real stem is the hidden -ματ- that surfaces in every case except the nominative: το όνομα → του ονόματος. Miss the -ματ- and you say *του ονόμα.
  • Learned Neuters in -οςB1 — The learned neuter class (το δάσος, το μέρος, το λάθος) whose -ος nominative looks masculine but is neuter — genitive -ους, plural -η. The article το, not the ending, tells you the gender apart from masculine ο δρόμος and feminine η οδός.
  • Other Learned NeutersC1 — The residual learned neuters whose true stem hides until you decline them — το φως / του φωτός / τα φώτα, το κρέας / του κρέατος, το γάλα / του γάλακτος, and the participial neuters το καθήκον, το προϊόν, το παρόν, το μέλλον, το γεγονός, το ον. Everyday words with irregular stems you simply have to learn.

Special

  • Indeclinable Nouns (Loanwords)B1 — A small but very common group — το ταξί, το μπαρ, το σινεμά, το μετρό — that never changes its ending: the article alone carries gender, case and number, and this page shows exactly how that works and which words belong to the club.
  • Irregular and Heteroclitic NounsB2 — The handful of everyday nouns — γάλα, κρέας, φως, νους, παιδί, χέρι, γυναίκα — that hide a second stem or borrow endings from two different paradigms, and exactly which forms you have to commit to memory.
  • Nouns With Two PluralsB2 — A set of common nouns — χρόνος, λόγος, δεσμός, βράχος, χείλος — that build two different plurals, where picking the wrong one does not sound clumsy but says something else entirely.
  • Assigning Gender to LoanwordsB1 — Every borrowed word has to be given a Greek gender before it can take an article — the default is neuter (το ίντερνετ, το λάπτοπ), but ending shape and semantic analogy override it, and this page gives you the decision procedure.
  • Compound NounsB2 — How Greek welds two nouns into one word with the linking vowel -ο- — ανεμόμυλος, νυχτοπούλι, ψαροταβέρνα — why only the last element inflects and gives the compound its gender, and when Greek uses a genitive instead.
  • Declining Greek Names and SurnamesA2 — How personal names change through the cases — Γιώργος → του Γιώργου, Γιάννης → του Γιάννη, Μαρία → της Μαρίας — how masculine Greek surnames decline, and why traditional feminine forms such as η Παπαδοπούλου are invariant frozen genitives.
  • Mass and Collective NounsB2 — How Greek handles the stuff you cannot count — το νερό, το ψωμί, ο καφές — when those nouns suddenly go plural (δύο καφέδες), how to measure them out (ένα ποτήρι νερό, λίγο ψωμί), and why ο κόσμος translates as people yet takes a stubbornly singular verb.

Numbers

Advanced

  • Fractions, Decimals, PercentagesB1 — Form everyday fractions, read decimal commas, express percentages with τοις εκατό, and make half agree correctly in Greek.
  • Approximate and Collective NumbersB1 — Express ten or so, a couple, roughly, and dozens or thousands in natural Greek, with the right register and agreement.
  • Distributive and MultiplicativeB2 — Distribute quantities with από, ανά, and reduplication, then distinguish double or triple forms, frequency phrases, and proportional -πλάσιος adjectives.

Cardinals

  • Greek Numbers OverviewA1 — Understand Greek cardinal and ordinal numbers, the small set of cardinals that agree with nouns, and the patterns needed for counting, time, dates, and money.
  • Cardinal Numbers 1–20A1 — Count from one to twenty in Greek, pronounce the everyday and learned doublets, and make one, three, four, thirteen, and fourteen agree with nouns.
  • Tens, Hundreds, ThousandsA1 — Build Greek cardinals with tens, hundreds, thousands, and millions while applying εκατόν and the gender agreement of hundreds and χίλιοι.
  • Declining 1, 3, 4A1 — Master the gender and case forms of ένας, τρεις, and τέσσερις, the three low Greek cardinals that must agree with the noun they count.
  • Which Cardinals DeclineA2 — See exactly which Greek cardinal components agree for gender and case, from 1, 3, and 4 through the hundreds, χίλιοι, and the noun χιλιάδα.

Ordinals

  • Ordinal NumbersA2 — Form and decline Greek ordinal adjectives from πρώτος to χιλιοστός, and use them naturally for order, floors, dates, chapters, and fractions.

Uses

  • Telling the TimeA1 — Ask and tell clock time in Greek with feminine hour forms, και for minutes past, παρά for minutes to, and στη μία versus στις δύο.
  • Days, Months, and DatesA2 — Capitalize Greek day and month names, put calendar months in the genitive, distinguish one Monday from Mondays, and read years naturally.
  • Prices and MoneyA2 — Ask and answer questions about prices, understand the bare accusative of price, quote per-unit rates, and handle everyday payment language in Greek.

Pragmatics

Address

Interaction

  • Backchanneling and Active ListeningA2 — Use Greek listening signals to support a speaker, show understanding, and react without taking over the turn.
  • Agreeing and DisagreeingB1 — Express alignment and disagreement in Greek while controlling directness, scope, and interpersonal force.
  • Emphasis and Intensity in SpeechB2 — Combine repetition, degree words, particles, prosody, and fronting to create natural emphasis in spoken Greek.
  • Compliments and ResponsesB2 — Give Greek compliments, accept or gently downplay them, and manage reciprocation without turning flexible social choices into rigid rules.
  • Softening and DirectnessC1 — Calibrate Greek requests from familiar directness to formal distance by combining request shape, address, particles, diminutives, and tone.

Overview

  • Pragmatics and Politeness OverviewA1 — Navigate Greek address, greetings, requests, directness, particles, and intonation by matching language to relationship and setting.

Situational

  • On the PhoneB1 — Handle Greek phone calls naturally, from answering and identifying callers to transferring, calling back, and closing.

Social Formulas

  • Greetings and FarewellsA1 — Choose Greek greetings by time and relationship, and use natural formulas for arrival, welcome, leave-taking, and seeing someone again.
  • Introductions and NamesA1 — Ask and give names, introduce another person, and continue a first Greek conversation with forms suited to familiar or polite address.
  • Please and Thank YouA1 — Use παρακαλώ, ευχαριστώ, and να είστε καλά naturally in requests, thanks, responses, service encounters, and polite turn-taking.
  • Wishes and CongratulationsA2 — Choose the Greek wish that fits a birthday, name day, achievement, illness, journey, meal, toast, or recurring celebration—and reply naturally.

Speech Acts

  • Making Requests PolitelyB1 — Scale Greek requests from familiar imperatives to questions, μήπως, and conditional forms without confusing directness, politeness, and formality.
  • Offers and SuggestionsA2 — Offer help and propose shared action with deliberative να, μήπως, θέλεις, τι λες, bare plural forms, and hortative ας.
  • Apologizing and Excuse-MeA2 — Choose natural Greek formulas for apologizing, attracting attention, expressing regret, and responding graciously.

Prepositions

Choosing

  • σε vs από: Goal vs SourceA2 — A practical decision guide to σε for location and goals versus από for origins, sources, paths, and separation.
  • από in ComparisonsA2 — Understand how source-marking από introduces a comparison baseline in everyday Greek, especially with manner, time, amounts, thresholds, and από ποτέ.
  • Motion vs LocationA2 — How Greek motion verbs choose goals, sources, paths, and direct objects while σε itself covers both destination and static location.

Core Prepositions

  • σε: to, at, in, onA1 — How σε covers both location and direction, fuses with the definite article, and marks recipients and clock time.
  • από: from, of, by, thanA1 — How από marks sources, passive agents, comparison standards, members of a group, and routes through a place.
  • με: with, byA1 — How με links companions, instruments, transport, and manner, always with an accusative complement.
  • για: for, about, toA1 — How για marks beneficiaries, topics, destinations, durations, and purpose through the high-frequency connector για να.

Deep Dives

  • σε in DepthA2 — How Greek uses σε for location, destination, recipients, time, distribution, and movement into or onto a place.
  • από in DepthA2 — How Greek uses από for source, origin, separation, causes, passive agents, partitives, materials, paths, and comparisons.
  • με in DepthA2 — How Greek uses με for company, instruments, transport, manner, description, rates, ranges, and the contrast between agent and means.
  • για in DepthA2 — How Greek uses για for purpose, beneficiaries, topics, duration, intended destinations, exchange value, and personal viewpoints.

Genitive Prepositions

  • Formal Connectors From PrepositionsC1 — Recognition guide to the deep learned layer—βάσει, ένεκα, χάριν, δυνάμει, πλην, άνευ, and περί—in legal, academic, and journalistic Greek.

Government

  • Verbs and Their PrepositionsB2 — Learn the lexical frames that pair common Greek verbs with από, για, σε, or με—and the important verbs that take no preposition at all.
  • Prepositional IdiomsC1 — Ten fixed Greek prepositional phrases for everyday, emphatic, and formal meanings that cannot be assembled word by word.

Other Prepositions

  • προς: towardB1 — How προς marks orientation toward a goal, extends to abstract relations, and appears in common fixed expressions.
  • ως, έως, μέχρι: until, up toB1 — Choosing ως, έως, and μέχρι for temporal, spatial, and quantitative endpoints, ranges, and until-clauses.
  • χωρίς / δίχως: withoutA2 — How χωρίς and literary δίχως express absence with a noun or a finite να-clause instead of an English -ing form.
  • παρά: despite, minus, butB2 — How παρά shifts among preposition, time subtraction, exception, comparison, and adversative connector uses.
  • κατά: against, about, according toB2 — How κατά changes meaning with the accusative and genitive, from everyday fixed phrases to formal opposition and standards.

Overview

  • Greek Prepositions OverviewA1 — The Modern Greek preposition system: the everyday accusative default, compulsory σε + article contractions, broad meanings, compound phrases, and the smaller genitive-governing set.
  • The Accusative PrepositionsA1 — The core Modern Greek prepositions that take an accusative complement, from σε and από to μέχρι, χωρίς, παρά, and κατά.
  • Preposition Reference TableB1 — A compact lookup table for the case, core meanings, contractions, and elisions of the main Modern Greek prepositions.

Semantic Sets

  • Temporal Prepositions and TimeA2 — How Greek expresses at, before, after, during, within, for, and from–to time spans—and when it uses no preposition at all.
  • Compound (Two-Word) PrepositionsA2 — The spatial expressions built with place words plus σε or από, their accusative complements, and the pairings that must be learned whole.

Pronouns

Clitics

  • Weak (Clitic) Pronouns OverviewA1 — The complete weak series — με, σε, τον, την, το, μας, σας, τους, τις, τα and μου, σου, του, της — fourteen unstressed words that carry the object of almost every Greek sentence and every possessive. Includes the fact nobody warns you about: six of them are letter-for-letter the definite article, and only the word standing next to them tells you which is which.
  • Direct-Object Clitics (Accusative)A1 — με, σε, τον, την, το, μας, σας, τους, τις, τα — the everyday object pronoun, and it arrives before the verb, not after it. Covers the third person's agreement with the Greek noun's gender rather than with English 'it', the final -ν that is the only thing keeping τον apart from το, and the postverbal form τες that most courses never mention.
  • Indirect-Object Clitics (Genitive)A2 — μου, σου, του, της, μας, σας, τους in front of the verb — the person something is given, said or sent to. Contrasts them with the accusative clitics on the same verbs, and covers the construction English has no name for: the genitive of the person an event simply happens to (Μου έφυγε το τρένο, Μου πάτησε το πόδι).
  • Possessive CliticsA1 — μου after a noun is 'my'; μου in front of a verb is 'to me'. Same seven words, two completely different jobs, and nothing but position to tell them apart — including the sentences where both turn up at once (Μου έφερε το βιβλίο μου). The one page in the group about reading and producing that difference.
  • Where Clitics GoA2 — One rule covers almost every weak pronoun in Greek: it stands immediately in front of the finite verb with nothing allowed in between — Το βλέπω, Δεν σε ξέρω, Θα σου το πω, Να με πάρεις. Two contexts send it behind instead. Includes the full list of what stacks in front of the verb, why an adverb can never squeeze in, and why Greek keeps the clitic with its own verb instead of moving it up.
  • Proclisis and Enclisis in DetailB1 — The complete account of clitic position: proclisis is the unconditional default with every finite verb in the standard language, and enclisis belongs to exactly two forms — the bare positive imperative and the gerund. Why those two, what the Medieval system looked like, why Cypriot Greek still uses it, and what the switch does to the written accent.
  • Clitics After a Positive CommandA2 — The everyday pattern in one line: give an order and the little pronoun jumps behind the verb — Πες μου, Δώσε μου, Πάρ' το, Άσε με, Περίμενέ με. Say the same thing in the negative and it goes straight back in front. Five commands to learn whole, and the one contrast that matters.
  • Two Clitics TogetherB1 — Greek stacks the indirect and the direct object in front of the verb as a single block — Μου το έδωσε, Σου τα άφησα, Της την πήρε — in the fixed order genitive then accusative, the mirror image of English 'gave it to me'. The order, the everyday clusters worth memorising whole, and why nothing may ever slip between the two little words.
  • Clitic Ordering and ContractionB2 — The full pre-verbal template — subordinator, then δεν/μην, then θα, then the genitive clitic, then the accusative clitic, then the verb — plus the morphophonemics that fall out of it: why μη μου το λες loses its ν but μην το κάνεις keeps it, why μου την έδωσε keeps a ν that μου τη ζήτησε drops, and the spoken contractions στο, στα and μου 'πε.
  • Clitic Doubling (Object Reduplication)B2 — Τον Γιάννη τον είδα χθες — the object is named and then said again as a clitic, and the doubling is not redundancy but a signal that the object is old news. The topic reading, post-verbal doubling (Την ξέρω την ιστορία), the environments that force or forbid the clitic, and why a fronted object without a clitic means something different.
  • Experiencer Clitics: μου αρέσειA2 — Μου αρέσουν τα λουλούδια is 'the flowers please me' — the thing is the subject and the person is a genitive clitic. The whole αρέσει / λείπει / φαίνεται / πάει family, why μου λείπεις inverts twice, the three ways to say your head hurts, and the sister family (με νοιάζει, σε πειράζει) that takes the accusative instead.
  • The Clitic το for Clauses and 'It'B1 — Το ξέρω, Το κατάλαβα, Δεν το πιστεύω — the neuter clitic that stands for a whole idea rather than a thing, and that Greek supplies in places where English leaves the verb bare or says 'so'. Covers the το that anticipates a ότι- or να-clause, the trap of το ότι where το is the article instead, and the fact that Greek has no subject 'it' for το to be confused with.
  • Accent on Clitic ClustersC1 — When pronouns attach behind a verb, the written accent sometimes has to be repaired: Ξύπνησέ μας, Δάνεισέ μου το, Ψάχνοντάς τα, Δώσε μού το — but never ×Πές μου το and never ×Πάρε τό. The exact condition, why a proparoxytone verb takes the mark itself while a paroxytone one passes it to the pronoun, and the look-alike accent in Ο πατέρας μού το είπε.

Demonstrative

  • Demonstrative PronounsA2 — What happens to αυτός and εκείνος when you take the noun away: the ending has to remember the noun's gender (Ποια θέλεις; — Αυτή), the one-word answer has to copy the question's case (Ποιον; — Αυτόν), neuter αυτό becomes the word for anything you cannot name, and pointing at a person with Αυτός sounds a lot colder than English 'he'.
  • αυτός vs εκείνοςB2 — The B2 layer of the choice: αυτός as the unmarked way to carry a referent forward, εκείνος for someone who has drifted away from the centre of attention, why the 'former / latter' mapping only works when both pronouns appear as a pair, and the narrative Εκείνη τον κοίταξε that belongs to fiction rather than to conversation.
  • αυτό for Ideas and DiscourseB1 — The stressed αυτό and αυτά that stand for a whole statement rather than a thing — Αυτό δεν το ήξερα, Με αυτά που είπες — plus the four slots where only the strong form fits (γι' αυτό, παρ' όλα αυτά, εκτός απ' αυτό), the written με αυτόν τον τρόπο against everyday έτσι, and the forward-pointing Αυτό που με ενοχλεί είναι ότι…

Impersonal

  • Generic 'You' and Impersonal ReferenceB2 — Πας στο δημόσιο, περιμένεις δύο ώρες και σου λένε ότι λείπει ένα χαρτί — one sentence with two impersonal strategies in it. Greek's generic second-person singular (anyone, hearer included), the third-person plural for an unnamed agent (someone else, speaker excluded), the mediopassive of signage and law, formal κανείς and everyday ο κόσμος — what each one covers, who it leaves out, and which register it belongs to.
  • Impersonal and Dummy SubjectsB1 — English has two subjects that mean nothing — it and there — and Greek has neither, which produces two separate transfer errors with two separate fixes. 'It' corresponds to nothing at all (Βρέχει, Κάνει κρύο, Είναι κρίμα που…), while 'there is' is the real verb υπάρχει, which agrees, or the everyday έχει, which does not. Plus the neuter-singular adjective in Είναι δύσκολο να… and when αυτό genuinely is allowed.

Indefinite

  • Indefinite PronounsB1 — A map of Greek's indefinite pronouns rather than a lesson on any one of them: κάποιος, κάτι, μερικοί, καθένας, κανένας, τίποτα and the -δήποτε words sorted by two questions — does it inflect, and which of the three series does it belong to. Every word here has a page of its own; this one tells you which page you need, and covers the free-choice series οποιοσδήποτε / οτιδήποτε in full.
  • Negative Polarity: κανένας, τίποτα, ποτέB1 — κανένας, τίποτα, ποτέ, πουθενά and καθόλου are not negative words — they are words that need a licensing context, and negation is only the commonest one. Questions, αν-clauses, πριν-clauses, χωρίς να, comparatives and superlatives all license them too, which is why the same word comes out as 'nobody' in one sentence and 'anybody' in the next, and why adding δεν inside a χωρίς να clause breaks it.
  • κάτι vs κάποιοςB1 — Not the forms — the choice. κάποιος points at a person the speaker could name and will not; κάτι points at a thing or, far more often, an event the speaker cannot name at all, which is why Κάτι έγινε and Κάτι τρέχει have no κάποιος counterpart. Plus the neuter-singular agreement that κάτι forces on everything after it (κάτι καινούριο, κάτι το γοητευτικό) and the narrow escape hatch that lets both words survive a negation.
  • καθένας, κανένας, ο ένας τον άλλονB2 — Three words that quantify over the same group and package it three different ways: ο καθένας walks through it one member at a time, όλοι takes it as a single body, κανένας empties it. The page is the opposition itself — minimal pairs where only the quantifier changes, the collective-predicate test that ο καθένας fails, and the scope difference that makes Δεν ήρθαν όλοι and Δεν ήρθε κανένας two entirely different pieces of news.

Interrogative

  • Interrogative PronounsA2 — When a Greek question word stands with no noun after it, it becomes a pronoun — ποιος (who / which one), τι (what) and πόσος (how many) — and ποιος still agrees with the noun you both have in mind but never said. Covers the standalone forms, why case alone separates Ποιος πήρε τη Μαρία; from Ποιον πήρε η Μαρία;, and the case a one-word answer comes back in.
  • τι vs ποιοςA2 — With a noun after it the choice is closed set versus open field, but standing alone the two words split differently: τι can open a conversation out of nothing, while a bare ποιο has to point back at something already in play. Covers the noun-less contrast, the genuine overlap zone (Τι δουλειά κάνεις; against Ποια δουλειά;), and the frozen τι-expressions — Τι ώρα είναι;, Τι κάνεις;, Τι λέει; — that refuse ποιος outright.
  • Questioning Prepositional ObjectsA2 — English lets you leave a preposition dangling at the end — who did you go with? — and Greek does not: in an overt question, the preposition travels to the front with its question word, giving Με ποιον πήγες;, Σε ποιον το έδωσες;, Από πού είσαι; Covers the fronting rule, the contrast between γιατί and separate για τι, and why a fragment answer repeats the preposition too.

Overview

  • The Pronoun System: Strong vs WeakA1 — Greek says 'me' two different ways: εμένα, which is stressed and can stand on its own, and με, which is unstressed and dies without a verb to lean on. This page lays the two series side by side, names the only two skills in the system that actually take work — accusative versus genitive, and where the little words go — and routes you to every other page in the group.

Personal

  • Subject PronounsA1 — The ten forms of εγώ, εσύ, αυτός, εμείς, εσείς — all of them stressed on the final syllable, all of them optional, and the third person borrowed wholesale from the demonstrative αυτός. Includes the polite εσείς and its odd agreement (plural verb, singular adjective) when you are addressing one person.
  • When to Use (and Drop) Subject PronounsA1 — Greek verb endings already say who is doing the action, so εγώ and εσύ are left out unless you are contrasting, correcting, switching topic or answering 'who?'. This page shows exactly what the extra pronoun signals, so you stop scattering εγώ through your sentences the way English forces you to.
  • Emphatic Object PronounsA2 — εμένα, εσένα, αυτόν, εμάς — the object pronouns you can actually put weight on, used when the object is the news rather than the background. The key skill is knowing when the strong form needs a clitic beside it (Εμένα με ρώτησε) and when it stands alone (Ρώτησαν εμένα, όχι εσένα), because the two mean different things.
  • Pronouns After PrepositionsA2 — Every Greek preposition takes a strong pronoun — σ' εμένα, από σένα, μ' αυτόν, χωρίς εσάς — and a clitic after a preposition is flatly impossible. Covers the shortened forms μένα/σένα/μας/σας that dominate real speech, the elisions γι' αυτό and απ' αυτούς, and the one word that breaks the rule: μαζί μου.

Possessives

  • Emphatic Possessives: δικός μουB1 — The stressed possessive that English hides inside its intonation: δικός μου, δική μου, δικό μου agrees with the thing owned and is what Greek uses for 'mine', 'my own' and 'MY car, not yours'. Includes the predicative Αυτό είναι δικό μου, the article-less Έχω δικό μου σπίτι ('a place of my own'), and οι δικοί μου for 'my family'.
  • All the Ways to Say 'My'A2 — A decision page: one table matching every possession situation to the construction Greek uses for it — the everyday clitic το σπίτι μου, the contrastive το δικό μου σπίτι, the genitive noun το σπίτι του Γιάννη, the emotional η ίδια μου η μητέρα and the reflexive ο εαυτός μου — with a link to the page that teaches each one properly.
  • Intensive Pronouns (εγώ ο ίδιος)B2 — Greek already has a stressed pronoun for emphasis — εγώ, εσένα, αυτόν — and this page is about the second gear on top of it: the reinforcers ο ίδιος, μόνος μου, ακόμα κι εγώ and προσωπικά, how each one agrees with the pronoun it strengthens (including in case: εμένα τον ίδιο), and why Σε σένα μιλάω lands so much harder than Σου μιλάω.

Reflexive & Reciprocal

  • The Reflexive ο εαυτός μουB1 — Greek's reflexive is not a pronoun at all — it is the masculine noun εαυτός ('self') with a definite article and a possessive clitic: τον εαυτό μου, στον εαυτό σου, του εαυτού της. Why the noun stays masculine and singular whoever you are talking about, why it can take an adjective (ο παλιός μου εαυτός) and even be a subject (Δεν είναι ο εαυτός του), and how it differs from ο ίδιος and μόνος μου.
  • Reflexive Pronoun vs Middle VoiceB2 — Greek encodes 'myself' twice — with the -ομαι ending and with the noun ο εαυτός μου — and they are not free variants. The middle deletes the object slot, the pronoun fills it, and that single fact predicts every case: why an oblique self, a contrasted self or a modified self forces τον εαυτό μου, why verbs like αγαπάω leave you no choice, why the two can never be stacked, and where the learned prefix αυτο- comes in.
  • Reciprocal: 'each other'B1 — The full inventory of Greek's 'each other' devices: the verb ending, the everyday μεταξύ τους, and the precise ο ένας τον άλλον — how the phrase is built out of two slots (a nominative echo of the subject, then whatever case the verb or preposition wants), why the preposition goes in the middle, the feminine η μία την άλλη and neuter το ένα το άλλο, the genitive ο ένας του άλλου, the sequential ο ένας μετά τον άλλον, and the learned αλλήλων you read but never say.
  • The Prefix αλληλο- (mutual action)C1 — The learned reciprocal αλληλο- / αλληλ- is word-formation, not syntax: it is welded into the verb or noun before the sentence starts. Which slot is still productive (mediopassive verbs, coined live in journalism), why the prefix kills the passive reading that the bare middle leaves open, how far the nouns have drifted from 'each other' (αλληλεγγύη, αλληλογραφία, αλληλουχία), where the diaeresis in αλληλοϋποστήριξη comes from, and why αμοιβαίος is usually the better formal choice.

Relative

  • The Relative πουA2 — One tiny word covers English who, whom, which and that, and it never changes shape: που is invariable for gender, number and case, so ο άντρας που ήρθε, η γυναίκα που ήρθε and τα παιδιά που ήρθαν all use the same form. Covers why που can never be dropped the way English drops 'that', the non-noun antecedents (τη μέρα που, τώρα που, εκεί που), restrictive against non-restrictive, and the person agreement in Εσύ που ξέρεις.
  • The Relative ο οποίοςB2 — The declinable relative of written Greek: ο οποίος / η οποία / το οποίο takes its gender and number from the antecedent and its case from its own job inside the clause, so η εταιρεία της οποίας ο διευθυντής παραιτήθηκε is 'the company whose director resigned'. Full paradigm, the obligatory article, the genitive that translates English 'whose', and where the form actually lives — journalism, academic prose, law and official documents.
  • που vs ο οποίοςB2 — Both are correct Greek and the axis between them is register plus explicitness, not right and wrong: που is light, invariable and covers nine sentences out of ten; ο οποίος marks gender, number and case, which buys you clarity in writing and costs you naturalness in speech. A context-by-context table, the two places where the choice disappears, how ο οποίος fixes an ambiguous attachment, and why piling on ο οποίος in conversation backfires.
  • Relatives After PrepositionsB2 — English offers 'the city in which I live' and 'the city I live in'; Greek offers η πόλη στην οποία ζω and η πόλη που ζω — and never the stranded preposition that sits at the end of the English one. The formal strategy (preposition + ο οποίος, including the genitive-governing λόγω / εξαιτίας / μέσω), the colloquial strategy (που plus a pronoun or adverb inside the clause), όπου for places, and paired versions of the same sentence in both.
  • Resumptive Pronouns in που-ClausesC1 — Because που carries no case, a clitic inside the clause has to carry it instead: ο άνθρωπος που του μίλησα, η γυναίκα που της έδωσα το δώρο, ο συγγραφέας που διάβασα το βιβλίο του. The rule role by role — required for the genitive (indirect object and possessor) and for prepositional objects, absent for the subject and for a restrictive direct object, absent again for place and time — plus why this is not clitic doubling and where the clitic stands.
  • Free Relatives: όποιος, ό,τι, όσος, όπουB2 — Relatives with the antecedent built in — Όποιος θέλει, ας έρθει; Πάρε ό,τι θέλεις; Όσοι ήρθαν; Όπου πας. Covers the declinable όποιος and όσος, the adverbial όπου, όποτε and όπως, the -δήποτε reinforced series, the concessive όποιος κι αν, and the one spelling that trips up natives as well as learners: ό,τι ('whatever') against ότι ('that'), two words pronounced identically and separated only by a comma.

Pronunciation & Alphabet

Alphabet

  • The Greek Alphabet: 24 LettersA1 — Every one of the 24 Greek letters — its name, its sound, and its two shapes — plus the single biggest beginner trap: a handful of letters look exactly like Latin ones but sound completely different (Ρ is 'r', Η is 'i', Χ is 'ch').
  • How This Guide Romanizes GreekA1 — The exact reading aid used on every page — η/ι/υ→i, β→v, δ→dh, θ→th, χ→ch — with the one rule that matters most: the stressed syllable always carries an acute accent, because Greek stress is unpredictable from spelling.
  • Letters That Look Latin But Aren'tA1 — The letters that ambush English readers: Ρ is 'r' not 'p', Η is 'i' not 'h', Χ is 'ch' not 'x', Β is 'v' not 'b'. Learn to distrust your eyes on signs and headlines — and discover where the 'missing' b and d sounds hide.

Digraphs

  • Vowel Digraphs: αι, ει, οι, ου, υιA1 — Five two-letter combos spell single vowels: αι = 'e' (και), ει/οι/υι = 'i' (είναι, ποιος), ου = 'u' (μου). Because ει, οι, υι all collapse into 'i' with η/ι/υ, they're the root of Greek's biggest spelling headache — and the diaeresis (Μάιος) exists to un-merge them.
  • αυ and ευ: av/af, ev/efA1 — αυ and ευ never sound like English 'ow' or 'you'. They carry a hidden v/f: voiced before vowels and voiced consonants (αύριο = 'ávrio'), voiceless before voiceless consonants and word-finally (αυτός = 'aftós', ευχαριστώ = 'efcharistó').
  • Consonant Digraphs: μπ, ντ, γκ, τσ, τζA1 — Greek has no single letter for the sounds /b/, /d/, /g/, /ts/ or /dz/ — it builds them from two-letter digraphs. If you can't find 'b' in μπύρα or 'd' in ντομάτα, this is why.
  • Voicing and PrenasalizationA2 — Why πάντα is heard as both 'pánta' and 'pánda', why δεν πειράζει comes out 'dhembirázi', and why none of this changes the spelling — the hidden pronunciation rule that turns a written ν into a voiced stop.
  • Double ConsonantsA2 — θάλασσα is said 'thálasa', άλλος is 'álos', Ελλάδα is 'Eládha' — Modern Greek pronounces a double consonant as a single sound. You must spell the two letters but say only one.

Punctuation

  • Greek Punctuation: ; and ·A1 — Standard Greek writes questions with the semicolon-shaped ;, while informal digital ? remains recognizable; the raised dot · (άνω τελεία) overlaps English semicolon and light-colon functions.
  • Sentence IntonationB1 — Greek melody does grammatical work: a neutral yes/no question has a low nuclear region followed by an edge rise–fall, while wh-question tunes vary with pragmatic intent.

Sandhi

  • The Final-ν Rule (τελικό ν)A2 — Modern final-ν has a split distribution: feminine τη(ν)/στη(ν) and μη(ν) follow the live sound-conditioned alternation, δεν normally keeps ν, and masculine τον/στον and έναν retain it in neutral current Standard Greek.
  • Elision and SynizesisB1 — Why σε αυτό becomes σ' αυτό, από εδώ becomes απ' εδώ, and θα έρθω becomes θα 'ρθω — and why μια is one syllable ('mya'), not two. The vowel-smoothing that makes spoken Greek flow; full forms sound stiff.
  • Euphonic and Movable ConsonantsB1 — Greek sound-smoothers include και → κι before a vowel, the σαν/σα alternation, final-ν patterns, and regional clitics enlarged with -ε. Their distribution is lexical, phonological, and sometimes regional.

Sounds

  • The Five Vowel SoundsA1 — Greek has just five vowel sounds — /a e i o u/ — and every one is pure, short and fully pronounced, even unstressed. The big English-speaker error is reducing unstressed vowels to a mushy schwa; the flip side is that /i/ can be spelled six different ways.
  • Consonant SoundsA1 — The Greek consonants English speakers get wrong: δ is the soft 'th' of 'this', θ the hard 'th' of 'thin', ρ a tapped r — and π, τ, κ are unaspirated, with none of the little puff English adds. Two habits to unlearn: substituting your own 'd' and puffing your stops.
  • The 'th' Sounds: δ and θA1 — English writes both with 'th', but Greek splits them into two letters: δ is the voiced 'th' of 'this' [ð], and θ is the voiceless 'th' of 'thin' [θ]. Get the voicing backwards and δεν slides into a foreign-sounding 'den'.
  • The Letter γ (gamma)A2 — γ is never the hard 'g' of 'go'. It softens to a throaty [ɣ] before α/ο/ου (γάλα = 'ghála') and to a 'y'-glide [ʝ] before ε/ι (γεια = 'ya'). The following vowel tells you which — and the clusters γγ, γκ, γχ have their own rules.
  • The Letter χ (chi)A2 — χ is neither English 'ch' (church) nor 'x'. It's a fricative: throaty [x] like Scottish 'loch' before α/ο/ου (χαρά), and soft [ç] like the 'h' in 'huge' before ε/ι (όχι). The killer error is reading it as /ks/ — that's ξ, a completely different letter.
  • Consonant ClustersA2 — ψωμί, ξέρω, φτάνω, βγαίνω, σχολείο — Greek stacks consonants at the start of a word in ways English forbids. The fix is to stop sneaking a vowel in: say 'psomí', never 'puh-somi'.

Stress

  • Stress and the Tonos (´)A1 — The little accent over καλημέρα, νερό, άνθρωπος is the most important mark in Greek. It shows the stressed syllable — and it changes meaning: πότε ('when') vs ποτέ ('never').
  • Where the Stress FallsA2 — Greek stress must land within the last three syllables, so added syllables can force movement (μάθημα → μαθήματα). Inherited declensional patterns also give άνθρωπος → ανθρώπου, but lexical and register-sensitive classes may preserve stress.
  • The Second Accent (Enclitic Stress)A2 — Why ο δάσκαλός μου and το αυτοκίνητό μας carry two accents while ο φίλος μου carries only one. A real written rule that most learners — and plenty of natives — get wrong, and that competing guides skip entirely.

Questions

Answering

  • Answering: ναι, όχι, μάλισταA1 — Answer Greek polar questions with ναι and όχι, make negative-question replies explicit by echoing the verb, and use μάλιστα or repeated ναι with the right register and intonation.

Embedded

  • Indirect (Embedded) QuestionsB1 — Embed yes/no questions with αν and information questions with their original wh-word, retaining ordinary Greek word order and interrogative accents but following the matrix sentence’s punctuation.

Overview

  • Asking Questions in GreekA1 — Greek forms direct questions without English-style inversion or ‘do’: intonation and the question mark ; identify yes/no questions, while a fronted question word identifies information questions.

Pragmatic

  • Rhetorical QuestionsC1 — Greek rhetorical questions use ordinary question syntax to express resignation, disbelief, reproach, irony, or an emphatic claim rather than request unknown information.

Question Types

  • Yes/No QuestionsA1 — Turn a Greek statement into a yes/no question with its characteristic intonation and the written question mark ;, without English-style inversion or an added auxiliary.
  • Wh-Questions (ποιος, τι, πού...)A1 — Build neutral Greek information questions by fronting the complete wh-phrase, keeping ordinary clause order after it, and carrying any preposition to the front instead of stranding it.
  • Accents on Question Words: πού, πώςA2 — Distinguish interrogative and exclamatory πού/πώς from linking που/πως, retain the accent inside embedded questions, and keep πότε ‘when’ apart from ποτέ ‘ever/never.’
  • Tag QuestionsA2 — Seek confirmation with Greek’s invariable tags έτσι δεν είναι;, σωστά;, δεν είναι;, and informal ε;, without matching an auxiliary to the main verb as English does.
  • Polite and Tentative Questions With μήπωςB1 — Use μήπως to present a yes/no question as tentative, hopeful, or suspicious—often corresponding to English ‘by any chance’ or ‘could it be that.’
  • Alternative (ή...ή) QuestionsA2 — Ask someone to choose between Greek alternatives with ή or the paired ή…ή, using prominence through the first option and ή followed by a low, comparatively flat final option.

Regional Variation

Dialects

  • Northern Greek DialectsB2 — Recognize northern unstressed-vowel raising and loss, plus accusative recipient clitics such as σε λέω and σε δίνω.
  • Cypriot GreekB2 — Recognize Cypriot Greek consonant length, palatal sounds, local vocabulary, clitic placement, particles, and its relationship with Standard Greek.
  • Cretan DialectC1 — Recognize major Cretan Greek sounds, words, pronoun forms, and cultural registers without treating the island as linguistically uniform.
  • Island and Peloponnesian DialectsB2 — Place Peloponnesian, Ionian, Cycladic, Dodecanesian, Old Athenian, and Maniot varieties on the broad map of Modern Greek.
  • Pontic GreekC2 — Recognize the history, present communities, final -ν, negation, and inherited vocabulary of Pontic Greek.
  • Diaspora GreekB2 — Distinguish integrated loans, code-switching, Greeklish, contact change, and heritage-language variation across Greek diasporas.

Overview

  • Regional Variation OverviewA2 — Recognize major regional varieties of Greek while keeping Standard Modern Greek as a practical, neutral production target.
  • Standard vs DialectA2 — Distinguish regional accent, local vocabulary, and structural dialect while using Standard Modern Greek as a shared production norm.

Vocabulary

  • Regional Vocabulary DifferencesB1 — Navigate low-stakes regional words for food, streets, objects, greetings, and fillers while keeping a widely understood fallback ready.

Register and Style

Formal Registers

  • Formal Connectors and PhrasingC1 — Build precise Greek essays, reports, and official correspondence with formal connectors chosen by logical relation.
  • Journalistic StyleB2 — Decode Greek news through source framing, agentless passives, nominalization, participles, reporting verbs, and headline ellipsis.
  • Academic and Essay StyleC1 — Structure Greek academic arguments with precise nominalization, responsible hedging, source attribution, and formal cohesion.
  • Legal and Official LanguageC1 — Decode the learned participles, inherited prepositions, passives, and fixed formulas of Greek laws, forms, contracts, and notices.

History

  • Diglossia: Demotic vs KatharevousaC1 — Understand the historical language divide that shaped Modern Greek and the learned layer still audible in formal style.
  • Katharevousa SurvivalsC1 — Recognize the frozen datives, learned participles, prepositions, genitives, and official formulas that survive in formal Modern Greek.

Informal Registers

  • Colloquial and SlangB2 — Understand current casual Greek, fast-speech reductions, and socially risky slang without treating peer-group language as universally safe.
  • Literary and Poetic StyleC1 — Read Greek literary style through marked order, register mixing, dialect color, elevated diction, rhetorical patterning, and poetic ellipsis.

Overview

  • Register and Style OverviewB2 — Recognize the everyday, learned-formal, colloquial, and specialized styles of Modern Greek and choose a register that fits the situation.

Vocabulary

  • Learned–Demotic DoubletsC1 — Read and choose learned and demotic Greek word pairs by register, domain, and specialized modern meaning.

Sentences

Adverbial

  • Temporal ClausesA2 — Arrange Greek time clauses before, inside, or after the main clause to build clear sequences of earlier, simultaneous, and later events.
  • Causal ClausesA2 — Arrange Greek reason clauses before or after a main clause, replace clauses with nominal causes, and connect a cause to its result.
  • Purpose and Result ClausesB1 — Distinguish an intended Greek outcome from an actual or construed consequence by reading the linker, mood, degree frame, and context together.
  • Concessive ClausesB1 — Arrange Greek although and even-if clauses, resume a defeated expectation with nevertheless, and keep concession distinct from condition.
  • Comparative SentencesB1 — Build Greek phrasal comparisons of superiority, equality, and inferiority with the correct marker and case.

Conditionals

  • Conditional Sentences: OverviewA2 — See the three central Greek αν-patterns: open conditions, unreal present conditions, and unreal past conditions, with their matching result forms.
  • Real Conditionals (αν + present)B1 — Build open, habitual, and general Greek conditionals with αν plus a non-past form and a present, future, modal, or imperative result.
  • Unreal Conditionals (αν + past)B2 — Express unreal present situations, missed past alternatives, and context-resolved counterfactuals with αν plus past forms and θα in the result.
  • All Conditional Types and MixedC1 — Combine Greek conditional time frames and recognize concessive, negative, να-based, participial, and asyndetic alternatives to ordinary αν-clauses.

Overview

  • Building Greek SentencesA2 — Move from one-clause Greek sentences to coordinated and subordinate structures, with a practical map of mood, aspect, conditionals, and reported speech.
  • The Simple SentenceA1 — Build a basic Greek clause from an optional nominative subject, an agreeing verb, and any accusative or genitive objects the verb requires.

Reported Speech

  • Reported (Indirect) SpeechB1 — Report Greek statements with ότι or πως while adjusting speakers, place, and time without automatic English-style tense backshift.
  • Reporting Commands and RequestsB1 — Turn direct Greek commands, requests, advice, and proposals into reporting frames with να, the right person, aspect, and negative μη(ν).
  • Reporting QuestionsB1 — Report who asked what in Greek while preserving the question type and adjusting tense, person, place, and time to the new viewpoint.
  • Tense and Deixis in Reported SpeechB2 — Choose Greek reported tense, person, time, and place from the intended viewpoint rather than applying English sequence-of-tenses rules.

Sentence Types

  • Sequencing Past EventsB1 — Combine imperfect background, aorist storyline steps, and pluperfect flashbacks to build clear Greek narratives.
  • Building Complex SentencesB2 — Combine complement, adverbial, and relative clauses into fluent Greek while keeping mood, clitics, and clause boundaries under control.
  • Connecting Sentences and ClausesB1 — Turn correct but choppy Greek sentences into a coherent paragraph through selective connectors, controlled repetition, and accurate punctuation.

Spelling

Consonants

  • Which Words Take Double ConsonantsB2 — Because Greek pronounces a double consonant exactly like a single one (θάλασσα = 'thálasa'), your ear can't tell you when to write σσ, λλ, μμ or ρρ — you have to know the word. Here are the patterns and the high-frequency words to lock in.

Endings

  • Spelling Verb EndingsB1 — A verb ending is spelled by its paradigm, not by sound: Type A γράφω, γράφεις, γράφει contrasts with Type B αγαπάω/αγαπώ, αγαπάς, αγαπά(ει), while passive -εται contrasts with active -ετε.
  • Noun and Adjective Endings: ο/ω, η/ιB1 — Which vowel letter closes a noun or adjective is decided by its gender and case, not its sound: masculine -ος and neuter -ο take omicron, the genitive plural -ων always takes omega, and the adverb καλώς contrasts with the adjective καλός.
  • Spelling Diminutive SuffixesB1 — Greek loves little-word suffixes — σπιτάκι, μανούλα, κοπελίτσα — and each has a fixed spelling learners get wrong: -άκι with iota (and it's neuter), -ούλα with ου, -ίτσα with τσ, plus the stress that always lands on the suffix.

System

  • Greek Historical SpellingA2 — The big picture: Greek spelling is etymological, not phonetic, so a single sound is written several ways — /i/ can be η, ι, υ, ει, or οι. Pronunciation is easy; spelling is learned word by word from ancient roots. But grammatical endings are predictable, and that's your lifeline.
  • Capitalization RulesA2 — Greek capitalizes days and months (like English) but writes languages, nationality adjectives, seasons and book titles in lowercase — and it keeps the tonos on an initial capital vowel (Έλληνας, Αίγυπτος) while dropping every accent, but not the diaeresis, in ALL-CAPS text (ΕΛΛΑΔΑ, ΠΡΟΪΟΝ).
  • Abbreviations and Their Full StopsB1 — π.χ., κ.λπ., κ.ά., βλ., δηλ., π.Χ./μ.Χ., κ., τ.μ., ΔΕΗ — what each one stands for, how it is read out loud, and the spelling rules behind the dots: every cut element keeps its stop, the sentence-final stop is never doubled, and initialisms are written both with and without their dots.
  • Why Greek Dropped the Breathing MarksC1 — In 1982 Greek officially abolished the polytonic system — the two breathing marks and the three-way accent — for a single tonos, because those diacritics had marked sounds (an /h/, a pitch accent) that vanished from speech nearly two thousand years earlier.
  • Common Spelling ErrorsB1 — A proofreading checklist for the mistakes learners and natives make most: -ω vs -ο in verbs, -ται vs -τε, ει/η/ι in endings, the movable final -ν, the missing tonos, and και vs κι — each with the rule that fixes it.

Vowels

  • Spelling the /i/ Sound: η ι υ ει οιA2 — The single hardest thing about writing Greek: five different spellings — η, ι, υ, ει, οι (plus archaic υι) — all sound identical, /i/. You can't hear which one a word takes, but you can predict most of them from grammatical endings and word families. This is the page to master.
  • Spelling the /o/ Sound: ο vs ωA2 — Two letters, ο (omicron) and ω (omega), spell the identical sound /o/. Which one you write is mostly decided by the grammatical ending — verbs end -ω, neuter nouns -ο, masculines -ος — and getting it wrong can flip a verb into a noun: καλώ ('I invite') vs καλό ('good').
  • Spelling the /e/ Sound: ε vs αιA2 — The sound /e/ may be ε or αι. In the έρχομαι paradigm, singular -ομαι/-εσαι/-εται and 3pl -ονται contain αι, while 1pl -όμαστε and 2pl -εστε use ε; words such as και, παιδί and αίμα must be learned lexically.

Syntax

Agreement

  • Semantic Agreement and MismatchesC1 — Handle collective meaning, polite plural address, coordinated subjects, and mixed-gender groups where grammatical form and real-world reference pull agreement in different directions.
  • AppositionB2 — Build Greek noun phrases in which one expression renames another, match their case, and punctuate identifying versus parenthetical appositives accurately.

Coordination

  • Coordination and AgreementB1 — Join equal Greek constituents, resolve person and number in coordinated subjects, recognize postverbal first-conjunct agreement, and understand shared material and list rhythm.

Information Structure

  • Topicalization and Clitic DoublingB2 — Front a known Greek object as the topic and resume it with a clitic matching its case, gender, and number: Τον Γιάννη τον είδα.
  • Focus FrontingC1 — Move new or contrastive Greek information to the front with strong intonation and, for a focused object, no resumptive clitic.
  • Word Order for EmphasisB2 — Use Greek order together with intonation to emphasize a subject, object, time, place, or newly introduced participant without changing grammatical roles.
  • Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft SentencesC1 — Foreground one Greek constituent by linking it through είμαι to a που-clause, and distinguish clefts from plain focus fronting.

Overview

  • Greek Sentence Structure OverviewA2 — Greek begins from a subject–verb–object pattern but uses case, omitted subjects, clitics, and flexible order to organize topic and focus.

Special Constructions

  • Existential υπάρχει (there is/are)A2 — Use υπάρχει or υπάρχουν with a following nominative noun to say ‘there is/are,’ without an English-style dummy ‘there’; colloquial speech also uses existential έχει.
  • Impersonal ConstructionsB1 — Map Greek impersonal frames by the complement they select: bare weather predicates, modal and evaluative να-clauses, factual που-clauses, and propositional ότι/πως-clauses.
  • Correlative ConstructionsC1 — Build balanced two-part Greek structures for proportion, result, distribution, and free-relative correspondence.
  • Comparative ClausesB2 — Compare Greek propositions with απ' ό,τι and όσο, leave predictable material unspoken, and reject an alternative with παρά να.
  • NominalizationC1 — Turn Greek clauses, qualities, times, phrases, and actions into noun phrases through articles and lexical derivation.
  • Scope of NegationC1 — Distinguish clause-wide δεν from constituent όχι, track negative concord, and place negation around modals and adverbs without changing the intended meaning.
  • Ellipsis and GappingC1 — Omit subjects, verbs, and repeated material when Greek grammar and context make the missing content recoverable, while preserving case and clitic structure.

Subordination

  • Complement Clauses: ότι / πως / που / ναB1 — See which Greek verb classes select ότι/πως, που, or να, and how one matrix verb changes meaning when its complementizer changes.
  • Subordinate Clauses OverviewA2 — Recognize Greek complement, adverbial, and relative clauses by what they attach to and what job they perform in a larger sentence.
  • Relative ClausesB1 — Understand how Greek relative clauses attach to a head noun, how commas change their scope, how far they may move, and which verb controls agreement.
  • Adverbial ClausesB1 — Organize Greek adverbial clauses by order, punctuation, mood, and viewpoint, then combine time, cause, purpose, concession, and condition in one sentence.

Word Order

  • Basic Word Order (SVO)A1 — Build neutral Greek statements with subject–verb–object order, then use nominative and accusative marking to keep the roles clear.
  • Dropping the Subject (Pro-Drop)A1 — Greek verb endings identify the subject, so pronouns and familiar noun subjects normally stay unspoken unless contrast or clarity requires them.
  • Subject-Verb AgreementA1 — Match Greek verbs to their subjects in person and number, including coordinated subjects, collectives, and modern neuter plurals.
  • Free-ish Word OrderB2 — Greek case marking permits SVO, VSO, VOS, and object-first orders, but each order organizes topic, focus, and new information differently.

Verb Reference

Class Α (-ω) Verbs

  • γράφω (to write)A1 — γράφω fills every productive verb-specific slot — both voices, both imperatives, participles and a verbal adjective. This card gives that inventory, the γράφομαι σε 'enrol' frame, impersonal γράφει 'it says', and five system-level gaps including the absence of a free productive infinitive.
  • διαβάζω (to read/study)A1 — Half of this verb's work is not reading at all: Διαβάζω για τις εξετάσεις is how you say you are studying, and σπουδάζω is not a substitute. Card gives the principal parts (διάβασα, no ε-, ζ → σ), the διαβάζω/σπουδάζω/μελετώ triple, the είμαι διαβασμένος idiom, and the frames.
  • παίζω (to play)A2 — Three -ζω verbs in one batch, three different aorists: παίζω → έπαιξα, διαβάζω → διάβασα, βάζω → έβαλα. Card gives the forms, the bare accusative that covers instruments, sports and games alike, the με-or-εναντίον question, and the slang layer (τι παίζει; δεν παίζει, παίζει να…) that παίζει has grown in the last twenty years.
  • τρέχω (to run)A2 — Beyond running, τρέχω is the verb for things that flow and things that are going wrong — Τρέχει η μύτη μου, Τρέχει το πρόγραμμα, and above all Τι τρέχει; 'what's up?'. Card gives the forms, the subjectless third person, the two participial survivals τρεχούμενος and τρέχων, and the frames.
  • φεύγω (to leave)A2 — English 'leave' splits three ways in Greek and φεύγω owns only one of them: depart, go away, never with an object. Card gives the φεύγ-/φυγ- stem pair, the φεύγω/αφήνω/ξεχνάω triple, the hortative Φύγαμε!, the gerund φεύγοντας and the euphemistic έφυγε.
  • ανοίγω (to open)A2 — The verb that opens a door and switches on a light, and that needs no reflexive marker to say the door opened by itself: Άνοιξα την πόρτα beside Άνοιξε η πόρτα. Full principal parts (άνοιξα with no augment, ανοίχτηκα, ανοιγμένος), the σε-frame for what a window looks out onto, and the line between ανοιχτός and ανοιγμένος.
  • κλείνω (to close)A2 — Close, shut, turn off, hang up, book, and — of a person — turn an age: six English verbs on one Greek form. Principal parts (έκλεισα with a plain σ, not the ξ of άνοιξα), the genitive clitic that turns Έκλεισε το τηλέφωνο into 'he hung up on me', and the κλειστό / κλεισμένο pair, where one means shut and the other means booked.
  • αρχίζω (to begin)A2 — A phase verb, so it constrains what comes after it: Άρχισε να βρέχει takes the imperfective, because what begins is an activity in progress. All five frames (accusative, να, intransitive, με, από), the aorist άρχισα with its σ, and the άρχισε / άρχιζε pair that separates 'he started' from 'he kept starting'.
  • τελειώνω (to finish)A2 — The model of the productive -ώνω class, whose aorist is always a plain -ωσα (τελείωσα, μεγάλωσα, σήκωσα). Three frames and three meanings on one form: Τελείωσα τη δουλειά (finished it), Τελείωσε το γάλα (ran out), Τελείωσα με αυτόν (done with him) — plus Τελείωσα το πανεπιστήμιο for graduating and the impatient imperative Τελείωνε!
  • στέλνω (to send)A2 — Three stems and two objects. στελν- for the present, στειλ- for έστειλα and στείλω, σταλ- for the passive στάλθηκε and σταλμένος — and the recipient frames a learner needs in week one: Σου έστειλα μήνυμα, Το έστειλα στον Γιάννη, Σου το έστειλα, with the word-order trap that turns Έστειλα τα χαρτιά του Γιάννη into somebody else's papers.
  • φέρνω (to bring)A2 — φέρνω moves a thing towards the speaker — which is why Greek needs three verbs where English has bring and take: φέρνω here, πηγαίνω there, παίρνω away with you. Principal parts (note the aorist έφερα, one ν away from the imperfect έφερνα), the frames, and the mediopassive φέρομαι, which has quietly become a different verb meaning 'behave'.
  • αφήνω (to leave/let)A2 — Four stems — αφήν-, άφησ-, αφεθ- and the odd little άσ- — doing two jobs at once: leaving a thing behind (Άφησα τα κλειδιά στο γραφείο) and letting a person act (Με άφησε να φύγω). Plus Άσε, the short imperative that stopped being an imperative and became a conversational move of its own.
  • περιμένω (to wait)A2 — One past tense for two English ones: περίμενα is both 'I waited' and 'I was waiting', because this compound never grew a perfective stem. Card gives the single paradigm, stress retraction without an inserted augment, the bare accusative object (Σε περιμένω), and the από frame for expecting something of someone.
  • πιστεύω (to believe)B1 — The strong member of the belief trio — conviction, trust, faith, against the guesswork of νομίζω and the reasoned classification of θεωρώ. Principal parts on the -εψ- perfective (πίστεψα, να πιστέψω), and the government contrast that changes the whole claim: σε πιστεύω 'I believe what you're telling me' beside πιστεύω σε σένα 'I have faith in you'.
  • νομίζω (to think/suppose)B1 — Greek's hedge. The forms take five minutes; what matters is that the imperfect νόμιζα carries a built-in 'and I was wrong' (Νόμιζα ότι ήσουν στη δουλειά — you weren't), and that Greek leaves the negative downstairs where English raises it: Νομίζω ότι δεν θα έρθει for 'I don't think he'll come'.
  • καταλαβαίνω (to understand)A2 — The aorist κατάλαβα is not only a past tense — in conversation it often means 'I see, got it', and it is a frequent one-word reply in spoken Greek. This card covers the contrast learners often reverse (Δεν καταλαβαίνω against Δεν κατάλαβα), the καταλαβαίνω από frame for knowing about something, and the news-page trap where κατάλαβα meets κατέλαβα.
  • μαθαίνω (to learn)A2 — One Greek verb doing the work of three English ones — learn, find out and teach — with the aspect deciding which: the imperfective says 'am learning', the aorist έμαθα says 'found out'. Plus the genitive of the person taught, and why μαθημένος means 'accustomed' and never 'learnt'.
  • δουλεύω (to work)A1 — The A1 verb for working, for machines running and for plans coming off — δουλεύω, δούλεψα, να δουλέψω — set against its formal twin εργάζομαι, with the δούλευε/δούλεψε imperative pair and the participle δουλεμένος 'honed'.
  • αγοράζω (to buy)A2 — Morphologically the dullest verb on this shelf — αγοράζω, αγόρασα, να αγοράσω — and useful mostly for knowing when Greek does not use it: παίρνω does the everyday shopping, the price goes in a bare accusative, and η αγορά is both the purchase and the market.
  • πληρώνω (to pay)A2 — The verb where the mediopassive is the one you need most: πληρώνομαι is ordinary Greek for 'I get paid' and 'I earn'. Plus the double accusative — the bill and the plumber are the same kind of object — and what πληρωμένος actually describes.
  • ψάχνω (to look for)A2 — The verb that never means 'find': έψαξα says a search happened, not that it worked. Forms, the bare-accusative versus για contrast that marks a definite target against an open-ended hunt, and the lexicalised ψαγμένος 'clued-up'.
  • δείχνω (to show)B1 — One verb doing two unrelated jobs — the ditransitive 'show X to Y', where the person is a genitive clitic, and the copular 'look, seem', where the complement is a nominative adjective. Principal parts, the χν → ξ aorist, and the line between δείχνω and φαίνομαι.
  • χάνω (to lose)A2 — The widest-scope loss verb in Greek: lose, miss, waste in the active, vanish and get lost in the mediopassive — and the μου χάθηκε construction, which reports a loss without naming anyone as the person who lost it.
  • αλλάζω (to change)A2 — A labile verb: one active form does duty as both transitive and intransitive, so Άλλαξα τη ζωή μου and Άλλαξε ο καιρός use the identical verb with no voice switch at all. Principal parts, the -ζω verbs that take ξ, and the frames with σε and με.
  • γυρίζω (to return/turn)A2 — One verb with two complete imperfective presents from different conjugation classes — γυρίζω and γυρνάω — plus their own imperfects but a shared perfective stem γύρισ-. The everyday 'come back', transitive 'turn' and 'give back', 'wander about', and film sense.
  • επιστρέφω (to return)B1 — The formal half of the return pair: what signs, receipts and news bulletins use where speech says γυρίζω. Principal parts, the internal augment that appears in the two past tenses and nowhere else, and the 'give back' frame it shares with γυρίζω but owns in writing.
  • αποφασίζω (to decide)B1 — Two forms off one stem that point in opposite directions: αποφασισμένος is about the person's resolve, αποφασίστηκε is about the matter being settled. Plus the four frames — να, ότι, bare accusative and για — and why only the first of them actually decides anything.
  • συνεχίζω (to continue)B1 — Συνεχίζεται — 'to be continued' — is one of the most-read words in Greek media, and it is this verb's third-person mediopassive. Full forms, the ε in συνέχισα that is stem material rather than an augment, the imperfective that always follows συνεχίζω να, and the axis it shares with σταματάω.
  • πέφτω (to fall)A2 — The present stem is πεφτ- and the past stem is πεσ- — two different words, not a sound change. Full forms, the πέστε that belongs to two verbs at once, and the genitive clitic in Μου έπεσε το ποτήρι, which is how Greek says 'I dropped it' with no transitive verb at all.
  • ανεβαίνω (to go up)A2 — ανεβαίνω goes up; ανεβάζω puts up. Greek keeps the two apart where English recycles one word, so 'upload', 'stage a play' and 'run a temperature' are all ανεβάζω while prices, blood pressure and you yourself ανεβαίνουν. Full forms, the three complement patterns, and both aorist paradigms.
  • κατεβαίνω (to go down)A2 — Not simply the mirror of ανεβαίνω: κατεβαίνω is also how you get off a bus, how a candidate stands for election, and how a crowd takes to the streets. Full forms, the four complement patterns including the bare place name that means 'travel south', and κατεβάζω = download.
  • φτάνω (to arrive/be enough)A2 — Two verbs in one shell: φτάνω arrives and reaches, and impersonal φτάνει is enough — a sense that has hardened into the conjunction φτάνει να 'as long as'. Full forms, the transitive reach frame, and the phrases the impersonal carries.
  • κερδίζω (to win/earn)B1 — One Greek verb for win, earn, gain and beat — the object tells you which. Full forms, the bare-accusative opponent that does not mirror χάνω από, the mostly third-person mediopassive κερδήθηκε, and κερδισμένος as a predicate.
  • προσέχω (to be careful)A2 — The cleanest aspect pair in the reference set: Πρόσεχε! is a standing instruction and a warm goodbye, Πρόσεξε! is one moment's warning. Plus the aorist's own sense — πρόσεξα, I noticed — the μη(ν) warning clause, and the live adjective προσεγμένος.
  • κόβω (to cut)A2 — Three stems you cannot derive from one another — κόβ-, κόψ-, κοπ-/κομμ- — and a verb that reaches far past English cut: quitting a habit, issuing a ticket, turning a corner, and failing an exam in the mediopassive.
  • δοκιμάζω (to try/taste)B1 — Greek's sampling verb — taste, try on, test, give it a go — always with a real object, which is what separates it from προσπαθώ. Full forms plus the second life of the mediopassive: δοκιμάζομαι, to be sorely tried.
  • καθαρίζω (to clean)B1 — Morphologically the quietest verb on this shelf — every slot filled, every slot predictable — so the card is about range: one word cleans a bathroom, peels a potato, guts a fish, clears the sky, and on its own announces that you are done.
  • ετοιμάζω (to prepare)B1 — Three Greek constructions sit behind one English 'get ready': ετοιμάζω makes something ready, ετοιμάζομαι gets yourself ready, είμαι έτοιμος reports the state. Principal parts, the mediopassive imperative Ετοιμάσου!, and why the active can never turn intransitive.
  • σπάω (to break)B1 — One verb with two complete, equally standard present paradigms — σπάω/σπας/σπάει beside σπάζω/σπάζεις/σπάζει — that collapse into a single aorist έσπασα. Plus the labile transitive/intransitive pair, the passive that adds an agent, and the slang engine σπάω has become.
  • ακούω (to hear/listen)A2 — The verb whose active present uses ακου-, whose imperfective γ appears in άκουγα, ακούγομαι and ακούγοντας, and whose active perfective forms use ακουσ-. One verb covers English hear and listen to with no preposition, while the mediopassive runs from 'be audible' through 'sound' to 'word has it'.
  • κλαίω (to cry)A2 — A small verb with two surprises: an aorist έκλαψα built on a labial nobody can see in the present, and a mediopassive κλαίγομαι that has left crying behind altogether and means to whine. Principal parts, the κλαίγ- forms, and the transitive 'mourn' sense the dictionaries keep.
  • μαγειρεύω (to cook)A2 — A Class Α -εύω card: μαγειρεύω, μαγείρεψα, μαγειρεμένος, and the hidden-plans sense of cooking something up.
  • ταξιδεύω (to travel)A2 — The Class Α forms of ταξιδεύω, its journey-scale limit, transport and destination frames, and ταξιδεμένος.
  • χορεύω (to dance)A2 — How χορεύω takes a dance, a partner, or a person as its object, with its compact principal parts and everyday dance expressions.
  • γνωρίζω (to know/meet)B1 — The aspect-driven contrast between γνωρίζω ‘know’ and γνώρισα ‘met,’ with the reciprocal middle and the distinct adjectives γνωστός and γνωρισμένος.
  • νιώθω (to feel)A2 — How νιώθω combines with sensations, agreeing predicate adjectives, adverbs, and clauses—and why its active voice must be learned as part of the verb.
  • φτιάχνω (to make/fix)A2 — One everyday verb whose object selects meanings from make and prepare to repair, tidy, and improve, with its live idiomatic mediopassive.
  • προτείνω (to propose/suggest)B1 — An aspectually invisible active paradigm: προτείνω keeps one stem through present, dependent, imperfect, and aorist, while its passive reveals προταθ-.
  • κανονίζω (to arrange)B1 — The everyday planning verb behind Το κανόνισα, with να-clauses, με and για phrases, and a fully personal passive often mistaken for an impersonal one.
  • γεμίζω (to fill)B1 — A labile verb whose active form means both fill and fill up, alongside a true passive and three distinct adjectives: γεμάτος, γεμιστός, and γεμισμένος.
  • περιγράφω (to describe)B1 — The internal augment in περιέγραψα, the wider γράφω compound family, and the object, addressee, and ως frames used when describing something.
  • επιτρέπω (to allow)B1 — The permission verb behind Δεν επιτρέπεται and Επιτρέπεται;, with its genitive recipient, third-person-only passive, and notice-language participle.
  • λείπωA2 — The three core meanings of λείπω—be absent, be missing, and be missed—with its genitive experiencer, principal parts, and restricted imperative idiom.
  • φταίωB1 — The vowel-final verb for being at fault, with φταις, έφταιγα, έφταιξα, its complement frames, and the language of blame.
  • πλένω / πλένομαιA2 — The four principal stems of πλένω and πλένομαι, including έπλυνα, πλύθηκα, πλυμένος, body-part syntax, and washing collocations.
  • ανήκωB1 — The present-stem-only verb for belonging, with ανήκω σε, genitive clitics, its empty perfective slots, and possession alternatives.
  • προλαβαίνωB1 — One Greek verb for catching, making it in time, having time to act, and beating someone to it, with the irregular perfective stem προλάβ-.
  • ρίχνωB1 — The transitive partner of πέφτω and a highly productive collocational verb for glances, blame, prices, weather, and several clitic-sensitive idioms.
  • πιάνωB1 — A many-purpose verb for grabbing and catching, involuntary states that seize an experiencer, things that work, reserved places, and bodily stiffness.

Class Β (-άω/-ώ) Verbs

  • αγαπάω/αγαπώ (to love)A1 — The model verb of the -άω/-ώ class, with both halves of every doublet in one table — plus the two words its participle turned into: αγαπημένος, which now means 'favourite' as often as 'beloved', and αγαπητός, the 'Dear' that opens a letter.
  • μιλάω/μιλώ (to speak/talk)A1 — μιλάω needs somebody spoken to, not something said — three frames (σε, με, για), the bare accusative that names a language, and a mediopassive μιλιέμαι that does three unrelated jobs: a language is spoken, a person is unapproachable, two people are not on speaking terms.
  • ρωτάω/ρωτώ (to ask)A2 — The one speech verb that puts the person in the accusative — Με ρώτησε, Τον ρώτησα — plus the double accusative it licenses, the indirect questions it takes, and the learned twin ερωτώ that supplies the noun ερώτηση and the journalist's ερωτηθείς.
  • απαντάω/απαντώ (to answer)A2 — The case-flip partner of ρωτάω: the person asked is accusative, the person answered is genitive or σε. Plus the accusative slot that is reserved for the content of the reply, and the second life of this verb — απαντά / απαντάται 'occurs, is found', with the voice argument that goes with it.
  • ζητάω/ζητώ (to ask for/request)A2 — Requesting, not questioning: the person is genitive or από, never accusative-plus-thing. Three ending sets are all in use (ζητάς, ζητά, ζητεί), and the learned mediopassive gives you the ΖΗΤΕΙΤΑΙ of every shop window and το ζητούμενο, 'the point at issue'.
  • περπατάω/περπατώ (to walk)A2 — English walk delivers you somewhere; περπατάω only names the activity, so 'I walked to school' is Πήγα με τα πόδια. Full forms, the two jobs its bare accusative does, the third-person senses (a car still runs, a business ticks over) and περπατημένος = 'been around'.
  • κοιτάω/κοιτώ (to look)A2 — One verb with two presents — κοιτάζω in Class Α and κοιτάω/κοιτώ in Class Β — sharing a single aorist κοίταξα. The eye senses against βλέπω and παρακολουθώ, the second life of the verb as 'see to, look after, get checked', and κοίτα να as a warning rather than a purpose clause.
  • ξεχνάω/ξεχνώ (to forget)A2 — One Greek verb where English needs three: forget a fact, forget to do something, and leave an object behind. Plus the imperative pair Ξέχνα το / Ξέχασέ το, the genitive clitic that names whose loss it is, and ξεχνιέμαι — both 'is never forgotten' and 'I lost track of time'.
  • γελάω/γελώ (to laugh)A2 — Two false friends inside one paradigm: transitive Με γέλασε means 'he tricked me', and the mediopassive γελιέμαι means 'I'm mistaken', never 'I am laughed at'. Full forms, the με that amuses versus the με that mocks, and γελαστός against γελασμένος.
  • πεινάω/πεινώ (to be hungry)A2 — Greek says hunger with a verb, not with 'be' plus an adjective — and its aorist πείνασα means 'I've got hungry', so a Greek past tense comes out as an English present. Full forms, the empty slots, the states that work the same way, and the third sense: to go hungry.
  • διψάω/διψώ (to be thirsty)A2 — Greek names the thirst instead of being thirsty, and the same verb carries a craving: διψάω για δικαιοσύνη. Principal parts, the για frame, the colloquial Με δίψασε where the salty thing is the subject, and ξεδιψάω, which runs in both directions.
  • πονάω/πονώ (to hurt)B1 — One verb, four argument frames, and English needs a different construction for each: Πονάω, Πονάει το πόδι μου, Με πονάει το κεφάλι, Με πόνεσαν τα λόγια σου. Principal parts with the -εσα aorist, why putting yourself in the subject slot turns the verb causative, and πονεμένος.
  • ξεκινάω/ξεκινώ (to start/set off)A2 — Not a synonym of αρχίζω: ξεκινάω has a motion sense αρχίζω lacks — cars, journeys and prices all ξεκινάνε. Principal parts, the six complement frames, and why the aspect after να does not tell you which ξεκινάω you are looking at.
  • σταματάω/σταματώ (to stop)A2 — A labile verb: Σταμάτησα το αυτοκίνητο and Σταμάτησε η βροχή are the same form with no voice switch in between. Principal parts, the σταμάτησα να / σταμάτησα για να pair that English collapses into one 'stop to', and the one live mediopassive, δεν σταματιέται.
  • περνάω/περνώ (to pass/spend)A2 — The widest verb in the class: cross, drop by, hand over, thread, spend an evening, get into university, wear off, be taken for. Principal parts with the -ασα aorist, the six frames that sort the senses out, and the για that takes a nominative when it predicates of the subject.
  • κρατάω/κρατώ (to hold/keep)A2 — One Greek verb where English needs four, and then a fifth job nobody teaches: κρατάει with no object at all means it lasts. Principal parts, the beneficiary clitic in Κράτα μου μια θέση, the από of descent, and the two things κρατιέμαι does.
  • τραγουδάω/τραγουδώ (to sing)A2 — Morphologically the tamest verb in its class, and idiomatically a trap: τραγουδάω names the activity, but one particular song, on request, is delivered with λέω — Πες μας ένα τραγούδι. Forms, the objects it does and does not take, and the third-person τραγουδιέται.
  • συναντάω/συναντώ (to meet)B1 — English 'meet' is three or four Greek verbs, and συναντάω is only one of them — the encounter, not the introduction and not the social arrangement. Forms, the accusative it takes for difficulties as well as people, and the reciprocal συναντιέμαι με, which cannot take a bare object.
  • βοηθάω/βοηθώ (to help)A2 — The person you help is a bare accusative — Σε βοηθάω, never a 'to'-phrase — while the thing you help with goes after σε or με and the action you help somebody do goes after να. Plus the subjectless βοηθάει να, which looks like a sentence with a missing subject and isn't.
  • μπορώ (can/to be able)A2 — The model Class Β2 verb: -ώ, -είς, -εί all the way down, with no -άω doublet, an aorist μπόρεσα in the small -εσ- group, and neither an imperative nor a mediopassive paradigm in current Standard Greek. Plus the two things only this card carries — Δεν τον μπορώ ('I can't stand him') and the health reading of bare Δεν μπορώ.
  • ζω (to live)B1 — A compact reference to ζω: its shortened Β2 present, έζησα and ζήσω, the ζω–μένω distinction, and its living active participles.
  • οδηγώ (to drive/lead)B1 — A reference to οδηγώ / οδηγάω: its live contracted and colloquial present sets, active and passive principal parts, imperfective οδήγα and perfective οδήγησε commands, and the productive οδηγώ σε ‘lead to’ frame.
  • προσπαθώ (to try)B1 — A reference to pure Β2 προσπαθώ: its principal parts and genuine missing forms, its characteristic να-complement, and the boundary between making an effort and testing something with δοκιμάζω.
  • χρησιμοποιώ (to use)B1 — A reference to χρησιμοποιώ: its productive -ποιώ pattern, complete active and mediopassive inventory, and its more idiomatic everyday alternatives.
  • προτιμώ (to prefer)B1 — The wavering present of προτιμώ, its live passive forms, and the από versus παρά να comparison frames.
  • θεωρώ (to consider)B2 — The Class Β2 forms of θεωρώ, its double-accusative opinion frame, and its sense-bound imperative.
  • προχωρώ (to proceed/move on)B2 — The two present sets of προχωρώ across physical movement, instructions, progress, and proceeding to an action.
  • ξυπνάω/ξυπνώ (to wake up)A2 — The labile morning verb ξυπνάω—both wake up and wake someone—with the short command ξύπνα, the irregular aorist ξύπνησα, and no finite mediopassive.
  • πουλάω/πουλώ (to sell)A2 — The everyday verb πουλάω/πουλώ and its learned relative πωλώ, connecting πούλησα and πουλιέται to the sign ΠΩΛΕΙΤΑΙ and the noun πώληση.
  • φοράω / φορώA2 — The everyday clothing verb whose aspect distinguishes wearing from putting on, with the irregular aorist φόρεσα and the fully live mediopassive φοριέμαι.

Deponent & Mediopassive Verbs

  • κάθομαι (to sit)A2 — The everyday verb for sitting, staying, and living somewhere, with the κάθισα–έκατσα doublet and the discourse command κάτσε.
  • σκέφτομαι (to think)A2 — The process verb for considering, planning, and having someone in mind—distinct from opinion verbs νομίζω and πιστεύω.
  • αισθάνομαι (to feel)B2 — The careful-register verb for feeling, with nominative predicate agreement, adverb and noun complements, and its attested formal imperative.
  • φοβάμαι (to be afraid)A2 — A five-frame map of φοβάμαι: fear something, hesitate to act, worry about an event or person, and soften bad news.
  • θυμάμαι (to remember)A2 — The state–event contrast between θυμάμαι, θυμόμουν and θυμήθηκα, plus the separate causative verb θυμίζω ‘remind’.
  • κοιμάμαι (to sleep)A2 — How κοιμάμαι covers sleeping, being asleep and going to bed, while αποκοιμιέμαι and κοιμίζω express different events.
  • λυπάμαι (to be sorry)B1 — Sympathy, regret, pity and reluctance with λυπάμαι—distinct from the everyday apology formula συγγνώμη.
  • χαίρομαι (to be glad)B1 — The irregular forms of χαίρομαι, factive που versus activity/prospect να, and the greeting pair Χαίρω πολύ–Χάρηκα.
  • χρειάζομαι (to need)A2 — The personal syntax Χρειάζομαι βοήθεια beside impersonal Χρειάζεται να φύγουμε, with agreement and principal parts.
  • εργάζομαι (to work)B2 — The formal verb for working, its current εργάστηκα/εργάσθηκα doublet, workplace frames, and εργαζόμενος as the everyday noun for an employee.
  • δέχομαι (to accept/receive)B1 — The deponent verb for accepting, receiving and agreeing, with its irregular δέξου command, δεκτός adjective, and prefixed verb family.
  • σηκώνομαι (to get up)A2 — The active–middle pair σηκώνω/σηκώνομαι, the short everyday command σήκω, and the frames used for getting up, lifting, and standing.
  • ντύνομαι (to get dressed)A2 — The clothing split between ντύνομαι, φοράω and βάζω, with the active–middle pair ντύνω/ντύνομαι and costume or role complements.
  • φαίνομαι (to seem/appear)A2 — The verb for being visible, seeming with an agreeing nominative predicate, and the impersonal evidential frames φαίνεται ότι/πως/να.
  • ενδιαφέρομαι (to be interested)B1 — The forms and three complement frames of ενδιαφέρομαι, with the accusative experiencer of με ενδιαφέρει and the written contrast among ενδιαφέρον, ενδιαφέρων, and ενδιαφερόμενος.
  • στενοχωριέμαι (to be upset)B1 — The everyday -ιέμαι verb for being upset: its two accepted spellings, formal -ούμαι doublet, cause clauses with που, and the consoling Μη στενοχωριέσαι.
  • στέκομαιB1 — The deponent-shaped verb for standing, stopping, dwelling on a point, and holding up, with στάθηκα, στάσου, and defective active στέκω.

Essential Irregulars

  • είμαι (to be)A1 — The complete inventory of είμαι on one card — present, past, future, να-form and gerund — plus the unusually long list of forms this verb does not have: no aorist or perfective stem, no perfect, no separate mediopassive, no -μένος participle and no plain imperative.
  • έχω (to have)A1 — The complete inventory of έχω on one card — present, the ει- past είχα, future, imperative and gerund — the slots it leaves empty (no aorist, no perfective stem, no perfect of itself, no passive), and the genuinely ambiguous έχω να construction.
  • κάνω (to do/make)A1 — The verb whose aspect contrast collapsed — present, imperfect, aorist and dependent are all κάνω/έκανα — plus its life as Greek's biggest light verb, the frames it appears in (weather, price, pretence, duration) and the passive it borrows from γίνομαι.
  • λέω (to say/tell)A1 — The four everyday active stems — λέω/λες, έλεγα, είπα, πω — plus the formal passive ειπώθηκα/λέχθηκα and the crucial contrast between Μου είπε ότι φεύγει ('he reported it') and Μου είπε να φύγω ('he ordered me').
  • θέλω (to want)A2 — The full inventory of θέλω — present, the ή- imperfect ήθελα, the rare aorist θέλησα that does not normally render plain 'I wanted', the slots this verb leaves empty, its four complement frames, and the politeness ladder θέλω → ήθελα → θα ήθελα.
  • ξέρω (to know)A2 — ξέρω has a present stem and the imperfect ήξερα, but no perfective stem. This card maps its inflectional gaps and the verbs that fill them: μαθαίνω for 'find out', γνωρίζω for meeting or acquaintance and for formal-leaning informational 'know'.
  • πάω / πηγαίνω (to go)A1 — One verb with two presents: πάω is the usual spoken form, while πηγαίνω supplies the imperfect πήγαινα and the neutral command πήγαινε. This card also covers colloquial πάνε / πάτε, the aorist πήγα (with γ), the folk-style participle πηγαιμένος, and the prepositions the verb takes.
  • έρχομαι (to come)A2 — A deponent whose past is shaped like an active verb and whose command comes from a third root: this card lists έρχομαι, ήρθα, έρθω, έλα and ερχόμενος in one place, names the four slots the verb leaves empty, and sets out the frames it takes — including μου έρχεται να, where the person is a genitive clitic.
  • βλέπω (to see)A2 — One verb for see, watch and look at — and three different complements that mean three different things: Τον βλέπω να τρέχει (an event in progress), Τον είδα που έφευγε (a sighting), Βλέπω ότι δεν κατάλαβες (a conclusion, not a sight at all). Plus the full inventory of βλεπ- and δ- forms, and why Greek sees a dream rather than having one.
  • δίνω (to give)A2 — Three stems doing three jobs — διν- for the present, δωσ- for έδωσα and δώσω, δοθ- for the passive δόθηκε and δοσμένος — and the two recipient frames that make δίνω the verb where Greek's double-object system first bites: Του έδωσα το βιβλίο beside Το έδωσα στον Γιάννη. Plus δίνω εξετάσεις, where Greek gives the exam English takes.
  • παίρνω (to take/get)A2 — The verb Greek reaches for wherever English says take, get, buy, pick up, catch or call — with the aorist πήρα and the dependent πάρω among the verb forms you will hear most often, and one genuinely ambiguous frame worth learning on purpose: Του πήρα ένα δώρο is either 'I bought him a present' or 'I took a present off him'.
  • τρώω (to eat)A2 — Two stems that share no letters — τρω- / τρωγ- against φαγ- — a present that contracts to τρως and τρώμε, and the ordinary objectless question Έφαγες;. Plus the γ of έτρωγα and τρώγεται, the different readings of φαγωμένος with people and things, and the idioms that turn on this verb's grammar.
  • πίνω (to drink)A2 — Four principal parts that open four different ways — πίν-, έπιν-, ήπι-, πι- — and a perfective stem two letters long, which puts πίνω's dependent among the shortest forms in the language. Full paradigms, the augment that stays in ήπιαμε but drops in πίναμε, the drinker-not-the-drink participle πιωμένος, and the toast frames.
  • βρίσκω (to find)A2 — Two verbs in one entry: active βρίσκω (find, get, judge) with the aorist βρήκα and the one-syllable dependent βρω, and the mediopassive βρίσκομαι (be located), whose aorist is βρέθηκα with an ε. Plus the warning that βρεμένος belongs to βρέχω and means 'wet'.
  • βάζω (to put)A2 — The -ζω verb that escapes the -ζω aorist split: not έβαξα, not έβασα, but έβαλα from a λ-final root. Full forms, the eight English verbs βάζω has swallowed (put, pour, turn on, enrol), the βάζω τα κλάματα frame, and why βάλθηκα is not a passive.
  • βγάζω (to take out/off)A2 — The extraction verb that covers eight English ones — take off, take out, remove, earn, produce, publish, photograph, work out. Forms identical to βάζω (έβγαλα, βγάλω, βγάλε, βγαλμένος), the naming frame Τον έβγαλαν Γιώργο, and the line between βγάζω and its intransitive twin βγαίνω.
  • μπαίνω (to enter)A2 — μπαίν- minus its -αιν- leaves μπ-, which is why the dependent is a single syllable: μπω. Full forms with the aorist μπήκα, the three slots this verb genuinely leaves empty, the σε it drops only before a bare noun, and the senses beyond 'enter' — clothes that fit, jumpers that shrink, a penny that drops, a winter that arrives.
  • βγαίνω (to go out/exit)A2 — βγαίνω is only nominally 'exit' — one small paradigm covers going out for the evening, dating someone, results being published, a sum adding up, a colour running and retiring. Card lists the paradigm, the από/σε/με frames, the idiom cluster, and the forms this verb does not have.
  • γίνομαι (to become/happen)A2 — One Greek verb covers become, happen and be-possible: Έγινε γιατρός, Τι έγινε;, Γίνεται; This card gives the paradigm — including the active-shaped aorist έγινα — the nominative predicate, the impersonal γίνεται, and the forms γίνομαι does not have.
  • μένω (to stay/live)A2 — μένω is how Greeks say where they live, how they say they stayed put, and — in a whole family of idioms — how they say something was left in a state: έμεινα από βενζίνη, έμεινε το αυτοκίνητο, έμεινα άφωνος. Paradigm, the ε→ει shift, frames and set phrases.
  • Principal Parts: Complete IndexA2 — A consolidated index of the principal parts of 151 frequent Modern Greek verbs, including defective and register-limited paradigms.

Learned & Formal Verbs

  • αποτελώ (to constitute)C1 — A receptive-first guide to formal αποτελώ and high-frequency αποτελείται από, including its active paradigm and exceptional mediopassive aorist αποτελέστηκε.
  • επικοινωνώ (to communicate)B2 — The complete active paradigm of επικοινωνώ, its stress-shifting aorist, register ladder, and the contrast between με for people and σε for contact points.
  • παρατηρώ (to observe/notice)C1 — The active perception frames and high-frequency impersonal passive of παρατηρώ, with agreement, να-complements, register, and the everyday noun παρατήρηση.
  • συμμετέχω (to participate)C1 — The split συμμετέχ-/συμμετάσχ- paradigm, the broad-use past συμμετείχα, and the obligatory σε frame of institutional συμμετέχω.
  • πρόκειται να (to be about to)B2 — The two-form impersonal construction πρόκειται / επρόκειτο, its να and για frames, and the learned participial expressions that survive outside its defective paradigm.
  • καθιστώ (to render/make)C1 — The formal double-accusative verb καθιστώ, its internal-augment aorists κατέστησα and κατέστη, and the everyday derivative το κατεστημένο.
  • διεξάγω (to conduct/carry out)C1 — The news-register verb διεξάγω, its reduplicated active aorist, and the learned and modern passive forms used for elections, trials, and research.

Modal & Impersonal Verbs

  • αρέσω (μου αρέσει — to like)A2 — The complete active paradigm behind μου αρέσει, including its overlapping past forms, subject agreement, genitive experiencer, and the separate formal verb αρέσκομαι.
  • πρέπει (must/have to)A2 — A defective-form inventory for impersonal πρέπει, kept distinct from the third-person verb πρέπω and its surviving formal active participle πρέπων.
  • υπάρχω (to exist/there is)A2 — The full personal paradigm behind υπάρχει, with the perfective existential and copular senses of υπήρξα, its formal active participle, and its genuinely empty voice slots.
  • συμβαίνει (to happen)B2 — The third-person-only event verb συμβαίνει, including συνέβη, diagnostic questions, the συμβαίνει να frame, and its genuinely missing person and voice forms.
  • αξίζει (to be worth)B1 — The personal and experiencer frames of αξίζω, whose imperfective-only paradigm uses άξιζε for both ongoing and completed past contexts.

Verbs

Aorist (Αόριστος)

  • Aorist: Class ΑA2 — The aorist of first-conjugation (Class Α) verbs — έγραψα, έγραψες, έγραψε, γράψαμε, γράψατε, έγραψαν — built from the augment, the perfective stem, and past endings that are identical to the imperfect's. The single insight: only the stem changes (γραψ- for the aorist, γράφ- for the imperfect); everything else is the same.
  • Aorist: Class ΒA2 — The aorist of second-conjugation (Class Β) verbs — the contract verbs in -άω/-ώ. They are the most regular aorist in Greek: slot a linking vowel before the -σ- and add the past endings — αγάπησα, μίλησα, ρώτησα, περπάτησα. Covers the three linking-vowel families (-ησ-, -ασ-, -εσ-), the stress that rides the antepenult, and the -εύω lookalikes that are really Class Α.
  • Aorist Consonant Merges (-ψα, -ξα, -σα)B1 — The reading skill that unlocks the aorist: every aorist hides the same perfective -σα, and the ending you see (-ψα, -ξα or -σα) tells you what consonant it landed on. Read the merge backwards — -ψα points to a labial verb, -ξα to a velar, -σα to a dental or -νω verb — and you can recover the present of an aorist you've never met. Includes the honest -ζω split (παίζω → έπαιξα but νομίζω → νόμισα).
  • Aorist Mediopassive: -θηκαB1 — The common perfective past in -θηκα for the -ομαι voice — αγαπήθηκα, ντύθηκα, φοβήθηκα, γεννήθηκα — with endings -θηκα, -θηκες, -θηκε, -θήκαμε, -θήκατε, -θηκαν, a plural accent shift, and passive, middle and deponent readings.
  • Passive Aorist Variants: -στηκα, -χτηκαB1 — The consonant-driven faces of the passive aorist: -φτηκα on labial stems (γράφτηκα, κρύφτηκα), -χτηκα on velar stems (ρίχτηκα, τυλίχτηκα), -στηκα on sibilant and dental stems (κουράστηκα, αναγκάστηκα) — each one predictable from the verb's stem consonant, exactly like the active -ψα / -ξα / -σα merges.
  • Using the AoristA2 — The aorist is Greek's default perfective past: it presents an event, a narrative step, a result or even a finite series as one bounded whole — and often lines up with the English simple past while contrasting with the imperfect's internal view.
  • Irregular and Suppletive AoristsB1 — The dozen aorists you cannot derive and must simply know — είδα, είπα, ήρθα, ήπια, πήγα, βρήκα, μπήκα, βγήκα, πήρα, έφαγα, έδωσα, έμεινα — grouped by their shared shape, and precisely because they belong to Greek's most frequent verbs, the highest-value forms in the whole past tense.
  • Aorists of Vowel-Stem VerbsB1 — How verbs whose stem ends in a vowel form the aorist: the clean -σα type (ακούω → άκουσα), the historical labial pattern behind κλαίω → έκλαψα and καίω → έκαψα, and the analogical -ξ- of φταίω → έφταιξα, with a note on the suppletive vowel-stems handled elsewhere.
  • The Augment in the AoristA2 — The stressed ε- in έγραψα, έπαιξα and έτρεξα appears when a short past form needs another syllable to carry antepenultimate stress; its distribution parallels the imperfect, while the aorist uses the perfective stem.
  • Internal and η- AugmentB2 — How inherited compounds place a visible augment inside the word (υπέγραψα, προέβλεψα) or use stress retraction without a new vowel (ανέβηκα, κατάλαβα, περίμενα), and how four frequent past forms begin with η- (ήθελα, ήξερα, ήπια, ήρθα) — with augment position kept distinct from stem irregularity.
  • Accent in the AoristB1 — Why the aorist is stressed as far back as Greek allows — έγραψα, γράψαμε, αγάπησα, αγαπήσαμε all fall on the antepenult — why short verbs need the augment to reach that syllable, and how the stress tracks the antepenult as the word lengthens.
  • Negating the PastA2 — How to say you didn't do something — put δεν in front of the past verb, exactly as in the present, with no auxiliary and no change to the verb itself; plus the clitic word order and how the aorist/imperfect aspect contrast survives negation.

Aspect

  • Imperfective vs PerfectiveA2 — The central Greek aspect choice: an internal or unbounded view (imperfective) versus an event or finite series packaged as one bounded whole (perfective). Event count and English tense are clues, never mechanical rules.
  • Building the Perfective StemB1 — The productive regular derivation of the perfective stem: Class Α adds -σ- (λύνω → λύσω), Class Β uses a linking vowel (αγαπώ → αγαπήσω), and -εύω gives -εψ- (δουλεύω → δουλέψω).
  • Perfective Consonant ChangesB1 — When the perfective -σ- lands on a consonant, the two fuse: labials (π, β, φ) give ψ, velars (κ, γ, χ) give ξ, and dentals plus most sibilants give plain σ. Learn the three merges by stem-final sound and you can read and build the aorist, the simple future and the perfective subjunctive of almost any verb — plus the honest -ζω split (παίζω → παίξω but διαβάζω → διάβασα).
  • Irregular Perfective StemsB1 — The commonest Greek verbs — see, say, eat, go, take, find, give, drink, come in, go out — build their perfective series unpredictably, often with a suppletive form (βλέπω → δω, λέω → πω, τρώω → φάω) instead of regular -σ-. Because these are the highest-frequency verbs, memorising their principal parts is one of the best-value things you can do in Greek.
  • Aspect in the Past: Imperfect vs AoristA2 — For verbs that supply an aspect pair, Greek contrasts the imperfect's internal or unbounded view (έγραφα) with the aorist's bounded view (έγραψα); context and construal, not event count alone, decide the aspect.
  • Aspect in the FutureB1 — Greek keeps one future particle, θα, and verbs with an aspect pair contrast an internal process or open routine (θα γράφω) with an occurrence or finite series packaged as bounded (θα γράψω); English wording supplies clues, not a mechanical mapping.
  • Aspect in the Subjunctive (να)B1 — Where a verb offers an aspect pair, a να-clause preserves the choice: να γράψω packages a bounded occurrence or finite series, while να γράφω presents an action internally or as an open habit.
  • Aspect in the ImperativeB1 — Where a verb supplies the contrast, Greek commands carry aspect too: the perfective imperative (γράψε, κλείσε, φάε) packages an instruction as a bounded whole, while the imperfective imperative (γράφε, πρόσεχε, να τρως) presents an activity internally or as an open habit.
  • Choosing the Right AspectB1 — The one page to bookmark: for verbs that supply an aspect pair, ask whether the speaker packages an occurrence or finite series as a bounded whole (→ perfective), or views a process, open habit or background from inside (→ imperfective), then work through ten real decisions across the past, future, subjunctive and imperative.
  • Habitual vs Single EventsB1 — The clearest entry into Greek aspect: open habits are normally imperfective, while one occurrence or a finite repeated series can be packaged perfectively as a bounded whole. Frequency phrases strongly cue the viewpoint but never choose it mechanically.
  • Aspect and Time AdverbsB2 — Time adverbs strongly cue an aspectual viewpoint but never select it mechanically: every, suddenly and constantly can combine with different aspects when the time horizon, lexical meaning or scope changes.

Conditional & Modality

  • The Conditional With θαB1 — Greek has no conditional endings — it builds would out of the modal particle θα plus a past tense: θα έγραφα (I would write) and θα είχα γράψει (I would have written). Why a past tense can mark distance from reality, how the two halves of an αν-sentence pair up, and the third job of the same shape, the future-in-the-past of Μου είπε ότι θα ερχόταν.
  • Present/Simple Conditional (θα έγραφα)B1 — θα plus the imperfect is the Greek would — θα έγραφα, θα ήμουν, θα μπορούσα. Its formation across all six persons and the key irregulars, its job in the result clause of an unreal condition (Αν ήμουν πλούσιος, θα ταξίδευα), the advice frame Στη θέση σου θα…, the hedged opinion Θα έλεγα να…, and the sharp contrast with the future θα γράψω.
  • Past Conditional (θα είχα γράψει)B2 — The full counterfactual system: θα + the pluperfect is would have done — θα είχα γράψει. The four ways an αν-sentence about the past can be built, why ξέρω and είμαι force a mixed pair, the modal counterfactuals θα έπρεπε να είχες and θα μπορούσα να είχα, and the everyday flattening of θα είχα to θα + imperfect.
  • The Conditional for PolitenessB1 — The top rung of the Greek politeness ladder: Θα ήθελα (I would like), Θα μπορούσατε να…; (could you), Θα σας πείραζε να…; (would you mind), Θα προτιμούσα (I'd rather). Why stacking θα on an imperfect buys a second layer of distance, the paradigm trap of θα θέλατε, and the formal written top end Θα σας ήμουν ευγνώμων αν…
  • Obligation: πρέπει / έπρεπεA2 — Two things the obligation frame does beyond 'must': the evidential πρέπει να είναι κουρασμένος ('he must be tired' — a deduction, not a duty, signalled by what kind of verb, and what tense, you put after να), and the way aspect commonly contrasts a bounded instruction (Πρέπει να πάρεις) with an open standing rule (Πρέπει να παίρνεις) — plus the double life of Έπρεπε να, 'had to' and 'should have' in one form.
  • Possibility and Permission: μπορεί / μπορώA2 — The past and conditional half of μπορώ: μπορούσα ('was able to', a standing past ability) against the aorist μπόρεσα ('managed to'), and the conditional θα μπορούσα, which does the work of English 'could' — hypothetical ability, suggestions, polite requests, reproach — before layering into θα μπορούσα να είχα… ('I could have…').
  • Volition: θέλω να / θα ήθελαA2 — Wanting in Greek: θέλω + a noun against θέλω να + a clause, whose action you are wanting (Θέλω να φύγω vs Θέλω να φύγεις), the meaning gap between Δεν θέλω να and Θέλω να μην, the ladder from desire to settled plan (σκέφτομαι να, λέω να, σκοπεύω να, plain θα), the polite θα ήθελα, and the impersonal θέλει that means 'it takes'.
  • Wishes: μακάρι, να, αςB2 — How Greek says 'I hope' and 'I wish': μακάρι να + a non-past verb for a wish you still think can come true, μακάρι να + a past verb for one you know cannot, the bare να-blessing and the wistful ας ερχόταν, and where εύχομαι, ελπίζω and the literary είθε fit around them.
  • Counterfactual and RegretC1 — The grammar of the road not taken: μακάρι να είχα ακούσει, ας μην είχα πάει, θα έπρεπε να το είχα δει — how Greek stacks a wish particle over a pluperfect to reach a past that did not happen, why no θα may enter the wish clause, and where the factive regret of μετανιώνω που parts company with the counterfactual.

Fundamentals

  • The Greek Verb System: OverviewA1 — The master map of the Greek verb — person/number, tense, aspect, voice and mood; the absence of a productive infinitive in the English to-go slot; and the bounded-versus-internal viewpoint contrast that organizes the core paradigms.
  • The Two Conjugations: -ω and -άω/-ώA1 — Every Greek verb belongs to one of two conjugation classes, and the stress on the 'I' form tells you which: unstressed -ω (γράφω, the big regular class) or stressed -άω/-ώ (αγαπώ). This page sets the two presents side by side and shows why the class is a fact you learn with the word.
  • Class Β Subtypes: αγαπάω vs μπορώA2 — Class Β has two paradigm sets: Β1 (αγαπάω/αγαπώ, αγαπάς, αγαπάει) and Β2 (μπορώ, μπορείς, μπορεί). Pure verbs select one set, while lexical waverers such as οδηγώ/οδηγάω and προχωρώ/προχωράω license both; the -άς versus -είς contrast identifies the set being used.
  • Aspect: The Heart of the Greek VerbA2 — Aspect organizes the Greek verb around two viewpoints: an internal process or open habit (imperfective), versus one occurrence or a finite series packaged as bounded (perfective), illustrated across the system with γράφω.
  • The Two Verb StemsA2 — Aspect becomes visible through stem choice. Most productive verbs contrast an imperfective stem with a perfective stem—γράφω → γράψ-, αγαπώ → αγαπήσ-, παίζω → παίξ-—while one-stem and suppletive verbs require separate principal-part notes.
  • Active Personal EndingsA1 — Regular active forms make person visible in their endings. Type A uses non-past -ω, -εις, -ει, -ουμε, -ετε, -ουν and regular past -α, -ες, -ε, -αμε, -ατε, -αν; Type B present forms such as αγαπάς, αγαπά(ει) must be learned with their own pattern.
  • Mediopassive Personal EndingsA2 — The mediopassive (passive/middle) voice has its own set of personal endings that look nothing like the active — present -ομαι, -εσαι, -εται, -όμαστε, -εστε, -ονται and past -όμουν, -όσουν, -όταν, -όμασταν, -όσασταν, -ονταν. They carry a fixed αι spelling, and a whole class of everyday verbs (έρχομαι, κάθομαι, θυμάμαι) lives only in this form.
  • Active and Mediopassive VoiceA2 — Greek marks voice on the verb's ending, not with an auxiliary — active -ω versus the mediopassive -ομαι that covers passive, reflexive, reciprocal, middle and deponent meanings all at once.
  • The Tense System at a GlanceA1 — A single grid of γράφω across the eight core tenses plus the subjunctive, showing how θα, να and the έχω auxiliary organize the analytic forms and where aspect contrasts appear.
  • Moods: Indicative, Subjunctive, ImperativeA2 — Greek's three moods — the fact-stating indicative, the all-purpose να-subjunctive used where English has a productive to-infinitive, and the imperative for commands — plus the particle family θα, να and ας.
  • The Augment (past-tense ε-)A2 — Why Greek past tenses sometimes grow an extra ε- at the front (έγραψα, έπαιξα) and sometimes don't (αγόρασα, διάβασα) — the overt augment is governed primarily by the need to carry stress, and that idea explains its basic comings and goings.
  • Verb AccentuationB1 — Greek verb stress is recessive — it is pulled as far back as the three-syllable law allows, which is why γράφω becomes γράφουμε, why the past grows an augment (έγραφα), and why Class Β verbs stress the ending in the present but pull back in the aorist.
  • No Infinitive: The να-ClauseA2 — Modern Greek has no productive infinitive corresponding to English 'to go'. In that slot it uses να plus a fully conjugated verb, while a restricted invariant form survives only inside perfect constructions.

Future

  • The Future With θαA2 — Greek's central future construction uses one unchanging particle—θα—before a finite verb: θα γράψω, θα πάω, θα σε δω. This hub covers its position, negation, aspect contrast, conditional use and probability reading.
  • Simple Future (θα + perfective)A2 — The everyday Greek future — θα in front of the perfective stem — presents a future occurrence or finite series as a bounded whole: θα γράψω, θα φάω, θα πάω, θα δω, θα τελειώσω. It is the default when you name a specific plan without opening up its internal course.
  • Continuous Future (θα + imperfective)B1 — The internal/open future — θα before the imperfective present stem: θα γράφω for one unfolding stretch or an open habit, with duration and frequency expressions treated as cues rather than switches.
  • Choosing Future AspectB1 — The practical decision page for θα γράψω vs θα γράφω: a bounded future unit (including a finite series) versus an open schedule or internally viewed stretch, with cues and minimal pairs for choosing the stem.
  • Future of είμαι and έχωA2 — The two most frequent verbs in Greek keep their present stem in the future: θα είμαι 'I will be' and θα έχω 'I will have'. Neither has a perfective aorist stem, so there is no aspect choice to make — one form covers all future reference. θα έχω also doubles as the auxiliary of the future perfect (θα έχω γράψει).
  • θα for Probability and InferenceB2 — θα is not only the future particle: put in front of a present or past verb it expresses the speaker's inference — 'he must be', 'she'll probably', 'it must have been'. Θα είναι στο σπίτι means 'he's probably home', Θα το ξέχασε means 'he must have forgotten it'. Here θα has nothing to do with future time; it marks a confident guess.

Imperative

  • The Imperative: Giving CommandsA2 — How Greek forms direct commands — the two persons (γράψε / γράψτε), the perfective-vs-imperfective aspect choice, enclitic pronouns, the μη(ν)-plus-subjunctive prohibition, and the irregulars — with links to every detailed page.
  • Perfective ImperativeA2 — The everyday command built on the perfective stem with -ε / -τε (γράψε / γράψτε, διάβασε / διαβάστε, μίλησε / μιλήστε): it presents the requested action or finite series as bounded and never takes the past augment.
  • Imperfective ImperativeB1 — The 'keep doing it / do it as a rule' command — built on the present stem with -ε (γράφε, πρόσεχε) in the 1st conjugation and -α (μίλα, κοίτα) in the 2nd, contrasted with the bounded perfective.
  • Mediopassive ImperativeB1 — Commands for -ομαι / -άμαι verbs — the reflexives, feelings and motion verbs — with singular -ου and plural -είτε (ντύσου / ντυθείτε, σκέψου / σκεφτείτε), plus the high-frequency irregulars κάτσε, σήκω, στάσου and έλα.
  • Negative Commands: μη(ν) + SubjunctiveA2 — Greek has no morphologically negative imperative: its productive prohibition uses μη(ν) + a subjunctive form — Μην το κάνεις, Μη φεύγεις — with preverbal clitics and a live aspect contrast that is not a simple event-count switch.
  • Clitics With the ImperativeB1 — Why weak pronouns jump to the far side of a positive command (Πες μου, Δώσε μού το) — the enclitic order, the second accent, the apostrophe contraction, and the way the negative flips them straight back in front.
  • Irregular ImperativesB1 — The dozen suppletive commands you cannot derive and simply have to know — έλα, πες, δες, φάε, πιες, βρες, μπες, βγες, ανέβα, κατέβα, κάτσε — with both the singular and the plural for each.
  • First-Person Commands With ας / ναB1 — The Greek imperative is only second-person, so first-person proposals use a ranked inventory: bare plural Πάμε! for a decisive move, Να πάμε; for consultation, Ας πάμε for a softened or conceding proposal, and να/ας formulas for 'let me'. Negative proposals take μη(ν).
  • Softening CommandsB1 — A register ladder for getting things done without a bare imperative — the polite plural, the request-question, μπορείς / μπορείτε να, the conditional θα μπορούσατε, the imperfect Ήθελα, μήπως, and παρακαλώ.

Imperfect (Παρατατικός)

  • Imperfect: Class ΑA2 — The imperfect (παρατατικός) of the big -ω verb class — έγραφα, έπαιζα, διάβαζα — built from the present stem plus the past endings -α/-ες/-ε/-αμε/-ατε/-αν, with neutral Standard adding stress-carrying ε- wherever a short form cannot carry antepenultimate stress.
  • Imperfect: Class ΒA2 — The imperfect of regular ending-stressed verbs (αγαπώ, μιλώ, μπορώ) uses one shared set across B1 and B2: -ούσα, -ούσες, -ούσε, -ούσαμε, -ούσατε, -ούσαν, with no productive augment; live B1 and wavering verbs may also have an informal -αγα twin.
  • Imperfect MediopassiveB1 — The past-continuous of the -ομαι voice — ερχόμουν, γινόταν, σκεφτόμουν — built with the mediopassive past endings -όμουν, -όσουν, -όταν, -όμασταν, -όσασταν, -ονταν, a set you learn separately from the active -α endings, plus the deponent verbs (καθόμουν, θυμόμουν) that live only here.
  • Using the ImperfectA2 — The four jobs the imperfect (παρατατικός) does — the ongoing background of a past scene, a repeated or habitual past, the description of past states and settings, and a softened, polite request — each set against the bounded viewpoint of the aorist and mapped onto English 'was doing / used to do / would do'.
  • Imperfect of είμαι (ήμουν)A2 — The only past of είμαι — ήμουν, ήσουν, ήταν, ήμασταν, ήσασταν, ήταν — built on mediopassive-shaped endings, with ήταν covering both 'he was' and 'they were,' and its complement staying in the nominative.
  • Imperfect of έχω (είχα)A2 — The single past of έχω — είχα, είχες, είχε, είχαμε, είχατε, είχαν — covering everything English does with 'had,' and doubling as the auxiliary that builds the pluperfect (είχα γράψει).
  • The Augment in the ImperfectB1 — Why neutral Standard Greek uses stressed ε- in έγραφα and έπαιζα but not γράφαμε and παίζατε: the productive augment hosts recessive past stress. Class Β normally needs none, compounds vary, and older, literary or regional Greek may retain an unstressed external augment.
  • The Habitual Past ('used to')A2 — How the plain imperfect renders English 'used to' and habitual 'would' — cued by παλιά, τότε, κάθε and συνήθως — while a counted total may be packaged with the aorist and a recurring rate can remain imperfective.
  • The Imperfect for PolitenessB1 — Why Ήθελα έναν καφέ is softer than Θέλω — the imperfect as a politeness-through-distance strategy for requests and wishes, alongside Μπορούσατε…; and the even more polite θα ήθελα.

Irregular Verbs

  • Irregular Verbs: PatternsB1 — Greek irregularity has one address: the perfective stem. The present of an irregular verb is almost always textbook-regular — it is δω, έφαγα, μπήκα, έστειλα that surprise you. This page sorts the whole field into five shapes (plus the impersonals) and the three verbs that have no perfective stem at all, and sends you to the page that handles each.
  • Suppletive Verbs (βλέπω→είδα)B1 — Six everyday verbs — βλέπω, λέω, τρώω, πάω, έρχομαι, παίρνω — carry two roots each, one for the present and a completely different one for everything perfective. This page puts each verb's present, aorist, να-form, command and perfect on a single card, shows which cells you actually have to memorise and which fall out of the others, and marks the two verbs where the chain breaks.
  • Vowel-Final Stems (ακούω, τρώω, λέω)B1 — Seven everyday verbs — λέω, τρώω, ακούω, πάω, κλαίω, καίω, φταίω — end their stem in a vowel, and that one fact reshapes the whole verb: an active present with no ending vowel (λες, τρως, ακούς), a γ that appears in forms outside that paradigm (έλεγα, άκουγα, κλαίγοντας, ακούγεται), and three different kinds of aorist inside one small class.
  • Nasal-Stem Verbs (μπαίνω, πίνω)B1 — In μαθαίνω, καταλαβαίνω, μπαίνω, πίνω and δίνω the -ν- or -αιν- belongs to the imperfective half of the verb only — it is there in μαθαίνω and μάθαινα alike, and gone from everything perfective. Drop it and the bare root underneath is the perfective stem (μάθ-, καταλάβ-, μπ-, πι-). Covers the whole family, the -ηκα aorists that look passive and are not, the causative partners in -άζω, and μαθαίνω's double life as both 'learn' and 'teach'.
  • Stem-Alternation Verbs (στέλνω→έστειλα)B2 — In στέλνω → έστειλα → στάλθηκε the root vowel itself is doing the grammar: ε in the present, ει in the perfective, α in the passive. This page works through the whole alternating set — στέλνω, πλένω, σπέρνω, δέρνω, μένω, φεύγω, πεθαίνω, φέρνω — with their dependents, commands and participles, and explains why these dependents (στείλω, πλύνω, μείνω) are more dangerous than δω or πω.
  • Irregular Class Β VerbsB2 — Class Β has the most regular aorist in Greek — and a short list of everyday verbs that refuse it. The -νάω group that drops its ν (περνάω → πέρασα, ξεχνάω → ξέχασα), the velar group that gives -ηξα / -αξα instead of -ησα (φυσάω → φύσηξα, πετάω → πέταξα, κοιτάω → κοίταξα) and pays off again in the passive (τραβήχτηκε), plus ζω, the one Class Β verb that is irregular in the present.
  • Impersonal and Weather VerbsB1 — The inventory of Greek verbs that live in the third person singular with nobody behind them: βρέχει, χιονίζει, φυσάει, αστράφτει, νυχτώνει, ξημερώνει, plus πρόκειται να, συμβαίνει and τυχαίνει. Includes their two pasts (έβρεχε against έβρεξε), the subjects that do turn up when there is one to name (Φυσάει βοριάς), and the personal lives these same verbs lead elsewhere (Φύσα τη σούπα, Βράχηκα).

Modal Particles

  • The Particles θα, να, ας, μη(ν)A2 — Four one-syllable preverbal particles: θα for future, conditional and inference; να for subjunctive environments; ας for hortative and concessive uses; μη(ν) for subjunctive negation and prohibition. Their paired clause patterns, clitic order, and the bounded versus internal/open aspect contrast.
  • θα: All Its UsesB1 — One invariable modal particle with no single English equivalent: the form behind θα and its context decide whether you get a future, a conditional, a future-in-the-past or a confident guess. The complete grid of θα + every tense, the strings that carry two readings and what tells them apart, where θα may and may not stand in a subordinate clause, and the peremptory θα that functions as an order.
  • να: All Its UsesB1 — The busiest word in Greek, gathered into one reference: the environments να appears in, its role in marking a non-indicative event rather than a plain assertion, and the constructions the frame pages miss, from Τον είδα να φεύγει to σαν να and Δεν έχω τι να φορέσω.

Participles

  • The Gerund in -ονταςB1 — How to build Greek's one everyday active participle: the imperfective stem plus -οντας (γράφοντας, τρέχοντας) or, for Class Β verbs, -ώντας (μιλώντας, αγαπώντας) — why it is invariable, why the fixed accent makes -οντας forms proparoxytone and -ώντας forms paroxytone, which verbs simply have no gerund at all, and how έχοντας + απαρέμφατο fills the gap left by the missing perfective gerund.
  • Using the GerundB1 — What the -οντας form actually does in a sentence: manner (Έφυγε τρέχοντας), background and simultaneity (Περπατώντας, σκεφτόμουν), immediacy (Μπαίνοντας, κατάλαβα), means (Έμαθα ελληνικά μιλώντας) and cause (Βλέποντας ότι δεν ερχόταν κανείς) — plus the same-subject rule that makes a dangling gerund a real error, the small closed set of formulaic gerunds that legitimately break it, and the four jobs English -ing does that Greek hands to a finite clause instead.
  • Passive Participle as AdjectiveB1 — The -μένος participle living its second life as an ordinary adjective: attributive (τα μαγειρεμένα φαγητά) and predicative (είμαι κουρασμένη), agreeing with an accusative object in Βρήκα την πόρτα κλειδωμένη, taking πιο and the καλο- / φρεσκο- / μισο- prefixes like any adjective, forming -μένα adverbs — and the large group whose meaning is not passive at all (πεσμένος, φαγωμένος, πιωμένος, παντρεμένος).
  • Participle vs Perfect ConfusionB2 — Why είμαι κουρασμένος and έχω κουραστεί are not two ways of saying the same thing: one describes a state and agrees like an adjective, the other reports an event and never changes — set against the two shapes that complete the picture, the mediopassive present for a repeated event (καθαρίζεται κάθε μέρα) and the active perfect for a named agent (κάποιος έχει κλείσει την πόρτα).
  • Learned Active Participles (-ων/-οντας)C1 — The ancient active participle seen from the verb's side: one -οντ- stem, three descendants — the frozen everyday gerund -οντας, the declined learned active -ων / -ουσα / -ον (ο ισχύων νόμος, η υπάρχουσα κατάσταση), and the middle participle in -όμενος / -ούμενος (οι εργαζόμενοι, τα εισερχόμενα, ο κατηγορούμενος), which is the one corner of the system still being used to make new words — plus how these participles head whole phrases like reduced relative clauses, why they negate with μη, and the -όμενος / -μένος split between a process and a result.
  • Participle Agreement RulesB1 — Greek has four participle-shaped forms and only two of them agree — the -μένος participle and the learned -ων / -όμενος decline for gender, number AND case, while the gerund in -οντας and the -ει / -εί form after έχω never change at all. One inventory table, one two-second test for telling them apart, what the agreeing ones agree with (including the polite plural Είστε κουρασμένος; and mixed-gender subjects), and two look-alikes that are not agreement at all.
  • Gerund vs Subordinate ClauseB2 — The decision procedure: three things force you out of a gerund and into a finite clause — a different subject, a verb with no gerund, and a relation that has to be named — plus the subordinator menu (όταν, μόλις, καθώς, ενώ, αφού, πριν, επειδή, για να) with the tense each one wants, a three-step repair for a gerund that will not work, and the one job (manner) that no subordinate clause can take over.
  • Participial and Genitive-Absolute SurvivalsC1 — The high-register participial connectors of written Greek — συμπεριλαμβανομένου του ΦΠΑ, εξαιρουμένων των αργιών, λαμβανομένου υπόψη, δεδομένου ότι, δεδομένης της κατάστασης, προκειμένου να, τηρουμένων των αναλογιών — read as what they are: frozen genitive absolutes, an ancient construction that let a participial phrase carry its OWN subject. How to parse them, the one agreement rule that is still live inside them, the προκειμένου να / πρόκειται να trap, and the everyday Greek each one translates into.

Perfect Tenses

  • The Perfect TensesB1 — Greek builds every perfect analytically — the auxiliary έχω (or its past είχα, or θα έχω) plus one invariable form, the -ει απαρέμφατο. Only the auxiliary conjugates; the second word never changes, which is exactly what makes the whole system easy once you have that one form.
  • The απαρέμφατο (-ει form)B1 — The invariable form used with έχω in the perfect tenses — γράψει, δει, πει, φάει, πάει — is the απαρέμφατο. It is built on the perfective stem, never agrees for person, number or gender, and survives as a restricted remnant of the older infinitival system.
  • The Present Perfect (έχω γράψει)B1 — έχω plus the invariable -ει form reports an earlier action whose result, experience or record reaches into the present — Έχω διαβάσει το βιβλίο ('I've read the book'), Δεν έχω πάει ποτέ στην Κρήτη ('I've never been to Crete'). Greek leans on the plain aorist far more, especially for events localized in a closed past frame.
  • The Pluperfect (είχα γράψει)B1 — Swap the auxiliary from present έχω to past είχα and the perfect steps one layer back in time: είχα γράψει is 'I had written', an action already complete before some other past moment. It is the workhorse of the 'earlier past' in narration — Είχα φύγει όταν ήρθες ('I had left when you came') — and with θα in front it becomes the counterfactual 'I would have written': Αν το ήξερα, θα είχα έρθει.
  • The Future Perfect (θα έχω γράψει)B2 — Put θα in front of the present perfect and it projects into the future: θα έχω γράψει is 'I will have written', an action to be finished by some future point — Μέχρι τις πέντε θα έχω τελειώσει ('By five I'll have finished'). The very same form also does double duty as a confident inference about the present: θα έχει φύγει, 'he'll have left by now'.
  • The Perfect Subjunctive (να έχω γράψει)B2 — How Greek puts a completed action inside a να-clause — να έχω + the invariable -ει απαρέμφατο — to say 'must have finished', 'may have left' and 'I hope he's arrived', where the action is already done relative to the point the modal or emotion verb is looking at.
  • The Perfect in the PassiveB2 — Greek has two ways to build a perfect in the passive voice — είμαι + the agreeing -μένος participle for a resulting STATE (η πόρτα είναι κλεισμένη), and έχω + the invariable passive απαρέμφατο in -εί for the EVENT (έχει γραφτεί, έχω κουραστεί) — plus how to form that -θεί/-στεί/-φτεί word and why one agrees while the other never does.
  • Perfect vs AoristB1 — When to say έχω γράψει and when to say έγραψα — the aorist for a past event or finite series viewed as bounded, especially with a closed event-time anchor, and the perfect for experience or a result connected to now. Greek often prefers an aorist where English uses a perfect, but time phrases and translations are cues rather than exceptionless switches.
  • Perfect With ήδη, ακόμα, ποτέB1 — The adverbs that pull a sentence toward the present perfect — ήδη (already), δεν... ακόμα (not yet), ποτέ (ever/never), and τελευταία (lately) — where each one sits in the clause, how they map onto English already/yet/ever/never, and why ποτέ needs a δεν to mean 'never'.

Present Tense

  • Present Tense: Class Α (-ω)A1 — The full present of the big regular verb class — γράφω, παίζω, τρέχω, διαβάζω, μένω, θέλω — with its six stem-stressed endings, the -εις vs -ει spelling trap, and the fact that one Greek form covers both 'I write' and 'I am writing'.
  • Present Tense: Class Β1 (αγαπάω/-ώ)A1 — The full present of the everyday Β1 contract verbs — αγαπάω/αγαπώ, μιλάω, ρωτάω, περπατάω, κοιτάω, ξεχνάω, περνάω — with the -άω/-ώ doublet in the 'I' and 'they' forms, the fixed -άς 'you' ending, and the crossover error ×αγαπείς that spells it as if it were Class Α.
  • Present Tense: Class Β2 (μπορώ)A2 — The full present of the pure Β2 anchor μπορώ — μπορώ, μπορείς, μπορεί, μπορούμε, μπορείτε, μπορούν — and the -ώ/-είς/-εί set also used by θεωρώ and καλώ. Some lexical verbs additionally waver into a live -άω set, notably οδηγώ/οδηγάω and προχωρώ/προχωράω, so the paradigm and a verb's complete inventory must be kept distinct.
  • Contract Verb DetailsB1 — The system behind Class Β: historical contraction and end-stress, widespread Β1 doublets, pure Β2 anchors versus analogical waverers such as οδηγώ/οδηγάω, the -άμε/-ούμε choice, near-contract λέω/ακούω/τρώω, and lexically variable Β1 aorists such as γέλασα and φύσηξα.
  • Present Mediopassive: -ομαιA2 — The present of the -ομαι mediopassive — πλένομαι, έρχομαι, γίνομαι — its full six-person paradigm, the passive, reflexive and deponent meanings it carries, and the fixed αι-spelling that makes -εται sound exactly like the active -ετε.
  • Present Mediopassive: -ιέμαιB1 — How the -άω verbs (Conjugation Β1, like αγαπάω) build their mediopassive present — αγαπιέμαι, αγαπιέσαι, αγαπιέται — where the -ι- glide comes from, the synizesis that keeps it one syllable, and the reciprocal 'kiss/love each other' meaning that makes -ιούνται so common.
  • Present Mediopassive: -ούμαι and -άμαιB1 — The last two mediopassive present patterns — the formal-leaning -ούμαι of Β2 verbs (θεωρούμαι), and the small but ultra-frequent set of -άμαι deponents θυμάμαι, κοιμάμαι, φοβάμαι and λυπάμαι, with their irregular three-vowel paradigm laid out in full.
  • Using the Present TenseA1 — What the Greek present actually does — right-now action, habits, general truths, situations that started in the past and still hold, scheduled near-future, and vivid narration — all from one form, because Greek has no separate progressive and no perfective present.
  • The Present of είμαι (to be)A1 — The most frequent verb in Greek — είμαι, είσαι, είναι, είμαστε, είστε, είναι — its irregular mediopassive-shaped paradigm, the single είναι that covers both 'he is' and 'they are', its uses for identity, state, location and existence, and why the word after it stays in the nominative.
  • The Present of έχω (to have)A1 — έχω, έχεις, έχει, έχουμε, έχετε, έχουν — a perfectly regular Class Α present that does three big jobs in Greek: possession, the colloquial existential έχει ('there is/are'), and, above all, the auxiliary that builds every perfect tense (έχω γράψει).
  • Negating the Present: δενA1 — How to say 'not' in the present tense — the negator δεν sits directly before the verb and its object pronouns, with no auxiliary, and negative words like τίποτα keep δεν rather than replacing it.
  • Asking Present-Tense QuestionsA1 — Greek asks yes/no questions with intonation alone — no 'do' and no required inversion — and marks them with standard ';'; neutral wh-questions generally front the question word.
  • Spelling the Present EndingsA2 — Present endings have fixed spellings within each paradigm: Type A γράφω, γράφεις, γράφει contrasts with Type B αγαπάς, αγαπά(ει), while mediopassive -εται contrasts with active -ετε.

Subjunctive (να)

  • The Subjunctive With ναA2 — να introduces a fully conjugated verb where English often uses an infinitive or subjunctive clause, expressing purposes, wishes, obligations and possibilities while preserving person and aspect.
  • Present Subjunctive (να + imperfective)A2 — να followed by the imperfective stem — να γράφω, να διαβάζω — presents a subordinated action internally or as an open habit; it can describe a routine or look inside one unfolding event.
  • Aorist Subjunctive (να + perfective)B1 — The dependent perfective forms να γράψω, να δω and να φύγω package an action or finite series as bounded and take no past augment; genuinely prior να-clauses with forms such as να πέρασες are a separate pattern.
  • Aspect After ναB1 — A decision guide for να γράφω versus να γράψω: choose an internal process or open habit with the imperfective, and package one occurrence or a finite series as bounded with the perfective; time expressions are cues, not switches.
  • να After Modal VerbsA2 — The everyday frame [modal + να + verb] — θέλω να, μπορώ να, πρέπει να, ξέρω να, πάω να, αρχίζω να — where the second verb is person-marked and personal main verbs conjugate too.
  • να After Emotion and EvaluationB1 — Verbs and expressions of feeling and judgement — μου αρέσει να, φοβάμαι να, χαίρομαι, λυπάμαι, αξίζει, είναι κρίμα — take a να-clause for the event itself and που for an established fact that stirs the feeling; how to tell which one you need.
  • Purpose Clauses: (για) ναA2 — How Greek says 'in order to / so that': για να spells out purpose explicitly, plain να is enough after verbs of motion, and — because no free infinitive fills this English complement slot — the purpose verb stays fully conjugated whether the subject is the same or different.
  • Standalone να: Wishes and Softened CommandsB1 — να can open a main clause with no verb in front of it — carrying wishes and blessings (Να ζήσεις! Να 'σαι καλά), gentle advice softer than a command (Να πας στον γιατρό), and, with an accent, the pointing Νά! (there it is).
  • The Particle ας (let / let's)B1 — ας + subjunctive covers 'let's', 'let me' and 'let him / them', often with a permissive or resigned stance; it also forms concessions and, with a past tense, sharp reproaches. It is negated with μη(ν), and its aspect follows the ordinary bounded-versus-internal contrast.
  • Deliberative Questions With ναB1 — να + subjunctive with question intonation asks what one should or shall do — Να πάω; (Should I go?), Τι να κάνω; (What should I do?), Να σου φέρω κάτι; (Shall I bring you something?) — the everyday Greek for English 'should I / shall I', with no θα and no auxiliary.
  • να vs ότι/πως (that-Clauses)B1 — The core complementizer split — ότι and πως report something that IS the case, while να points at something wished-for, aimed-at, or merely possible — and how the same verb (λέω, ξέρω) can take either one with a change of meaning.
  • να After πριν, μέχρι, χωρίς, αντίB2 — A family of subordinators — πριν (before), μέχρι / ώσπου (until), χωρίς (without), αντί (instead of), εκτός από (except) — that switch to a full να-clause the moment a verb follows, turning what English does with 'before doing / without doing' into a conjugated Greek clause.
  • Impersonal πρέπει / μπορεί ναB1 — The two invariable modal frames — πρέπει να for obligation ('must / have to') and μπορεί να for possibility ('may / might') — where the modal never changes and the person is carried by the να-verb, plus their pasts έπρεπε να and μπορεί να + past.
  • Nominalized να-Clauses (το να...)B2 — Put the article το in front of a να-clause and the whole clause becomes a noun — Greek's equivalent of the English '-ing' subject or 'to'-infinitive: Το να μαθαίνεις γλώσσες ανοίγει μυαλά, Δεν μου αρέσει το να περιμένω, Με το να φωνάζεις δεν κερδίζεις τίποτα.

Voice

  • The Mediopassive Voice: OverviewA2 — A map of the -ομαι voice across its tense-specific shapes — present -ομαι, imperfect -όμουν, common perfective -θηκα, and perfect έχω + -θεί / result-state είμαι + -μένος — including the suppletive principal parts some deponents require.
  • Mediopassive Present FormsB1 — A recognition map from a verb's active conjugation class to its present mediopassive shape — Α → -ομαι, Β1 → -ιέμαι, Β2 → -ούμαι, plus the closed -άμαι deponent set — routing to the three pages that drill each full paradigm.
  • Mediopassive Imperfect (-όμουν)B1 — The imperfective past of the -ομαι voice — where -όμουν sits in the cross-tense system and how it presents a passive, reflexive, middle or deponent situation from inside or as an open habit, with the full paradigm and accent details routed to the Imperfect page.
  • Mediopassive Aorist (-θηκα)B1 — The bounded perfective past of the whole -ομαι voice — where -θηκα sits in the cross-tense system, its everyday passive, reflexive and deponent uses, the stem-driven -φτηκα/-χτηκα/-στηκα faces, and the suppletive aorists ήρθα, έγινα, κάθισα.
  • The Passive Participle -μένοςB1 — The perfect passive participle in -μένος / -μένη / -μένο seen from the verb's side — how it is built from the passive-perfect stem (γράφω → γραμμένος, κλείνω → κλεισμένος, κουράζω → κουρασμένος), why its stem-final consonant sorts into a handful of patterns, its job as the participle half of the είμαι-perfect passive, and how it names a resulting STATE against the -θηκα aorist that names the EVENT.
  • Reflexive Use of the Middle VoiceB1 — How Greek uses the mediopassive -ομαι ending to say you do something to yourself — πλένομαι (wash), ντύνομαι (get dressed), χτενίζομαι (comb one's hair), ετοιμάζομαι (get ready) — why the ending itself is the 'myself', when the marked τον εαυτό μου is needed instead, and why body parts take active + possessive (πλένω τα χέρια μου).
  • Reciprocal Use of the Middle VoiceB1 — How the mediopassive says 'each other' — αγαπιούνται, φιλιούνται, συναντιούνται, αγκαλιάζονται, τσακώνονται, δεν μιλιούνται — and why the requirement is two parties, not a plural subject: Συναντιέμαι με τη Μαρία is just as reciprocal. Covers the singular + με construction, the two disambiguators μεταξύ τους and ο ένας τον άλλον (with the neuter το ένα το άλλο and the case forms), the actives that are reciprocal on their own, and the overlap with the plain passive.
  • Deponent Verbs (-ομαι only)B1 — Verbs with no corresponding active present but an active meaning — έρχομαι (come), κάθομαι (sit), γίνομαι (become), θυμάμαι (remember), φοβάμαι (fear), σκέφτομαι (think), εργάζομαι (work) — their mediopassive present and imperfect, and their unpredictable active-type or mediopassive-type perfective forms.
  • Expressing the Agent (από)B1 — How to name the doer of a passive action with από + accusative — Το βιβλίο γράφτηκε από τον Σεφέρη — why Greek reuses its word for 'from' as 'by', how the agent differs from the instrument (με), and why spoken Greek usually prefers the active instead.
  • Active/Passive Verb PairsB2 — The causative–inchoative alternation that learners mistake for a passive — καίω/καίγομαι, κουράζω/κουράζομαι — plus the labile actives that need no voice change at all (σταματάω, τελειώνω, γυρίζω, ανοίγω, σπάω), the suppletive pairs ανεβάζω/ανεβαίνω, and the middles that have drifted into new words (χάνομαι, βρίσκομαι, φέρομαι).
  • Impersonal and Agentless PassivesB2 — The two routes Greek uses to keep the doer out of the sentence: mediopassive forms in signs, notices and reports — including completed agentless events such as Ανακοινώθηκε and Δόθηκε — and the everyday subjectless third-person plural (Μου έκλεψαν το πορτοφόλι, Λένε ότι…).
  • Middle-Voice MeaningsB2 — What the -ομαι ending really encodes once you stop calling it 'the passive' — acting for your own benefit (δανείζομαι, μοιράζομαι), emotional and mental states (χαίρομαι, στεναχωριέμαι, ντρέπομαι), spontaneous events (φαίνεται, ακούγεται), and the potential middle that means 'can't be done' (δεν τρώγεται, δεν διαβάζεται) — plus the honest warning that θυμώνω and νιώθω are active.

Word Formation

Affixes

  • PrefixesB1 — Recognize productive everyday and learned Greek prefixes, their allomorphs, and the lexicalized meanings that resist word-for-word decoding.
  • SuffixesB1 — Use recurring Greek suffixes to identify likely word class and meaning while treating each derived word as a lexeme with its own stress and behavior.

Compounding

  • CompoundingB1 — Decode and use Greek compounds beyond nouns, especially compound verbs, descriptive adjectives, and productive prefix-like first elements.
  • The Linking Vowel -ο-B1 — Segment Greek compounds at the linking vowel -ο- and recognize when a vowel-initial second element triggers loss, merger, or lexical retention.

Derivation

  • Nouns From VerbsB1 — Recognize Greek action and result nouns in -ση, -ξη, -ψη, -μα, and -μός without forcing a single suffix or meaning onto every verb.
  • Agent and Instrument NounsB1 — Form and inflect Greek names for people and tools while navigating productive agent suffixes, common-gender professions, and socially marked feminine alternatives.
  • Forming AdjectivesB1 — Recognize Greek adjectives of relation, material, characteristic, and verbal origin while learning their lexical meanings and agreement patterns.
  • Forming VerbsB2 — Build and recognize Greek verbs in -ίζω, -ώνω, -αίνω, -εύω, -οποιώ, and -άρω while learning voice and perfective stems lexically.
  • Abstract NounsB1 — Form and recognize Greek nouns for qualities and states through -ότητα/-ύτητα, -οσύνη, and -ία/-εία without treating derivation as mechanical.
  • Privative and Negative FormationB1 — Build and recognize Greek word-level opposites with α-/αν-, δυσ-/ευ-, reversative ξε-, and formal μη- while keeping them distinct from sentence negation.
  • Adapting LoanwordsB2 — Understand how current Greek assigns gender, inflection, and verb forms to foreign words without forcing every loan into one pattern.

Evaluative

  • DiminutivesA2 — Use Greek diminutives for smallness, affection, approximation, and conversational softening while respecting gender, spelling, and lexical convention.
  • AugmentativesB2 — Understand expressive Greek augmentatives in -άρα and -αρος, including their gender, admiration, exaggeration, coarseness, and lexical limits.

Overview

  • Word Formation OverviewB1 — Decode and expand Greek vocabulary through recurring roots, derivation, compounding, linking -ο-, and expressive suffixes.