Genitive: The Indirect Object

This page covers one of the genitive's highest-frequency jobs alongside possession. In neutral Standard Greek, the genitive marks the recipient — the person you give something to, tell something to, or send something to. After the Ancient Greek dative disappeared from speech, Standard and southern varieties developed genitive indirect objects, while many Northern and Pontic varieties developed accusative ones; σε + accusative provides a shared prepositional alternative. This page teaches the neutral-standard genitive pronouns μου, σου, του, της, μας, σας, τους, which occur constantly in conversation.

The recipient in a sentence

An action like give, say, send, bring or show has three participants: the person doing it, the thing being handed over, and the person receiving it. In neutral Standard Greek, the thing is accusative and the recipient is genitive.

Notice what is not there: no preposition. English needs to whenever the recipient is not sitting immediately after the verb (I sent the tickets *to them). Greek needs nothing — the genitive form of the pronoun *is the "to".

The seven weak genitive pronouns

These seven little words are the single highest-frequency piece of grammar in the language. They are clitics: unstressed, unable to stand alone, unable to follow σε, από, με or για, and glued to the verb. (Scope that restriction carefully — the learned genitive prepositions are precisely the ones that do take a clitic: εναντίον μου, μεταξύ μας, εξαιτίας σου. See Genitive after learned prepositions.)

They are identical to the possessive clitics — of course they are, because they are the same genitive pronouns doing a different job. Position tells you which job. Sitting after a noun, μου means "my"; sitting before a verb, μου means "to me".

Where the clitic goes — the part with no English parallel

This is the top-three difficulty for English speakers, and it is worth learning as a fixed reflex rather than as a rule you compute each time. The clitic sits immediately before the verb. Not after it, as English does with me, him, us. And if the verb has a particle in front — δεν, θα, να, ας, μη(ν) — the clitic slots in between the particle and the verb, never before the particle.

Everything is proclitic (before the verb) except the positive imperative, which flips the clitic to the other side. That single exception is the whole irregularity, and it happens to be the one you use every day in shops and kitchens.

The imperative pair is worth saying out loud back to back — Μη *μου λες versus Πες μου* — because the clitic jumps sides between them, and nothing else in the sentence changes.

Two clitics at once: genitive first

Very often both the recipient and the thing are pronouns — he gave *it to me*. Greek stacks both clitics in front of the verb, and the order is fixed: genitive before accusative, the reverse of the English order.

In that last example, note the extra accent on μού. When two clitics follow an imperative, the stress would fall four syllables from the end of the group (δώ-σε-μου-το), which Greek does not permit — so a second accent is written on the first clitic. The full set of these accent repairs lives on Accents in clitic clusters.

Full nouns: grammatical in the genitive, but σε is what people say

A full noun phrase can take the genitive as an indirect object, and you will read it:

But be honest about the statistics: with full nouns the overwhelming everyday choice is σε + accusative, which is neutral in every register and never sounds bookish.

So the working split is clean and worth memorising as a pair of defaults: pronoun → genitive clitic; full noun → σε + accusative. The choice is not free, and getting it backwards is what makes a sentence sound foreign even when every word is right. The gray areas — and there are some — are worked through on Indirect object: genitive vs σε.

The two can also appear together, with the clitic anticipating a full phrase that follows or precedes it. This is not redundancy; it is the ordinary way of putting emphasis or contrast on the recipient, and it is extremely common in speech.

That pattern has its own page: Clitic doubling.

You cannot stress a clitic

Because μου and σου are unstressed by nature, you cannot lean on them the way English leans on ME in he gave it to me. Greek has two repairs. Either front the whole thing with a strong pronoun and keep the clitic (Εμένα δεν μου είπε τίποτα), or use σε + strong pronoun (σ' εμένα, σ' εσένα).

The genitive experiencer

One more family of verbs uses the same genitive person, but not as a recipient — as the one who undergoes something: μου αρέσει (it pleases me), μου λείπεις (you are missing to me), μου φαίνεται (it seems to me), μου πονάει το κεφάλι (my head hurts me). These follow all the placement rules above.

These are laid out in full on The genitive experiencer.

Common Mistakes

1. Putting the clitic before δεν or θα. The particle always comes first.

2. In standard Greek the recipient of λέω is genitive. Με is "me" as a direct object; the recipient is μου. This is the one entry on the list where the other version is not a learner error at all — it is a living dialect form — so both sentences below are marked ✅.

Across much of northern Greece the accusative clitic simply takes over the indirect-object job: με είπε, σε λέω, τον έδωσα το κλειδί. First- and second-person plural μας and σας are case-syncretic, so the clearest audible contrasts are singular pairs such as με/μου, σε/σου, τον/του, and την/της; third-person plural systems can also reveal the regional pattern. It is a genuine, widespread feature with a long history, not a mistake. The learner problem is different in kind: an English speaker who says με είπε has usually not acquired a dialect, they have mapped told me onto the object pronoun they already know — and they then have no way to produce the standard form when a job application needs it. Learn μου είπε as your default; recognise με είπε when you hear it in Thessaloniki.

3. Ordering two clitics accusative-first. The genitive leads.

4. Building a preposition phrase out of a clitic. After σε, από, με or για you need the strong form. (The genitive prepositions are the exception — εναντίον μου is fine — but σε never is.)

Key Takeaways

• In neutral Standard Greek, the genitive marks the recipient — the person something is given, said, sent, shown or explained to. There is no word for "to"; the case does it.
• The seven weak genitive pronouns are μου, σου, του, της, μας, σας, τους, identical in form to the possessives. Position disambiguates: after a noun = "my/his/her"; before a verb = "to me/him/her".
• Clitics sit immediately before the verb, and after any particle (δεν μου, θα σου, να μας, μην τους). The one exception is the positive imperative, where the clitic follows: Πες μου, Δώσε μου.
• With two clitics, the order is genitive then accusative — μου το έδωσε — the reverse of English.
• With full nouns, the everyday choice is σε + accusative (στον Γιάννη); the full-noun genitive is grammatical but markedly less frequent.
• Clitics cannot be stressed and cannot follow σε, από, με or για. For emphasis use εμένα… μου or σ' εμένα. The learned genitive prepositions (εναντίον, μεταξύ, εξαιτίας) are the one set that does take a clitic.
• In neutral Standard Greek, verbs like τηλεφωνώ/τηλεφωνάω, μιλώ/μιλάω, απαντώ/απαντάω, γράφω, εξηγώ take a genitive weak pronoun for the person, and so do the experiencer verbs αρέσω, λείπω, φαίνομαι. Northern and Pontic accusative indirect objects are a legitimate regional pattern, not the neutral-standard default taught here.