No Infinitive: The να-Clause

Of everything that makes Greek feel structurally alien to an English speaker, this is the big one: Modern Greek has no infinitive. There is no single word for "to go", "to eat", "to be". Ask "what's the infinitive of φεύγω?" and the honest answer is: there isn't one. Where English reaches for to + verb, Greek reaches for a small word, να, followed by an ordinary, fully conjugated verb. Get comfortable with this one substitution and a startling amount of Greek suddenly clicks.

The substitution: να + a finite verb

English keeps the second verb frozen: I want to leave, you want to leave, they want to leave — to leave never changes. Greek can't do that, because it has no frozen form to use. So it conjugates the second verb too, and links the two with να:

Read the Greek literally and it says "I want that I-leave." The να is doing the job of English to, and φύγω is a real first-person verb ("I leave"), not an infinitive. This is why beginners' instinct to hunt for "the infinitive form" leads nowhere — the slot is filled by a conjugated verb every time.

Same subject: the να-verb echoes the main verb

When both verbs share a subject ("I want to go" — I want, I go), the να-verb simply repeats the person of the main verb. Watch the pair move together through the persons:

Both verbs carry the same person: θέλω … πάω, θέλεις … πας, and so on. English lets want change while to go stays put; Greek changes both.

Different subject: the killer feature

Here is where Greek pulls decisively away from English. Because the να-verb carries its own person ending, its subject can be different from the main verb's — and Greek marks that difference with nothing but the ending. Compare:

Same main verb, θέλω ("I want"). The only thing that changed is φύγω → φύγεις, and with it the whole meaning: I leave versus you leave. English needs a whole extra pronoun-object construction ("I want you to…"); Greek just re-points the second verb's ending. The same trick works after any verb of wishing, hoping or asking:

Everywhere English uses "to + verb"

Because να is the stand-in for the infinitive, it turns up after the whole family of verbs that English follows with to: modals, verbs of wanting, verbs of motion-with-purpose, verbs of starting and stopping, and verbs of knowing-how.

The particular verbs that take να, and the ones that instead take ότι/πως ("that") for a plain fact, are mapped on να after modals and the broader subjunctive overview.

The να-verb still chooses its aspect

Since the verb after να is a real verb, it also carries an aspect choice — imperfective (ongoing/repeated) or perfective (one complete act). Θέλω να μιλάω ελληνικά κάθε μέρα pictures habitual speaking; Θέλω να μιλήσω με τον διευθυντή pictures a single conversation. This layer is covered on aspect in the subjunctive and the general aspect overview.

The one fossil: the perfect's frozen form

The old infinitive did leave a single fingerprint. Inside the perfect tenses, the second element — γράψει in έχω γράψει (I have written) — is an invariant form called the aparémfato. It looks like an infinitive and never changes for person: the person is carried entirely by the auxiliary έχω.

Notice έχω γράψει, έχεις γράψει, έχει γράψει — only έχω moves; γράψει is frozen. But this form is not a free-standing infinitive: you cannot use γράψει on its own to mean "to write". It exists only welded to έχω/είχα. Its story is on the aparémfato.

Why Greek, and not English, lost it

Ancient Greek had a rich infinitive (γράφειν, "to write") — but over the medieval period it withered away and was replaced by να-clauses. This wasn't an isolated Greek quirk: it is a shared feature of the Balkan language area, and Bulgarian, Macedonian, Romanian and southern Albanian all lost or curtailed their infinitives the same way. No Western European language did this, which is exactly why the construction has no natural echo for an English, French, German or Spanish speaker — those languages all kept their infinitives intact.

Common Mistakes

1. Dropping να and juxtaposing two bare verbs. English "want to go" tempts you to write "want go"; Greek always needs the να.

2. Adding an object pronoun for the second subject, English-style. "I want you to leave" is not θέλω + "you" + leave; the "you" is inside the ending.

3. Using the frozen perfect form as a free-standing infinitive. γράψει only lives after έχω; on its own you need να + a conjugated verb.

Key Takeaways

• Modern Greek has no infinitive — there is no single word for "to go".
• English to + verb becomes να + a conjugated verb: θέλω να φύγω = "I want to leave".
• The να-verb agrees with its own subject, so θέλω να φύγω ("I leave") and θέλω να φύγεις ("you leave") differ only by that ending — never add an object pronoun.
• The verb after να also picks an aspect (να μιλάω vs να μιλήσω).
• The only relic of the old infinitive is the frozen γράψει inside the perfect (έχω γράψει) — and it is welded to έχω, never used alone.