The Greek Verb System: Overview

The verb is where Greek is at its most different from English, and also where it is most systematic. An English verb carries almost no information on its own — write could be first person, second person, plural, present, a command, or the base form after to. A Greek verb, by contrast, packs an enormous amount into a single word: it tells you who is doing the action, when, whether the action is seen as ongoing or complete, whether the subject is doing or undergoing the action, and whether the sentence is a statement, a wish, or a command — all at once, in the ending and the stem. This page is the map of that whole system. It does not teach any one piece in depth; it shows you the terrain and points to the page where each piece is laid out properly.

Five things every Greek verb encodes

The rest of the Verbs section is really just these five columns explored one at a time. Two of them — aspect and the absence of an infinitive — have no clean English equivalent, so they deserve to be flagged before anything else.

Shock one: there is no infinitive

English has a base "dictionary" form of the verb that appears after to and after other verbs: I want *to go, I can swim, it's time to eat*. Greek has no such form at all. Where English reaches for to + verb, Greek uses να + a fully conjugated verb that agrees with its own subject.

Literally these say "I want that I go" and "I can't that I come." The verb after να is not a frozen base form — it is inflected, and if the subject changes, it changes: θέλω να πάω "I want to go" but θέλω να πας "I want you to go." Never look for, or invent, a Greek "infinitive"; the whole apparatus of the language routes around its absence. Why the ancient infinitive died and what replaced it is the subject of The loss of the infinitive, and the machinery of να-clauses lives in the subjunctive section.

Shock two: aspect forces a choice on nearly every form

This is the single hardest and most important thing about the Greek verb, so it gets its own page — but you meet it on day one. Every Greek verb has two stems: an imperfective stem for actions seen as ongoing, repeated or habitual, and a perfective stem for an action seen as a single, complete whole. For γράφω these are γράφ- and γράψ-.

The point that trips up every English speaker: this is not just a past-tense thing. The imperfective/perfective choice runs through the past, the future, the subjunctive and the imperative alike.

Both are future, both are "I will write," but Greek makes you decide what kind of writing you mean and pick a different stem for each. English half-encodes this — "I was writing" vs "I wrote", "used to" for habits — but only in the past, and only sometimes. Greek forces the decision almost everywhere. The concept is on Aspect: the heart of the Greek verb; the concrete stem forms are on The two verb stems.

The two conjugations

Every Greek verb belongs to one of two conjugation classes, and you tell them apart by the stress on the "I" form (1st person singular):

• Class Α (πρώτη συζυγία) ends in unstressed -ω: γράφω, παίζω, τρέχω, διαβάζω. This is the big, regular class.
• Class Β (δεύτερη συζυγία) ends in stressed -άω/-ώ: αγαπώ, μιλάω, μπορώ. Its endings pull the accent onto themselves.

That single stress difference — γράφω vs αγαπώ — is the whole diagnostic, and it decides how the verb behaves in every tense. The two conjugations sets them side by side, and Class Β itself splits into two sub-patterns (αγαπάω vs μπορώ) on Class Β subtypes.

Voice: doing versus undergoing

Greek has two voices. The active looks like γράφω, τρέχω, θέλω. The mediopassive (μεσοπαθητική) has a completely different set of endings — -ομαι, -εσαι, -εται… — and covers the English passive ("it is done"), reflexive and reciprocal meanings, and a large group of everyday verbs that simply only exist in this form.

That έρχομαι has no active form whatsoever is the kind of thing you have to learn up front. The endings themselves are on Mediopassive personal endings; the whole voice system starts at Voice: an overview.

Mood: statement, wish, command

• Indicative — plain statements and questions: γράφεις "you write / you're writing."
• Subjunctive — introduced by να (and by θα for the future), for wishes, purposes, and everything under another verb: θέλω να γράψεις "I want you to write."
• Imperative — direct commands: γράψε! "write!"

Notice how mood and aspect interlock: the command γράψε and the subjunctive να γράψω both use the perfective stem here because each names a single act. Mood is mapped at Mood: an overview.

Why Greek can drop the subject

Because the ending already spells out person and number, the subject pronoun is normally left out. Γράφω is unambiguously "I write" — adding εγώ is only for emphasis or contrast. This is why the personal endings are the highest-value thing to memorise early: they are the pronouns, baked into the verb. See Active personal endings and, for when a pronoun is actually needed, Using subject pronouns.

Common Mistakes

1. Inventing an infinitive after another verb. There is no to + verb in Greek; use να + a conjugated verb.

2. Bolting a pronoun onto every verb. The ending already carries the person; a subject pronoun is emphatic, not obligatory.

3. Stressing a Class Β verb like a Class Α one. The whole point of Class Β is that the stress sits on the ending.

4. Ignoring aspect and using one stem everywhere. "I'll write you a letter" is a single act and needs the perfective γράψω, not the imperfective γράφω.

Where to go next

The foundations (this subgroup)

• The two conjugations — γράφω-type vs αγαπώ-type, told apart by the stress.
• Class Β subtypes — αγαπάω vs μπορώ.
• Aspect: the heart of the verb — the imperfective/perfective idea.
• The two verb stems — how γράφ- becomes γράψ-.
• Active personal endings and Mediopassive personal endings — the two ending sets.
• The tense system map, the augment, and verb accent rules.

Start conjugating: the present tense

• The active present by class: Class Α, Class Β1, Class Β2, and what the present is used for.
• The two verbs you need first: είμαι (to be) and έχω (to have).
• Negating with δεν and asking questions.

Then the rest of the machinery, one dimension at a time

• Tense/aspect in action: the aspect section, the future, the imperfect and the aorist.
• Mood: the subjunctive with να and the imperative.
• Voice: the passive/mediopassive section and deponent verbs.
• The compound tenses: the perfect with έχω and the conditional with θα.
• The four little words that carry it all: θα, να, ας, μη(ν).
• When a verb refuses to follow the pattern: irregular verbs, and the one-verb lookup cards in the verb reference.

Key Takeaways

• A single Greek verb encodes five things at once: person/number, tense, aspect, voice, and mood.
• There is no infinitive: to + verb becomes να + a conjugated verb (θέλω να πάω).
• Aspect is the spine — imperfective vs perfective — and it forces a stem choice across the past, future, subjunctive and imperative, not just the past.
• Verbs come in two conjugations, told apart by the stress on the 1sg: unstressed -ω (γράφω) vs stressed -άω/-ώ (αγαπώ).
• Two voices (active, mediopassive) with two entirely different ending sets; some verbs live only in the mediopassive.
• The ending carries person and number, so subject pronouns are dropped by default.