Lesson 3.2 · Words that go with nouns
Adjectives
Describing words, and how they agree with the noun they describe.
Words like good, holy, eternal and great take exactly the same endings as nouns, and they agree with the word they describe: same gender, same number, same job.
tos poimēnos tos kalos
the good shepherd (John 10:11)
Every word in that phrase ends the same way, because all three belong together. Now put the whole phrase on the receiving end of a verb and all three change together:
| doing it | done to | |
|---|---|---|
| masculine | tos kalos logos | ton kalon logon |
| feminine | tas kalas agapas | tan kalan agapan |
| neuter | tem kalem bibliem | tem kalem bibliem |
A describing word takes its noun's gender, not its own
This is the one thing to get straight. A noun's gender is fixed forever; a describing word has no gender of its own and simply borrows whichever one it needs:
zōan aiōnian
eternal life (John 3:16) — "life" is feminine and
on the receiving end, so "eternal" is feminine and on the
receiving end too.
In the Greek — agreement, minus the classes
Greek adjectives agree the same way, and this is one of the things that makes Greek readable at all. What Greek adds is paperwork: adjectives come in patterns of their own (καλός, καλή, καλόν versus ἀληθής, ἀληθές versus πᾶς, πᾶσα, πᾶν), and the adjective's endings need not look like its noun's — ἡ ὁδὸς ἡ ἀγαθή pairs a feminine noun in -ος with a feminine adjective in -η. Here the vowel is the same vowel on both.
Practice
- Make "the good word" (
agath-good) as the thing being done to. - In
tan agapan tan kalan, how many words are feminine? - What tells you
aiōniangoes withzōanand not with something else?
Show the answers
ton agathon logon.- All three —
t·a·n,agap·a·n,kal·a·n. They agree completely. - They match: both feminine, both singular, both on the receiving end.