Lesson 4.7 · Verbs
The future
Action still to come.
A final -i puts the action in the
future:
agapati | he will love |
poiami | I will make |
echati | he will have |
zani | we will live |
kai poiami vin halievoin anthrōpoiu.
and I will make you fishers of men. (Matthew 4:19)
Everything in that line is now readable: poiami
"I will make", vin "you" (more than one, on the
receiving end), halievoin "fishers" — plural, on the
receiving end — and anthrōpoiu "of men", plural, "of".
Four down, two to go. You now know
four of the six endings that go on the end of a verb:
ō now, e was going on, a
happened, i will happen. Two more in the next
lesson.In the Greek — the future is its own stem
Greek forms the future by adding -σ- to the verb stem, which collides with whatever consonant is already there and changes it: πέμπω → πέμψω, ἄγω → ἄξω, ἐλπίζω → ἐλπιῶ. It is also the one Greek tense with no aspect choice — there is a future, and that is that, which is exactly how it works here too.