Lesson 4.1 · Verbs
Verb structure
Stem, voice, person, mood, tense — one slot each, always in that order.
A verb is built exactly like a noun: a stem, then markers on the end. It just has more of them, because a verb carries more information — including who is doing it, which in English takes a separate word.
Here is one, whole:
luamō — "I loose". Four letters after the stem would
be five, except that one box is empty: a plain statement adds
nothing for mood, which is why this word has four pieces and not
five. You will meet that box in Part 6.
A verb can be a whole sentence
Because the person is built into the word, you do not need a separate "I" or "he":
agapamō.
I love. — one word, complete.
When a separate word for "I" or "he" does appear, it is
adding emphasis, not filling a gap:
mis agapamō is "I love".
Reading order
The two markers you will lean on most are the last letter (when it happened) and the letter just before the middle (who did it). Get into the habit of reading a verb from both ends:
| Word | Front | Middle | End |
|---|---|---|---|
agapatō | agap- love | t = he/she/it | ō = now |
agapata | agap- love | t = he/she/it | a = past |
agapanō | agap- love | n = we | ō = now |
In the Greek — why verbs are the hard part
A Greek verb marks the same facts, but fuses them into endings that cannot be taken apart: -ουσιν says "they", present, active and indicative all at once, and a different fusion applies in every tense. On top of that the stem itself changes — λύω, ἔλυσα, λέλυκα, ἐλύθην are one verb — and past tenses add a syllable to the front (ἔ-λυον). Learning a Greek verb traditionally means learning six "principal parts" for it.
Here there are none: one stem, and one marker per fact, always spelled the same and always in the same order.