Lesson 3.1: Cases, Genders and Number

This lesson aims to outline cases, gender and number.

Gender

Greek has three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter.

The gender of the noun may or may not be a reflection of its gender in real life. In the case of animals and people, which both have easily defined genders, it follows. There are however many occasions where there is no obvious reason for the gender. The gender is just a grammatical feature of the language.

Case

Whereas in English only pronouns have cases (I/me/my), in Greek all nouns have four cases (πτώσεις), which are indicated by changing their endings. The endings provide a clue to the noun's grammatical role in the sentence.

Ancient Greek had separate cases for direct objects (the accusative) and indirect objects (the dative), but in modern Greek a single case is used for both (except in a few cases where the genitive, rather than the accusative, is used for indirect objects).

Number

Number just gives an idea of the how many of the noun are involved. Number is either Singular or Plural.

The concepts of all the cases are introduced below. But only the nominative, subject, and accusative, object, are presented for the moment in the lesson. The other two cases follow shortly.

Articles

The sentence uses articles. Articles are always present in English. Articles come in two varieties definite and indefinite. The definite article is: the for both singular and plural. As the name implies, gives an indication of a specific object or person. The indefinite articles are: a or some in the plural. Once again the name indicates the role in grammar. If we simply consider the difference between the bag and a bag, it becomes clear. The bag implies a bag that those in the conversation are familiar with. Whereas a bag implies just a bag that no one is necessarily knows anything about. The plural indefinite article does not exist in Greek.

The use of articles is different to English. Articles are used more often in Greek than in English. They are even used before names.

Before getting into the precise details let us present an example of the cases in English.

The sentence could also be expressed as: The man has the girl's bag. "girl's" is still the genitive case. The form used above is closer to the Greek. The following sentence uses a vocative.

Summary

• We have introduced the idea of gender (masculine, feminine and neuter).
• We have introduced the idea of case (nominative, accusative, genitive).
• We have introduced the idea of number (singular and plural).
• We have introduced the idea of the article, and that it changes with all of the above.

Exercises

Now try the exercises here