The Article and Agreement

English has one word for "the." Greek has seventeen different spellings of it, spread over twenty-four slots. That sounds like bad news. It is the best news in the language, because the article tells you the gender, number and case of its noun before you even reach the noun. Learn the article cold and half of every Greek sentence starts parsing itself.

The definite article is the word "the." Greek has no word for "a" or "an." ἄνθρωπος [AN-thrō-pos] alone means "a person" or just "person"; ὁ ἄνθρωπος [ho AN-thrō-pos] means "the person."

All the forms of ὁ ἡ τό

Dictionaries and grammars name the article by its three nominative singular forms: ὁ ἡ τό [ho hē TO], masculine, feminine, neuter. Here is the whole thing. Smyth sets it out in section 332 of his Greek Grammar, and every textbook since has the same forms, because these are facts of the language.

There is no vocative article. When Greeks addressed someone they used the interjection ὦ [Ō], "O," as in ὦ ἄνθρωπε [Ō AN-thrō-pe], "sir!" or "my good man!" Greek also had a dual number for pairs, with article forms τώ and τοῖν. Smyth notes that the feminine duals are very rare in the authors. The dual is fading even in classical Attic, and this course sets it aside until you meet it in reading.

Patterns that do the memorizing for you

• Masculine and neuter copy the second declension. Compare τοῦ / λόγου, τῷ / λόγῳ, τῶν / λόγων, τοῖς / λόγοις, τούς / λόγους. The masculine article is the -ος noun ending with a τ in front.
• Feminine copies τιμή. τῆς / τιμῆς, τῇ / τιμῇ, τήν / τιμήν, ταῖς / τιμαῖς, τάς / τιμάς.
• Neuter nominative and accusative are always the same. τό and τό, τά and τά. This is true of every neuter word in Greek, which means a neuter subject and a neuter object can look identical. Word sense and the verb sort them out.
• Every genitive plural is τῶν. One form for all genders, circumflex on the ω.
• Four forms start with a rough breathing and no τ: ὁ, ἡ, οἱ, αἱ. These are the masculine and feminine nominatives. Every other form starts with τ.

The accents on the article

Two things from lesson 3 come into play here. First, ὁ ἡ οἱ αἱ have no accent at all. Smyth calls such words proclitics: short words that lean forward onto the next word and borrow its accent. You say ὁ λόγος [ho LO-gos] as if it were one word.

Second, an acute on the last syllable turns grave when another word follows in the same sentence. The table shows the forms as they appear on their own, with acutes. In a phrase you will write τὸν λόγον, τὴν χώραν, τὸ δῶρον, τὰ δῶρα, τοὺς λόγους, τὰς τιμάς. The circumflex forms (τοῦ, τῆς, τῷ, τῇ, τῶν, τοῖς, ταῖς) never change.

Agreement: words that belong together match

Agreement means that words belonging to one phrase share the same gender, number and case. The article agrees with its noun in all three. A feminine noun in the genitive singular takes the feminine genitive singular article. A neuter plural accusative takes the neuter plural accusative. No exceptions.

Here are the five nouns from lessons 5 and 6, now wearing their articles. Read every line aloud. Notice the graves.

θάλαττα is the Attic spelling. Ionic writers such as Herodotus and Homer, and the later common Greek (Koine), write θάλασσα [THA-las-sa]. Same word, same endings, -σσ- for -ττ-.

When the endings do not rhyme

Agreement is about gender, number and case. It is not about spelling. Most of the time the article and noun happen to look alike, which lulls beginners into matching letters instead of grammar. Then two kinds of noun break the habit.

Feminine nouns of the second declension. A small group of -ος nouns are feminine. They decline exactly like λόγος but take feminine articles and feminine adjectives. Smyth lists them in section 232. The ones you will see soonest are ἡ ὁδός [hē ho-DOS] road, ἡ νῆσος [hē NĒ-sos] island, and ἡ βίβλος [hē BIB-los] book (a papyrus roll).

Masculine nouns of the first declension. A group of nouns in -ης and -ας are masculine but use mostly first declension endings. Examples: ὁ πολίτης [ho po-LĪ-tēs] citizen, ὁ ναύτης [ho NAU-tēs] sailor, ὁ νεανίας [ho ne-ā-NI-ās] young man.

Look at τοῦ πολίτου. The genitive ending -ου comes from the second declension, borrowed by these masculines. Look at τῆς ὁδοῦ, where a feminine article sits on an ending that looks masculine. These pairs are your proof that the article follows the noun's gender, not its spelling.

This is why every Greek dictionary lists a noun with three pieces of information: the nominative, the genitive ending, and the article. ὁδός, -οῦ, ἡ tells you the noun is second declension and feminine. Learn every new noun that way, out loud: "ho-DOS, ho-DOO, hē."

New words for this lesson

Some of these words are on every list of the most common words in Greek. The Dickinson College Commentaries core vocabulary ranks ὁ ἡ τό first, καί third, δέ fourth and μέν ... δέ tenth (second place goes to αὐτός, lesson 10). That is a fair hint about where your study hours pay off.

What the article does in a sentence

It marks a definite thing, and more than English allows

ὁ ἵππος is "the horse." ἵππος alone is "a horse." So far, so English. But Greek also uses the article in places English leaves it out.

• With names. ὁ Θεόδωρος [ho the-O-dō-ros] means simply "Theodoros." Plato writes ὁ Σωκράτης for Socrates, often when the person is already known in the conversation. Do not translate it.
• With abstract and general nouns. ἡ τιμή can mean "honor" in general. ὁ ἄνθρωπος can mean "the human being" as a type, "mankind."
• As a possessive. When the owner is obvious, the article does the job of "his," "her" or "my." ὁ Θεόδωρος τὴν ἀδελφὴν ... means "Theodoros ... his sister." Greek does not bother to say "his" when nobody could doubt whose.

Its absence marks a predicate

Smyth states a rule that saves beginners a lot of grief: a predicate noun has no article (section 1150). A predicate noun is the noun on the far side of "is," the thing the subject is said to be. So in ὁ Θεόδωρος ἀδελφός ἐστιν, "Theodoros is a brother," the word with the article is the subject and the bare word is the predicate. When two nominatives sit side by side, look for the article.

Greek can also leave "is" out entirely. ὁ θεὸς φίλος [ho the-os PHI-los] is a complete sentence: "The god is a friend." The article tells you which word is the subject.

It makes a descriptive slot

Anything placed between an article and its noun describes the noun. Smyth calls this the attributive position (section 1154). A genitive fits there neatly:

It turns almost anything into a noun

Put the article in front of a word or phrase and the whole thing becomes a substantive, something used as a noun (Smyth 1153). You will meet this on every page of real Greek.

• τὰ τοῦ Θεοδώρου [ta TOO the-o-DŌ-roo] "the things of Theodoros," his belongings, his affairs
• τὰ τῆς νήσου [ta TĒS NĒ-soo] "the affairs of the island"
• οἱ τότε [hoi TO-te] "the people of that time" (τότε means "then")

The gender of the article tells you what kind of noun to supply. Masculine plural οἱ means "the men" or "the people." Neuter plural τά means "the things." Feminine ἡ often stands for a feminine noun understood from context, such as ὁδός or χώρα.

The article as a pronoun

The article began life as a pointing word, "this one, that one," and in Homer it still mostly works that way. In Attic prose that old force survives in a few fixed patterns with the little words μέν and δέ (Smyth 1106 to 1112).

μέν and δέ are postpositive: they never stand first in a clause and usually come second. μέν marks the first half of a contrast and often goes untranslated. δέ marks the second half, or simply links a new sentence to the last one.

The Xenophon line uses past tense verbs you have not learned yet, which is why the meaning is given. Look only at οἱ μὲν ... οἱ δʼ. The second δέ has lost its ε before the vowel of εἵποντο, a process called elision that lesson 11 covers.

The lone ὁ δέ deserves special attention. Smyth notes (section 1112) that in the nominative it usually points to someone different from the last subject. A story says "Cyrus gave him money," then ὁ δέ, "and he," meaning the man who received it. When you see ὁ δέ or ἡ δέ at the start of a clause with no noun following, read "and he" or "and she," and look back for a new person.