The Imperfect and the Future

Until now every verb in this course has lived in the present. Real stories happen in the past, and plans happen in the future, so this lesson adds two tenses at once. The imperfect is a past tense of action in progress. The future is exactly what it sounds like. They share one idea worth getting right on day one: a Greek tense tells you when and also what kind of action.

Reading the brackets: the capitalized syllable carries the accent, ē is eta (an open "e" held long), ō is omega (an open "o" held long), ü is upsilon (French "u"), ē also stands for ει (Lesson 2), oo is ου, kh, th and ph are k, t and p with a puff of breath, zd is ζ, and h marks a rough breathing. This is the restored Attic key from Lesson 2.

Tense and aspect in one picture

English mostly uses tense for time. Greek uses it for time and for aspect, which means the way the speaker looks at the action: as a process still going, as a single whole event, or as a finished act with a lasting result. The imperfect is past time plus ongoing aspect. You will meet the snapshot aspect (the aorist) in Lesson 13 and the completed aspect (the perfect) in Lesson 15.

The augment: how Greek marks the past

An augment is a mark on the front of a verb that means "past time." It appears only in the indicative (the mood of plain statements and questions) and only in the past tenses: imperfect, aorist and pluperfect. Smyth sections 428 to 437 lay out the rules. There are two kinds.

Syllabic augment: verbs that start with a consonant

Put ε- in front. The word gains a syllable, which is why it is called syllabic.

That last one is a trap. A verb starting with ρ doubles the ρ after the augment, and the rough breathing disappears because ρ is no longer first: ῥίπτω, ἔρριπτον.

Temporal augment: verbs that start with a vowel

Lengthen the first vowel. Nothing is added, but the first syllable takes longer to say, so the old grammarians called it "temporal" (having to do with time, meaning length). With diphthongs, the first vowel of the pair lengthens and an ι moves under as iota subscript.

Vowels that are already long (η, ω, long ι and υ) cannot get any longer, so you see no change. Smyth 437 notes that ει and ευ are sometimes left unaugmented (εἴκαζον beside ᾔκαζον, "I was guessing"), and ου never takes an augment.

A handful of irregulars to learn now

Some verbs once began with a consonant that later vanished (an old "w" sound called digamma, or an "s"). They still augment as if it were there. The one you need today is ἔχω [E-khō], I have, whose imperfect is εἶχον [Ē-khon], "I had, I was holding." Smyth 431 lists the rest, and you will pick them up from reading.

Compound verbs: augment after the prefix

Many verbs carry a preposition glued to the front (you met the prepositions in Lesson 11). The augment belongs to the verb, so it goes between the prefix and the verb. Prefixes ending in a vowel lose it (except περί and πρό), ἐκ becomes ἐξ before the vowel, and συν- or ἐν- that changed shape to match the next consonant goes back to its basic form (Smyth 449).

The imperfect of λύω

The imperfect is built on the present stem (λυ-) with the augment in front and a set of past endings called secondary endings. Here are the active and the middle/passive side by side. As in the present, one set of forms serves for both middle and passive, and context decides.

Notice three things. First, ἔλυον is both "I was loosing" and "they were loosing." The subject, or the context, tells you which. Second, the movable ν on ἔλυε(ν) works the way it does on λύουσι(ν): Attic adds it before a vowel or at the end of a sentence. Third, the middle endings -όμην, -ου, -ετο, -όμεθα, -εσθε, -οντο are worth chanting aloud until they stick, because the aorist middle and many other past forms reuse them.

The deponent verbs from Lesson 9 behave the same way. βούλομαι [BOO-lo-mai], I want, has the imperfect ἐβουλόμην [e-boo-LO-mēn], "I wanted, I was wanting." Smyth 430 adds that later Attic sometimes writes ἠβουλόμην, with η, and you will see both.

The imperfect of εἰμί

The verb "to be" is irregular in every language, and Greek keeps the tradition. Its imperfect has no thematic vowel and must simply be learned.

Older Attic (Plato's generation) prefers ἦ for "I was," and later writers prefer ἦν. Either way, ἦν as "he was" or "there was" is one of the most common words in Greek prose. Stories start with it: ἦν ποτε... [ĒN po-te], "there was once..."

What the imperfect means

Because its aspect is ongoing, the imperfect covers several English shapes. Pick the one the context wants.

• Progressive: ὁ δοῦλος τὸν ἵππον ἔλυεν. "The slave was untying the horse."
• Repeated or habitual: ὁ διδάσκαλος τοὺς παῖδας ἐπαίδευεν. "The teacher used to teach the boys" or "kept teaching them."
• Attempted (conative): ἔπειθον αὐτούς, οἱ δὲ οὐκ ἐπείθοντο. "I was trying to persuade them, but they would not obey."
• Beginning (inceptive): ἐπεὶ ἦλθεν ὁ ἄγγελος, ἔλεγεν. "When the messenger came, he began to speak."

Vocabulary used above: δοῦλος [DOO-los] slave; ἵππος [HIP-pos] horse; διδάσκαλος [di-DAS-ka-los] teacher; παῖς [PAIS] child, boy (a third declension noun you will meet properly in Lesson 14); πείθω [PĒ-thō] I persuade, and in the middle πείθομαι [PĒ-tho-mai] I obey, trust; ἄγγελος [ANG-ge-los] messenger; λέγω [LE-gō] I say, speak.

The future

The future is the friendliest tense in Greek. For a verb like λύω you add -σ- to the stem and then use the present endings you already know. No augment, because the future is not a past tense.

λύομαι in the middle means "I loose for myself," and the classic use is ransoming a prisoner: you get him loosed for your own benefit. The future passive is a separate formation (λυθήσομαι, "I will be loosed") built on the aorist passive, so set it aside until you have that tense.

The future of εἰμί

"I will be" is middle in form and has one oddity in the third singular, where the thematic vowel is missing.

The sigmatic future when the stem ends in a consonant

"Sigmatic" just means "with a sigma." When a stem ends in a vowel, the σ sits there politely. When the stem ends in a consonant, the σ collides with it and the spelling changes. These are the same sound rules that will build the aorist in Lesson 13, so learning them now pays twice. Smyth 537 is the reference.

Two notes on that table. πράττω is the Attic spelling. Ionic writers such as Herodotus and the later common Greek (Koine) write πράσσω, the same way Attic θάλαττα is θάλασσα elsewhere. The stem is πραγ-, which is why the future has ξ. And τιμάω, ποιέω, δηλόω are contract verbs, whose present forms squeeze vowels together. You do not need their present yet. Just notice that the future ignores the contraction and lengthens the vowel.

Liquid futures: no σ at all

Verbs whose stem ends in λ, μ, ν or ρ (the liquids and nasals) do not take a plain σ. They add -εσ-, the σ falls out between vowels, and the vowels contract. The result looks like a contract verb with a circumflex.

Compare μένει [ME-nē], "he stays," with μενεῖ [me-NĒ], "he will stay." Only the accent tells them apart, which is a good argument for learning accents. Others like it: ἀγγέλλω [ang-GEL-lō] I announce, ἀγγελῶ [ang-ge-LŌ]; φαίνω [PHAI-nō] I show, φανῶ [pha-NŌ].

Futures that are middle in form

A number of very common verbs are active in the present but have a middle future with active meaning. You translate them as ordinary futures.

Look hard at the last line. πείσομαι is also the future of πείθομαι, "I obey." Same spelling, two verbs. Greek readers sort it out from context, and you will do the same in the reading below.

ἔχω has a future with a rough breathing, ἕξω [HEK-sō], "I will have." The old lost "s" at the front of the stem shows up again as h.

Principal parts, first glimpse

A Greek dictionary lists each verb by several key forms called principal parts. Every other form is built from one of them. There are six in all, and you now know the first two: the present (λύω) and the future (λύσω). The imperfect is not a principal part, because you build it from the present. By Lesson 20 you will have all six. For now, when you learn a verb, learn its future with it: πέμπω, πέμψω; ἄγω, ἄξω; μένω, μενῶ.