Second Conjugation Verbs in Greek

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While learning Greek, you may realize that verbs are essential to every sentence. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to express what you want! In the Greek language, it isn’t enough to know what the verbs themselves are. Like most languages, you need to learn how to conjugate them.

Verbs need to agree in number and gender to the rest of the sentence. In English, the verb “to read” would be conjugated as I read, you read, he, she, it reads, we read, you (plural) read, they read. The same thing happens in Greek.  In a previous article, we talked about the first conjugation verbs. Today, we’ll discuss the second conjugation.

What is a Verb?

Before you can learn to conjugate the verbs, you need to know what a verb is. Webster’s Dictionary describes a verb as:

a word that characteristically is the grammatical center of a predicate and expresses an act, occurrence, or mode of being, that in various languages is inflected for agreement with the subject, for tense, for voice, for mood, or for aspect, and that typically has rather full descriptive meaning and characterizing quality but is sometimes nearly devoid of these especially when used as an auxiliary or linking verb

Although this definition was created with the English language in mind, the same is true for Greek.

Second Conjugation of Verbs in Greek

Second Conjugation Verbs, also referred to as Group 2 verbs, are those that are conjugated a certain way based on where the accent in the word falls. In this case, the verb would end with “ώ” or an “Omega” with an accent over it. Here’s a look at some common verbs that are in this group:

• Γελώ – gelo – I laugh
• αγαπώ – agapo – I love
• Απαντώ – apando – I answer
• πηδώ – pitho – I jump

Here’s a look at how these verbs are conjugated, using one of the verbs as an example:

• αγαπώ – agapo – I love
• αγαπάς – agapas –  you love
• αγαπά – agapa – he, she, it loves
• αγαπάμε – agapame – we love
• αγαπάτε – agapate – you (pl) love
• αγαπούν – agapoon – they love

This is how all the second group of verbs are changed. Your best bet is to memorize these, but you don’t need to spend too much time on it. You’ll start to understand it with repeat exposure.

The Learn Greek section on GreekBoston.com was written by Greeks to help people understand the conversational basics of the Greek language. This article is not a substitute for a professional Greek learning program, but a helpful resource for people wanting to learn simple communication in Greek.

Categorized in: Learn How to Speak Basic Greek

This post was written by Greek Boston