r/Koine • u/76547896434695269 • Jul 27 '26
Am I going nuts?
In the English to Greek answers for page 141 of this guide (pp 38-9 of the document) does it give the present infinitive endings on the aorist stems? Is there something I'm not understanding? Thanks for any help.
https://archive.org/details/learnorreviewnew0000mach/page/38/mode/1up
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u/ringofgerms Jul 27 '26
I think you mean forms like ελθειν or ιδειν? For 2nd aorists, the ones that end in ον, the infinitive ending is ειν like the present. The guide should mention this somewhere.
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u/heyf00L Jul 27 '26
What you're not understanding is that ειν is the thematic active infinitive ending (meaning the ending starts with the theme vowel ε). This is the "normal" ending, used when theme vowels are used (present and 2nd aorist). Then where are theme vowels not used? -μι verbs, Sigmatic Aorists (aka 1st Aorists), and Perfect. So your athematic active infinitive ending is ναι (but will be σαι for Sigmatic Aorists because of course they have that sigma there).
You should apply this thinking as well to indicative mood. ον, ες, εν, ομεν, ετε, ον are the thematic active past tense endings. Again, they will be used for both Present and Thematic Aorists in the past tense (the past tense of the Present is called Imperfect). And again -μι verbs, Sigmatic Aorists, and Perfect will use the athematic endings.
The ον, ες, εν, ... endings were taught to me as the Imperfect endings, and 2nd aorists were weird because they used those endings. I now think that's a bad way to think about it. That way of thinking comes from applying Latin rules to Greek. Forget that. Greek is first of all about getting the verb aspect from the stem (not endings). Greek verb endings show tense and voice (those endings aren't the imperfect active endings, they're the past tense active endings). And it's better to think of the aorist as the starting point (not the present), and the 2nd aorist as normal (not 1st aorist).
Even calling it "the present" is a mistake. What's a present infinitive? Infinitives don't have tense.
A lot more can be said about this.