Learn Greek Online!: are there 3 sets of the 3 adjectives. i will explain more

Every Greek noun has a grammatical gender. There are 3 grammatical genders in Greek: masculine, feminine, and neuter. In addition, there are 4 grammatical cases in Modern Greek: nominative, accusative, genitive, and vocative, in both singular and plural number. Because of the requirement for grammatical agreement, adjectives (as well as pronouns, articles, and certain numbers) are inflected to agree with the gender, number, and case of their noun. This results in the differing kinds of inflectional endings, both singular and plural, that you ask about.

While the majority of Modern Greek adjectives fall into the -ος, -η, -ο inflectional pattern (for example, sg. καλός, -ή, -ό; pl. καλοί, -ές, -ά), there are a number of other adjective patterns, such as:
-ος, -α, -ο (sg. ωραίος, -α, -ο; pl. ωραίοι, -ες, -α)
-ης, -α, -ικο (sg. τεμπέλης, -α, -ικο; pl. τεμπέληδες, -ες, -ικα)
-ύς, -ιά, -ύ (sg. βαθύς, -ιά, -ύ; pl. βαθιοί, -ιές, -ιά)
-ύς, -εία, -ύ (sg. ταχύς, -εία, -ύ; pl. ταχείς, -είες, -έα)
-ης, -ης, -ες (sg. διεθνής, -ής, -ές; pl. διεθνείς, -είς, -ή)
-ων, -ων, -ον (sg. σώφρων, -ων, -ον; pl. σώφρονες, -ονες, -ονα)
-ων, -ουσα, -ον (sg. ενδιαφέρων, -ουσα, -ον; pl. ενδιαφέροντες, -ουσες, -οντα)
-ας, -ασα, -αν (sg. λήξας, -ασα, -αν; λήξαντες, -ασες, -αντα)
-είς, -είσα, -έν (sg. κατατεθείς, -είσα, -έν; pl. κατατεθέντες, -είσες, -έντα),
most of which either derive from or continue unchanged from the ancient Greek language.

The various inflectional patterns for nouns, adjectives, pronouns, articles, and numbers in Modern Greek will be presented in the Lessons of the LGO course.

Hope this helps,
Greg Brush

[originally posted Sunday, 19 May 2013, 08:01 AM]

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