CONTENTS. II. Of Words, and first of the Article III. Of Nouns Substantive and their Declensions IV. Of the Gender of Nouns Substantive V. Of Heteroclites, or Irregular Nouns VI. Of Nouns Cognate, Feminine, Patronymics, Gentiles, Possessives, Am- plificatives, Diminutives, Verbals, and Compounds XI. Of the Passive Voice of Verbs in w, and first of the Auxiliary Verb ɛu XII. Of the Middle Voice of Verbs in w, and of the Deponent Verb XXII. General Observations for rendering Greek into English XXIII. Of Dialects, and particularly of the Attic XXIV. A Grammatical Praxis on the first Chapter of St. John's Gospel P A PLAIN AND EASY GREEK GRAMMAR, &c. SECTION I. Of the LETTERS and READING. 1.THE Letters in Greek are twenty-four, of which the following 2. Writing over the letters several times is the best way of making them familiar to the Learner, who should also, as he is going through the Grammar, continually exercise himself in reading. 3. I before 7, x, and 2, is sounded like n, as in afyɛños angelos, ayxaλŋ ancalee, avye lunx, 87x05 enchos. 4. T before is pronounced like the Eng. wh, thus vos pronounce whios. Comp. Rule 11. below. 5. Of the Greek letters these seven, a, ɛ, y), i, o, u, w, are vowels, the remaining seven teen are consonants. 6. The vowels, in respect to quantity or time in pronouncing, are divided into long, n, w; short, t, o; doubtful, a, i, v. 7. Diphthongs (A149fy, i e. double sounds) are formed of two vowels joined together, and in Greek may be reckoned twelve; six proper, ai, au, εl, Eu, oi, où; and six improper, a, n, w, o, u, wu; the little stroke under a, 7, w, standing for Iota, and being called Lota subscribed, or subscript. T, ♪, 0; four liquids, made of y5, xs, or 8. The Consonants are divided into nine mutes, 7, C, O; ×, Y, X; λ, μ, v, p; σ, and three double letters, 2 made of ds, or ad; X5; and, of us, es, or 45. 9. The nine Mutes are divided into tenues, or smooth, π, x, τ; media, or intermediate, b, y, d; and aspirate, or rough, 4, x. ; of which the labials, or lip-letters, 7, 6, 9; the palatines, or palate-letters, x, y, x; and the dentals, or teeth-letters,, d, 0, are related respectively, and frequently exchanged for each other, i. e. one labial for another labial, as for or ; one palatine for another palatine, as x for or ; or one dental for another dental, as for ♪ or 0. γ 10. If in a word one Mute follows another, a tenuis is put before a tenuis, a media before a media, and an aspirate before an aspirate, as Tetuniai, for TETUØral, he was smitten; dopos, for inlopos, the seventh; εTUCOy, for ETUTTIYY, I was smitten. 11. Every word having a vowel or diphthong for the first letter i, in most printed books, marked at the beginning either with an aspirate, i. e. a rough breathing (*), as, ¿pos pronounce horos, or with a smooth one ('), as opos pronounce oros. 12. The former only of these breathings is of necessary use, and may be considered as a real letter, which was anciently written H, + then, and for expedition ('); whence the other side of the letter,, in quick writing ('), was taken to denote the smooth breathing. 13. Almost all words beginning with u or are aspirated, or marked with a rough breathing; and if there be two ps in the middle of a word, the former is marked with a smooth, the latter with a rough, breathing, as eppwow pronounce errhoso, woppu porrho. 14. As the little marks over words called Accents are by no means necessary, either for the pronouncing (so far, I mean, as we moderns can pronounce it) or understanding of the Greek language, I shall only observe concerning them, that the Acute ( ́) marks the elevation of the voice in a syllable, the Grave (`) the depression of it, and the Circumflex (^) first the elevation of the voice, then the depression of it, in the same syllable, and is therefore placed only on long syllables. 15. A Diæresis (") divides diphthongs, and shews that the vowels are to be sounded separate; as auπvos, pronounce a-upnos. 16. A Diastole (,) distinguishes one word from another; thus TO,TE and the is distinguished from TOTE them. *See the Lexicon under this letter H. + See Montfaucon's Palæographia Græca, p. 33, 275, 278. Thus many words used by our Saxon ancestors begin with hr, as hracode ragged, hɲeap raw, breed a reed, &c. 17. An Apostrophe (') is the mark of the vowels a, e, i, o, or more rarely of the diphthongs a, i, being rejected at the end of a word, when the word following begins with a vowel, as anλ' yw for añλa yw; and observe, that if the first vowel of the second word have an aspirate breathing, a preceding tenuis or smooth consonant must be changed into it's correspondent aspirate or rough one (comp. above 11.), as ap' jjuwv for anо juwv, x' day for vuxia iλny. Comp. above 10. 18. N is frequently added to words ending in & or, if the next word begins with a vowel, to prevent the concurrence of two vowels, as εικοσιν ανδρες for εικοσι άνδρες twenty men, τυπίεσιν αυτον for τυπίεσι αυτον they beat him, εδωκεν αυτῳ for έδωκε αυτή he gave to him. 19. A letter or syllable is called pure which has a vowel, and impure which has a consonant, before it, thus w in wow is pure, in TUπlw, impure. 20. The manner in which most Greek books were formerly printed makes it necessary to add A Table of the most usual ABBREVIATIONS or LIGATURES, which see fronting page! 21 As to the Greek Punctuation, that language, in it's present form, has four marks or stops, the full stop and comma as in English, a dot placed towards the upper part of the word, and serving both for a colon and semicolon, as λoyos and the mark of interrogation resembling our semicolon, as 20yos: 22. The Greeks express their Numbers either by their small letters with a dash over them, thus, 2, or by their capitals. To express Numbers by their small letters they divide their alphabet, which, with the addition of the three Erica, 5 Bau, 4 xona, and ravi, consists of twenty-seven letters, into three classes: The letters of the first class, from a to, denote Units; of the second, from 1 to 1, Tens; of the third, from p to 7, Hundreds. Thousands are expressed in the same order by adding a dot under the letters; thus a is 1000. They join them thus, a, 11; ß, 12; 17', 13; &c. x, 22; λy', 33; ud', 44; &c. på, 1; old, 1; ти, 322; &c. apid, 1111; axes, 1000; avý, 1768; &c. In denoting heir Numbers by capitals the Greeks use six letters, I, ia or a, l; Π. Πεντε, 5 ; Δ, Δεκα, 10; Η, Ηεκατον, 100; Χ. Χιλιά, 1000 ; Μ, Μύρια, 10000. Two of these letters placed together signify the Sum of the Numbers; thus II is 2, Ill 8, 20: And when the letter II (5) incloses any one of these, it denotes that it is to be multiplied by 5, or raises it to 5 times it's own value; thus is 50, H 500, X 5000, M| 50,000; and 1768 may be thus expressed, X HHHAANIII. ་ SECT. II. 2. SECTION II. Of WORDS, and first of the ARTICLE. WORDS are in Greek usually distinguished into eight kinds, called Parts of Speech; Article, Noun, Pronoun, Verb, Particle, Adverb, Conjunction, Preposition. Of which the first five are declined, the last three undeclined. 3. A word is said to be declined when it changes it's ending, and to be undeclined when it does not. 4. The Article, Noun, Pronoun, and Participle, are declined by Number, Case, and Gender. 5. Numbers are two, the Singular, which speaks of one, as λoyos a, i. e. one, word; and the Plural, which speaks of more than one, as 2010 words. 6. To these the Greeks have added a third Number, called the Dual, which speaks of two only, as Xoyw two words: But this Number is not much used in the profane writers; and neither in the New Testament, nor in the Septuagint version of the Old, do we ever meet with a Dual, either Noun or Verb; and therefore Observe, once for all, that though in the following examples, both of Nouns and Verbs, the Dual Number is printed, yet it may greatly contribute to the ease and progress of the Learner entirely to omit it in declining. 7. A Case is a variation of the termination or ending, denoting certain particles, of, to, &c. 8. The Cases are five in each number, Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, and Vo 9. cative. Things are frequently considered with relation to the distinction of Ser or Gender, as being Male or Female, or neither the one nor the other. Hence" 10. "Substantives are of the Masculine, or Feminine, or Neuter, that is Neither, Gender." 11. "The English language, with singular propriety, following nature alone, applies the distinction of Masculine and Feminine only to the names of animals, all the rest (except in the figurative style) are Neuter." But 12. In Greek, very many Nouns, which have no reference to Sex, are Masculine or Feminine. 13. The mark of the Masculine Gender is ó, of the Feminine, and of the Neuter ro. To this the Grammarians have given the name of Apopov, or Article, which properly denotes a joint in the body, because of the particular connection it has with the Nouns And before we come to the declining of Nouns, it will be necessary to be quite perfect in *Bishop Lowth's Introduction to English Grammar, p. 27, 28. 2d edit. 14. The |