Picture of Chay Adnil
are there 3 sets of the 3 adjectives. i will explain more
by Chay Adnil - Friday, 7 February 2014, 02:19 PM
  καλός άντρας but βαθύς άντρας
good man, deep man.

deep man doesn't make sense but not only do adjectives come in masculine, neutral, and feminine but there are also 3 set of endings for all these forms (including the plurals). this is the website i look on: www.mylanguages.com

singular: καλ-ός, καλ-ή, καλ-ό (good)

plural: καλ-οί, καλ-ές, καλ-ά


βαθ-ύς, βαθ-ιά, βαθ-ύ (deep)

βαθ-ιοί, βαθ-ιές, βαθ-ιά


διεθν-ής, διεθν-ής, διεθν-ές (international)

διεθν-είς, διεθν-είς, διεθν-ή

what i mean is that i thought adjectives just had o i a and the plurals for these. i didn't know you could get other adjectives with us ia and u etc. it's starting to make a bit of sense except for the different types of noun endings too. You can get masculine nouns that don't follow the os or its plural ending.

Another theory.

Masculine and etc nouns don’t all have the same ends but maybe with one of the set of plural for example βαθ-ιοί maybe there is a masculine that ends in ιοί too. So you pair that up with that.

Please help me to explain if i am understandable enough. i've been trying to find this for some time. i am new here.

[originally posted Saturday, 18 May 2013, 05:01 PM]

Picture of Nick Savchenko
Re: are there 3 sets of the 3 adjectives. i will explain more
by Nick Savchenko - Sunday, 19 May 2013, 02:23 AM
  There is no unified system of adjective declension in the modern Greek language. So the best thing you can do is to learn or classes of declensions without trying to find any unification between them.

There is also adjective class with endings -ης -α -ικο (τεμπέλης, τεμπέλα, τεμπέλικο). Also, some adjectives with masculine ending in -ος have feminine ending -ια (γλικιά). Some feminine adjectives can have both -η and -ια endings (κακιά and κακή).
Picture of Greg Brush
Re: are there 3 sets of the 3 adjectives. i will explain more
by Greg Brush - Monday, 10 February 2014, 11:47 AM
  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]