Notes On Koine Greek: Part 16

www.MichaelHalcomb.com

nd
1) 2 Declension Case-Number Suffix Morphemes: In addition to the last
couple of “Notes” on 2nd Declension suffix morphemes, I wanted to offer one
more way to begin remembering these tricky endings.
2) Alphabetical Order: One way to memorize the 2nd Declension suffix
morphemes, is to note that ALL of the suffixes begin with a vowel!!! Since this is
the case, we can put them into 5 groups and memorize them that way: a, e, h, o,
w. This really alleviates a lot of paradigm memorization and allows you to focus
on 1 paradigm and all of the cases and number suffixes. Put another way, you no
longer have to spend as much time memorizing all of the suffixes. If you can
remember that there are 10 within the 2nd Declension and that they encompass 4
vowels, you are good to go. So, my goal is to memorize and understand the Case-
Number suffixes cumulatively so as not to overwhelm myself. In other words, I
will not provide ALL of the declensions here (1st, 2nd and 3rd) but rather, only
those from the 2nd Declensions, which we have been working with (this means,
for example, that h will be left out for now). When we encounter the 1st and 3rd
Declensions respectively, we will then add those suffix morphemes to the mix.
Thus, this table will get bigger as time goes on. So, take note of the groupings in
the table below and commit them to memory:

1st Letter Family Case-Number Result

a a = Pl - Nom. / Acc.
e e = Sg. - Voc
o oi = Pl. - Nom.
oij = Pl. - Dat.
on = Sg. - Nom. / Acc. / Voc.
oj = Sg. - Nom.
ou = Sg. - Gen.
ouj = Pl. - Acc.
w w| = Sg. - Dat.
wn = Pl. - Gen.

*Note: By “Family”, I simply mean all of the suffix morphemes that

start with the same letter (and are thus, part of the same “letter family”).
For example, in the omicron “o” family, we have oi, oij, on and so on.