I took Latin in high school and biblical Greek and Hebrew in seminary. Taking these languages helped me learn more about English grammar than all my years of English (am native English speaker). I was struck by the plethora of tenses in the Greek language. Could you give me a brief refresher with English equivalent? I remember my prof using the act of mopping the floor as an example. No rush. Thanks in advance or future perfect!😉
No problem! Of course, all languages have tenses, and people use plenty of them in everyday language, but we don’t generally acknowledge these uses until we encounter a language (like Greek) that emphasizes them.
I think it’s probably the most striking in Greek because of the Principle Parts of verbs and how they relate to forming the tense in a sentence.
So, an example of tenses with English equivalent is all you ask? Okay!
Greek has three main general tenses: Present, Past, and Future, each of which has its own subdivisions.
In the Present tense, you have the Present: action contemporary with the present.
Present: “I am sacrificing the goats… right now.”
In the Past tenses, there are four to choose from: Perfect, Pluperfect, Aorist, and Imperfect.
The Aorist is the simplest: “I sacrificed the goats… at some point.”
The Perfect is slightly more confusing, showing an action which was completed already in the past which you are still near: “I have sacrificed the goats. Now what?”
The Pluperfect is the past of the Perfect, a completed action in the past removed from you: “I had sacrificed the goats… and then I ate a sandwich, and went to the agora, and went to war, and came back, and here I am.”
The Imperfect is in the past, but may not have been completed yet: “I was sacrificing the goats… but then I got distracted.
And sometimes you have to deal with the Future Perfect, which is fairly confusing, but which you summed up fairly well in your ask. It is an action anticipated to be completed in the future. Thus, it is projecting the future into the past.
The Future Perfect: “I will have sacrificed the goats… by the time you finish those errands.”
In the Future, of course, you have the Future tense, denoting an action yet to come:
Future: “I will sacrifice the goats.”
I hope this helped!
