New Testament Greek for Beginners

(Based on the book with the same title by Gresham Machen, The MacMillan Company, 1923)

References

124. The imperfect indicative, like the indicative of the other secondary tenses (see §20, footnote), places an augment at the beginning of the stem of the verb.

125. In verbs that begin with a consonant the augment consists in an ε- prefixed to the stem.

Examples: ἔλυον, I was loosing; ἐγίνωσκον, I was knowing.

126. In verbs that begin with a vowel, the augment consists in the lengthening of that vowel. But α lengthens not to long α but to η.

Examples: The imperfect of ἐγείρω is ἤγειρον; of ἀκούω, ἤκουον; of αἴρω, ᾖρον.

127. The personal endings in the active of the secondary tenses are as follows:

128. The variable vowel (placed between the stem and the personal endings) is, in the imperfect as in the present, ο before μ and ν and ε before other letters.