The Indefinite Article in Modern and Ancient Greek

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The indefinite article in Greek is given in the tables below.

• In Modern Greek the word "one" (ένας, μία, ένα) is used in the singular, and "some" (μερικοί, -ές, -ά) in the plural.
• In Ancient Greek there was no indefinite article.⁽¹⁾ Instead, the indefinite adjective τις, τις, τι ("a certain") could be used in some cases where we use "a/an" in English, with its corresponding plural form τινές, τινές, τινά (some). The same word, as an indefinite pronoun, also meant "someone" and "anyone". For completeness, I include the indefinite adjective ένιοι,-αι,-α, which also meant "certain", "some" (in the plural sense only).

For the punctuation in the columns for ancient Greek read the notes following the tables.

Notes on punctuation:

In the column for Modern Greek there are two forms for the feminine in the singular: they differ only in pronunciation, not meaning. The first form is written without stress mark since it is considered monosyllabic (in pronunciation the stress should be over α).

In the column for Ancient Greek, since the modern Greek character set does not include accents and breathing marks, I adopt the following scheme: Where a breathing mark is not provided, a smooth one is assumed over the vowel. The circumflex is shown with this symbol: [^~] after the vowel over which it should be placed. Acute accents are shown normally, over the vowel (there are no grave accents here).

Footnotes

(1) Thanks to Karen McCollam for this observation, which corrects an earlier version of this page.

(2) The monosyllabic forms of this word are enclitic: their accent mark is not shown because it is carried over the last syllable of the word preceding them.

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