Notes On Koine Greek: Part 38

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1. Imperfect Active Indicative eimi: Back in portion 6 of these “Notes”, we

encountered the Present Active Indicative of eimi. Here, we compare that
paradigm to its Imperfect Active Indicative counterpart.
2. Conjugation: The 6 conjugations for “eimi” in the present are in the first table
while the 6 for the imperfect are in the second one; these should all be committed
to memory:

Pres. Act. Ind. eimi Table *Take note once more of the
Singular Plural “movable “nu”. Recall the
1 eimi esmen rule concerning these letters
from Pt. 4 of my notes!
2 ei este
3 esti (n) eisi (n)

*Note: One way to remember this table with a little more ease is to note that the first two letters of the first two
terms in each set match the first to letters of the third term in each set. You can see this via the matched colors
above.

Imperf. Act. Ind. eimi Table

Singular Plural
1 h;mhn h-men
2 h-j h-te
3 h-n h-san

*Take note that each of the

conjugations with the exception of the *Take note that each of the
1st person sg. all begin with an eta (h-) corners of the table (1st & 3rd
which has an umlauted rough person singulars and plurals)
breathing mark. all end with a “n”.

3. eimi in the Imperfect: Where in the Present, eimi was translated as “I am”,
“You are”, etc. in the Imperfect, as you might have guessed, it is rendered “I
was”, “You were”, etc. Here are two English tables to compare to one another:

Present Active Indicative (Translated) Imperfect Active Indicative (Translated)

Singular Plural Singular Plural
1 I am We are 1 I was We were
2 You are You are 2 You were You were
3 He/She/It is They are 3 He/She/It was They were