Classical Greek Wants to Know What You Did and Why

[4thofeleven]

Alright, so in English, we have two ‘voices’, the active voice and the passive voice. Ancient Greek has both, but it also has a third voice – the ‘middle’ voice. Middle voice verbs resemble passive verbs, but act more like active verbs. Since the middle voice doesn’t exist in English, they’re hard to translate, but generally a verb in the middle voice either implies that the action is being done to oneself (eg ‘I free myself’), or – and this is pretty neat – that the action is being done for one’s own benefit. The verb that means “To carry”, for example, when used in the middle voice has the implied meaning of “To win (eg, a trophy)”. The verb "To fight" only exists in the middle; presumably because once you're in a fight, you're acting to preserve your own life - it does have the interesting implication that one cannot selflessly fight in the defense of others in Ancient Greek; there's always the implication of self-interest.

I find it kinda interesting to have a form of a verb that’s concerned with the subject’s motivation as well as their actions – it’s an unusual concept; there aren’t, to my knowledge, any major modern languages that have a middle voice. Still, I kinda like it, though it is a pain to learn.

Still not sure why the course I'm taking teaches the middle voice before the passive voice, though – it seems to me it would be easier to teach the grammatical forms that also exist in English before moving on to largely untranslatable oddities…

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

I remember the middle voice! I felt the same way: it's a pain to learn, but cool in concept. I've forgotten it all by now, though... Although it's only 95% my fault, because we had a terrible book (both in organization and construction - it looked like it was done on a typewriter).