Greek Imperfect Indicative Active

This post will cover the imperfect indicative active. There is no imperfect infinitive, subjunctive or optative. The imperfect tense has progressive or repeated aspect and past time, equivalent to the English, ”I was doing,” “I used to do,” or “I did [habitually].”

The imperfect indicative active is based on Principal Part 1, the 1st Person Singular Present Indicative Active. To form the imperfect, take PP1 and add the past indicative augment and remove the ending -ω to form the augmented present tense stem. To this stem add the appropriate ending for the person and number (assuming tense, mood and voice for this post are fixed, of course).

		Indicative	Translation
1st Person Singular (1ps)		-ον	I was doing I used to do I did [habitually]
2nd Person Singular (2ps)		-ες	you (s.) were doing you (s.) used to do you (s.) did [habitually]
3rd Person Singular (3ps)		-ε[ν]	he/she/it was doing he/she/it used to do he/she/it did [habitually]
1st Person Plural (1pp)		-ομεν	we were doing we used to do we did [habitually]
2nd Person Plural (2pp)		-ετε	you (p.) were doing you (p.) used to do you (p.) did [habitually]
3rd Person Plural (3pp)		-ον	they were doing they used to do they did [habitually]