Case endings

Greek nouns - both in modern Greek, in classical Greek, and in koine (Biblical) Greek - are declined. That is, they have different endings according to their use in a sentence. English nouns are not declined to nearly this same degree. For example, in the two sentences

"John sees the dog." and

"The dog sees John."

neither the word 'John' nor the word 'dog' changes, even though in the first sentence John is the subject of the sentence - the one doing the seeing - and in the second sentence the dog is the subject.

In Greek, the subject of a sentence is in the nominative case, and the object (in this case, the object being seen) is in the accusative case.

Ο Γιάννης sees τον σκύλο. (John sees the dog.)

Ο σκύλος sees τον Γιάννη. (The dog sees John.)

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Vocabulary

ο Γιάννης - John, nominative case (literally, 'the John' - he is equally unique as 'the dog.')

τον Γιάννη - John, accusative case

ο σκύλος - the dog, nominative case

τον σκύλο - the dog, accusative case

Note that in the examples above, the word for 'dog' is in modern Greek.