Hello, this is Pastor Steven Anderson from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona,
and today we're going to learn how to count from 1 to 10 in Greek.
So we've got our arithmi.
Arithmi means numbers, okay?
You can think of the word arithmetic.
So I've got the arithmi, the numbers written on the board here, from 1 to 10.
Our first number is ena, and we have veo, tria, tesara, pende, exi, epta, octo, eneia,
vecha.
Now, I think that this is a great thing to learn early on when you're studying Greek,
how to count from 1 to 10, because this is something you can practice all the time.
All throughout our lives we're counting constantly.
Let's say you exercise, maybe you're lifting weights or you're doing pull-ups or whatever.
You're probably counting repetitions, 1, 2.
Well, instead of counting in English, you can count in Greek, and then you're just constantly
practicing.
Just other things in life, maybe at your job you do a lot of counting.
I have to constantly count my kids to make sure I have them all with me, because I have
seven children.
So this is just a great way to practice your numbers.
Back a long time ago when I was in Kung Fu, we would count in Cantonese whenever we'd
be practicing any punches or kicks or anything.
To this day, I remember how to count to 10 in Cantonese, because I just practiced it
so many times, you're never going to forget it.
So this is something that you're going to want to practice a lot, get these numbers
just drilled in by every time you need to count something, as long as it's not super
important and you don't want to mess it up.
Practice your counting in Greek instead of English.
So let's talk about these words.
We've got ena, which means one.
Now a couple of other forms that you're going to want to be familiar with are just en and
mia.
Now the reason that there are multiple forms for these is that in Greek we know that nouns
and adjectives have gender.
We've already talked about that, masculine, feminine, and neuter.
Now the good news is most of the numbers only have one form, like for example, veo is only
one form, pende, exi, eta, octo, enea, veca, those all have one form, but a few of these
have different forms for different genders.
But when we're counting, we use the neuter form.
So these 10 words right here, ena, dio, tria, tessora, pende, that's all the neuter form.
Some of these take different forms for masculine and feminine that you're going to want to
be familiar with, and you're going to see them when you're reading your Bible in Greek,
for example.
But one of those, of course, is ena.
You're also going to see another form of that without the a on the end.
You're going to see basically en, and then you're also going to see mia.
So those are a couple of other forms that you're going to want to be familiar with.
But when you're counting, just use ena, because that's the one that you count with.
Then veo, good news, only one form.
Tria has another form, tris.
And tris is going to be the form that's used for masculine or feminine.
So when you're going neuter, it's tria.
When you're doing masculine or feminine, it's going to be tris.
Tessora also has a different form for masculine and feminine, which basically just involves
throwing an es on the end.
Instead of tessora, it's tessores.
So I'll write it out.
I don't have a lot of room here, but I'll try to squeeze it in here the best I can.
Okay, tessores is going to be the masculine, feminine form of that.
Pende only has one form.
Remember, this tof, it looks like a little t, whenever it comes followed by the ne, it
is pronounced more like an English d.
So instead, it's not pente, it's pende, all right?
So ena, veo, tria, tessora, pende.
Then we have exi, epta, octo, ena, and veca.
And of course, these all only have one form, which is good news.
Now let me say a word quickly about the differences between modern Greek and biblical Greek, or
what we call Koine Greek.
The differences are pretty slight when it comes to the numbers 1 to 10.
Okay, this number right here, tessora, is going to be spelled, instead of an alpha here,
it would be an epsilon.
So in modern Greek, it would be tessora.
Now you almost can't even tell the difference, tessora, tessora, I mean, it almost sounds
identical anyway.
Just a slight difference in spelling.
And then another slight difference is that when you come across this word in your biblical
Greek, exi, you're just going to lose the iota on the end, exi, it just becomes ex.
So when you find the number 6, it's just going to be ex instead of exi, all right?
But other than that, I mean, they're pretty much identical.
Obviously in modern Greek, you're probably not going to write in the breathing marks,
which are not pronounced using modern pronunciation anyway.
Whereas in the Bible, you're going to see the breathing marks.
But honestly, counting from 1 to 10 in modern Greek and biblical Greek is pretty much exactly
the same.
Ex, because if we're doing biblical Greek, we're not going to do exi, just ex, eta, octo,
eneia, veca.
Now these are pretty easy to remember because they do resemble English words and prefixes,
okay?
We've got ena.
Well, ena, if you know Spanish, doesn't ena sound kind of similar to uno?
So maybe that'll help you remember, ena is similar to uno, all right?
And then veo, of course, we can think of a lot of English words, you know, like a duo,
a duo kind of looks the same as this or a duet, veo.
So we've got ena, veo, tria, when you think of a trio or a tricycle, tessera, okay?
One thing that helps me remember tessera, when I was a kid, there was a video game called
Tetris and it was all based on the number 4.
You know, if you scored a Tetris, it was like four lines in a row, all the pieces were made
of four blocks and so Tetris actually, you know, can be derived from certain forms of
the number 4 in Greek, tessera, all right?
Pende, you can think of the pentagon or a pentagram, okay, pende.
X is obviously similar to the number 6, but also we have a hexagon, okay, a hexagon is
a polygon with six sides.
So X, hepta, okay, how do we remember hepta?
Well, when someone has seven children at the same time, it's called septuplets, right?
And also our month, September, comes from the number 7.
You say, well, September is the ninth month, right, but if you'll notice, all of our month
names are two months off numerically.
For example, December, Spanish 10 is diez, all right, December, November, Spanish, nueve.
Obviously it derives from Latin, but I'm using the Spanish because we in Arizona are a lot
more familiar with Spanish than we are with classical Latin, okay?
So you know, December, diez, November, nueve, October, obviously we can recognize October
is derived from the number 8, octopus, okay?
What comes before October, September, okay, because the sept there is a prefix that has
to do with the number 7.
So September, October, November, December are months 7, 8, 9, and 10, okay, because
of the fact that throughout history most calendars have started in the spring, you know, so March
would be like the first month, December would be like the tenth month, okay?
So that's why the numbers of our months are like two numbers off, because we start in
January in the winter, whereas most calendars throughout history have started in March in
the spring.
So that's why we have those numeric months, September, October, November, December, and
that can help you remember these, because hepta, September, octo, October, anea, November,
veca.
Now veca is pretty easy to remember anyway, because veca is a prefix that we use in the
metric system.
Of course, I don't use the metric system, I use English, but decagram, decaliter, okay,
the decalog is a name that sometimes people call the Ten Commandments.
So veca, and then anea is 9, octo, very common prefix in English, just remember octopus,
octo, epta, think septuplet, September, epta, x is 6.
So let's just blow through these one more time, write these out over and over again,
practice them, memorize them, and count with them whenever you need to count in your daily
life.
Ena, veo, tria, tessera, pende, ex, epta, octo, anea, veca.