7.43 Present Indicative of εἰμί

So far, you had an introduction to Greek present active indicative verbs in Lesson 2, and you did not have any new information about verbs in Lessons 3-4-5-6. Now in Lesson 7, you need to learn about an irregular form of the present active indicative, for the verb "to be." Based on the strange forms of the verb "to be" in English (be, am, is), you should not be surprised that the forms of the verb "to be" are also irregular in Greek.

You need to memorize these verb forms and be able to recognize them:

εἰμί = I am
εἶ = you are
ἐστί = he is, she is, it is
ἐσμέν = we are
ἐστέ = you are
εἰσί = they are

It is important to know these forms, but at the same time you already have seen that very often the present active indicative form of the verb "to be" is simply implied in a sentence, while the actual verb form itself is omitted. For example:

δίκαιος ὁ θεός = "God (is) righteous"

There are accent marks provided for the forms here, but very often these accent marks are not used. Except for the second person singular εἶ (which always has a circumflex accent), the other forms of the verb are enclitic, meaning that they normally do not carry an accent mark. However, there are some circumstances when the other forms do take an accent mark as shown in the forms above. To learn more about accent marks and enclitic words, review the discussion of enclitics in Croy 7.42. There are also some specific rules for the accentuation of ἐστί.