The imperfect tense — ο παρατατικός
Built from your class notes of 30 July 2026. The imperfect (also called the past continuous) is the tense for "I was doing" or "I used to do" something — an ongoing or habitual action in the past, as opposed to a single completed one.
How it's built, in one picture
Every regular verb's imperfect is made the same basic way: take the present-tense stem, and add an ending. Where it gets interesting is where the stress falls — and that's really a story about syllables, not about the verb itself.
- If the verb's stem already has three or more syllables (like πη-γαί-νω), there's already a syllable available further back for the stress to land on — so the imperfect just shifts the accent forward, no extra syllable needed: πηγαίνω → πήγαινα.
- If the stem only has one or two syllables (like βλέπ-ω or παίζ-ω), there's nowhere for the stress to go without help — so Greek adds a syllable in front, the augment ε-, purely to give the accent somewhere legal to land: βλέπω → έβλεπα.
That's the whole trick. Group 1 verbs add -α (plus the augment if needed); Group 2 and 3 verbs add -ούσα instead. See the Grammar page, Lesson 13 for the full suffix tables.
Your example verbs
πηγαίνω and βλέπω make a perfect matched pair for seeing the rule in action — same verb group, different stem length, different outcome.