Castilla y León PAU Greek II common mistakes
Castilla y León PAU Greek II · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Translating a genitive absolute as if the genitive noun were the subject of the main verb, producing a Spanish sentence where an attendant circumstance becomes the agent of the action (e.g. rendering τοῦ στρατηγοῦ ἀποθανόντος as "el general murió y..." then reusing "el general" as subject of the main clause).
Candidates learn the genitive absolute as a formula ("al + infinitivo") but do not check whether the participle's subject also appears as a nominative in the main clause; when the two are distinct they fail to mark the separation, and when they are the same they apply the construction mechanically instead of recognising a simple participial phrase.
What to do instead
Before translating, underline every genitive and every nominative in the sentence; if the participle's noun has no syntactic link to the main verb, render it as a subordinate clause with its own subject ("al morir el general", "después de que el general muriera") and keep the main clause subject separate. Practise on five sentences per session where the genitive absolute subject differs from the main subject and five where a plain participle agrees with the main subject, and state aloud which is which.
Leaving indirect speech in the Greek construction (ὅτι/ὡς + optative, or infinitive after φημί/λέγω) and translating the optative as a Spanish subjunctive in the wrong tense, or keeping the infinitive as an infinitive where Spanish requires a finite verb.
The optative has almost no direct Spanish equivalent, so candidates default to subjunctive without checking whether the Greek reports a past statement (optative = imperfect/perfect indicative in Spanish) or a present one; and they transfer the accusative-and-infinitive construction word for word because it looks like Spanish "decir que + infinitivo", which is ungrammatical in most contexts.
What to do instead
Build a three-column table: Greek form (λέγει ὅτι + indicative / ἔλεξεν ὅτι + optative / φησὶν + infinitive), function (real present, reported past, reported statement), Spanish rendering (indicative present, indicative past, que + indicative). Drill by converting ten reported statements into Spanish and back-checking the tense against the Greek tense of the reporting verb.
Analysing a form by its ending alone without checking the stem: calling οἶδα a present, λέλυκα a present perfect in the wrong voice, or identifying ἐλύθην as middle because the ending -μην looks middle.
Candidates memorise endings in isolation and never build the habit of checking the tense marker (-σ-, -κ-, -θη-) and the augment before the ending; irregular and athematic verbs (οἶδα, δύναμαι, εἶμι) are learned as vocabulary only, not as paradigms.
What to do instead
For every form in the analysis question, write four things in order: augment (present or absent), tense marker, stem, ending. Then state person, number, tense, mood, voice. Keep a one-page list of the athematic and irregular verbs prescribed in the text (οἶδα, δύναμαι, φημί, εἶμι, ἵστημι) with all principal parts and test yourself by covering the right-hand column.
Declining to state the case and function of a form when the ending is ambiguous, giving only "genitivo" for a form that could be dative singular or nominative plural, and not resolving it from context.
The morphological analysis question rewards a complete answer, but candidates stop at the first plausible parse because they do not re-read the surrounding words (preposition, verb agreement, article) that disambiguate; they also confuse the second-declension dative plural -οις with the same-looking endings elsewhere.
What to do instead
Always give the full parse and then a one-line justification citing the article, preposition, or verb agreement that fixes the case. If two parses remain possible, list both and say which the context requires. Practise with a list of ten deliberately ambiguous forms (e.g. λόγοις, πόλεσι, βασιλέα) and write the disambiguating evidence for each.
Producing a Spanish translation that is grammatically correct but drops particles and connectives (μέν... δέ, γάρ, οὖν, ἄρα, καί in the sense of "even"), so the argumentative structure of the Greek disappears.
Particles carry no lexical content, so candidates skip them as untranslatable; they also do not know the standard renderings (μέν... δέ = "por un lado... por otro", γάρ = "pues/en efecto", οὖν = "por tanto") because these are taught as vocabulary items rather than as discourse markers.
What to do instead
In the translation draft, mark every particle in the margin before writing Spanish, then make sure each has an equivalent or a deliberate decision to leave it implicit. Keep a particle chart with function (contrast, cause, inference, emphasis) and Spanish renderings, and revise one past translation per week checking only particles.
Translating a Greek participle with a finite verb in a coordinated clause, turning a subordinate circumstance into a main event (e.g. ταῦτα ἀκούσας ἀπῆλθεν rendered as "oyó esto y se marchó" without noting the causal or temporal relation), or conversely leaving the participle as a Spanish participle where Spanish requires a clause.
Spanish tolerates fewer attributive participles than Greek, so candidates either over-correct into coordination or under-correct into an unnatural participle; they also do not identify the participle's aspect (present = simultaneous, aorist = prior) which determines the Spanish tense.
What to do instead
Classify each participle before translating: attributive (goes with a noun), circumstantial (temporal, causal, concessive, conditional), or supplementary (with verbs of perception, stopping, ruling). Then choose the Spanish structure accordingly (relative clause, "al + infinitivo", "como", "aunque", coordination only when the Greek really coordinates). Practise by sorting fifteen participles from the prescribed text into these categories.
Giving an etymology answer that stops at "viene del griego" without naming the Greek etymon in transcription, its meaning, and the phonetic or semantic path into Spanish, or inventing a Greek form that does not exist to match a Spanish word.
Candidates rely on the modern Spanish word's shape and guess a Greek original, producing forms like *philosophia for filosofía without checking the actual Greek φιλοσοφία, and they confuse learned cultisms with inherited or Latin-mediated words.
What to do instead
For each derived word, write the Greek etymon in Greek script, its transliteration, its literal meaning and components, and the semantic shift. Distinguish three routes: direct cultism (φιλοσοφία → filosofía), Latin-mediated (ἐκκλησία → ecclesia → iglesia), and compound elements (-λογία, -γραφία, -φορος). Build a 30-item list from the prescribed text and test the Greek script, not just the transliteration.
Answering the literary-genre question with a label alone ("es un discurso", "es una tragedia") without naming the defining features, the author, the work, and the passage's function within it.
Candidates memorise genre names as tags and do not connect them to structural markers (proem, narrative, argument, peroration for oratory; prologue, parodos, episodes, stasima, exodos for tragedy), so they cannot justify the label or place the excerpt.
What to do instead
For each prescribed work, prepare a one-page sheet: genre and subgenre, author, date, occasion or festival context, structural parts in order, and the position of the set passages. Answer genre questions with a claim plus two concrete features visible in the text plus the work's place in the genre's development.
Confusing mythological figures and their genealogies or roles: mixing Achilles and Patroclus, attributing Heracles' labours to Theseus, giving the wrong parentage for Helen, or placing the Trojan War events in the wrong order.
Myth is learned as isolated names from footnotes rather than as connected genealogies and cycles, so similar figures collapse together; candidates also rely on modern film versions rather than the prescribed texts' own accounts, which sometimes differ.
What to do instead
Draw a genealogy chart for the houses relevant to the prescribed texts (Atreidae, Labdacidae, Aeacidae) and a timeline of the Trojan cycle. For every mythological allusion in the set text, write the version the author gives and note where other versions differ. Test yourself by naming, for each figure, parents, spouse, children, and the one episode the prescribed author emphasises.
Treating the historical and cultural context as decoration: writing that Athens was democratic and leaving it there, without linking institutions (ostracism, liturgies, the delian League, the ekklesia, the Areopagus) or the political situation to the content of the prescribed passage.
Candidates study context from general summaries unconnected to the text, so they cannot explain why a speaker argues as he does or why an author chooses a particular example; dates and institutions are memorised without function.
What to do instead
For each prescribed passage, write three sentences: what institution or historical event is presupposed, what the author's audience would take for granted, and how that shapes the argument or narrative. Keep a dated timeline of the relevant period (Persian Wars, Peloponnesian War, fourth-century Athens) with the institutional vocabulary in Greek and Spanish, and practise linking each item to a specific line of the set text.