Galicia PAU Greek II common mistakes
Galicia PAU Greek II · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
When translating an aorist participle in an adverbial or genitive-absolute construction, the candidate renders it with a present-tense or simultaneous value (e.g. translating λύσαντες as 'while untying' rather than 'having untied / after untying'), so the sequence of events in the narrative is reversed or flattened.
School grammars present the participle as 'the -ing form', and the candidate transfers the progressive value of the English/Spanish gerund onto the Greek aorist, ignoring that aspect in the participle marks completion relative to the main verb. Under exam pressure the candidate translates word by word and never asks what the aspect contributes.
What to do instead
Before translating any participle, do a two-column check: tense-stem (present/aorist/perfect) and syntactic function (attributive, circumstantial, genitive absolute, complement of a verb of perception). For aorist circumstantial participles, force yourself to write 'after + verb' or 'having + participle' in the draft, and only then smooth the Spanish/Galician. Practise on five-sentence passages where one present and one aorist participle appear together so the contrast becomes automatic.
The candidate translates a genitive absolute as if the genitive noun were the subject or object of the main verb, producing a sentence in which the main clause has the wrong agent (e.g. τούτων λεχθέντων translated as 'they said these things' and then attached to the main verb's subject).
The genitive absolute is a construction with no counterpart in Romance languages, so the candidate has no structural slot for it and silently reassigns the participle's subject. Recognition is also hampered because the participle may be separated from its noun by several words.
What to do instead
On the first reading, bracket every genitive noun/pronoun plus participle pair that has no syntactic link to the main verb, and translate the bracket as a subordinate clause introduced by 'cuando / después de que / aunque', keeping the agent inside the bracket. Build a checklist: is the genitive dependent on any verb, preposition, or noun in the sentence? If not, it is absolute.
In morphological analysis the candidate labels the tense of a form from its ending alone, e.g. calling ἐλύθησαν a present or ἐδόθη a future, or identifying λέλυκα as aorist because it looks like a past narrative form.
The candidate memorises endings without the stem changes (augment, reduplication, -θη-/-θησ- passive markers, -κ- perfect marker), and the exam passage supplies many third-person plural forms whose endings are shared across tenses.
What to do instead
Analyse in a fixed order: (1) augment present? (2) reduplication present? (3) stem-final consonant or vowel? (4) thematic vowel or athematic? (5) ending. Drill the four-way contrast of λύω on one page - ἔλυσα / ἐλύθην / λέλυκα / λυθήσομαι - and require yourself to name the tense marker explicitly in the answer, not just the label.
The candidate gives a single case label (e.g. 'accusative') for a form that is ambiguous between cases, or assigns the case from the article's shape without checking whether the form could be dative plural or genitive singular.
Nominal endings are syncretic (e.g. -οις dative plural vs. -ους accusative plural; -ῃ dative singular vs. -ει verb ending), and candidates answer the first label that comes to mind rather than listing alternatives and disambiguating by syntax.
What to do instead
For every nominal form, write the lemma, the full set of possible case/number combinations, and then state which one the syntax of the sentence requires, quoting the governing verb or preposition. If the exam asks only for the form in context, give the contextual case first and mention the ambiguity.
The candidate translates a middle or passive verb as active (or vice versa), e.g. rendering ἐποιήσαντο as 'they made' instead of 'they made for themselves / they had made', or ἐπαιδεύθη as 'he educated'.
The middle voice has no clean Romance equivalent, and many verbs are deponent-looking; the candidate defaults to the active meaning learned first from the vocabulary list.
What to do instead
Keep a personal list of the middle-only and middle-with-shifted-meaning verbs that recur in Attic prose (ποιέομαι, παύομαι, γίγνομαι, αἱρέομαι, στρατεύομαι, βουλεύομαι) with a one-word gloss for each voice. In translation, ask whether the subject is acting on itself, for its own interest, or being acted upon; if the -μαι/-σατο form fits none of these as active, mark it for review.
When asked for the etymology of a modern Galician or Spanish word, the candidate gives a vague statement like 'comes from Greek' without naming the Greek etymon, its transliterated form, and the semantic path (e.g. biblioteca < βιβλιοθήκη, from βιβλίον 'book' + θήκη 'case').
Candidates treat etymology as general knowledge and do not realise the exam wants the Greek lemma, the compound elements, and the Latin transmission route where relevant.
What to do instead
Prepare a table of high-frequency learned compounds and suffixes: -logía < -λογία, -grafía < -γραφία, filosofía < φιλοσοφία, demos < δῆμος, polis < πόλις, -itis < -ῖτις, hiper- < ὑπέρ, hipo- < ὑπό. For each, learn the two component morphemes and one modern derivative. In the answer, always give: Greek form in Greek script, transliteration, literal meaning of components, current meaning.
The candidate identifies the author or genre of the passage incorrectly because the text is judged by topic rather than by style - e.g. a passage of Thucydidean narrative with speeches is labelled 'rhetoric/oratory' or attributed to Xenophon, or a Lysias speech is called history because it mentions Athenian institutions.
Candidates revise authors as names attached to periods, not as stylistic profiles, so they have no criteria (particle density, use of speeches, first-person narrator, address to a jury, narrative vs. argumentative structure) to distinguish historiography from forensic oratory.
What to do instead
Build a one-page profile for each prescribed author: Thucydides (speeches, abstract nouns, antithesis, 'the Athenians and the Spartans' framing), Herodotus (ethnographic digressions, ἱστορίη, ring composition), Xenophon (plain narrative, Hellenica and Anabasis first person), Lysias (ethopoeia, plain style, jury address ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί), Demosthenes (long periodic sentences, rhetorical questions), Plato (dialogue, Socratic question-and-answer, ὅτι/ἆρα). Test each passage against three of these markers before answering.
The candidate dates and contextualises Athenian institutions inaccurately - for instance placing the reforms of Cleisthenes after the Persian Wars, calling the Council of the Areopagus a democratic institution, or confusing the Athenian assembly (ἐκκλησία) with the Council of Five Hundred (βουλή).
Candidates learn dates as isolated numbers without a causal sequence, and the exam vocabulary (δημοκρατία, ὀλιγαρχία, ψήφισμα) is studied as glosses rather than as institutions with functions.
What to do instead
Draw a single timeline of Athenian constitutional history with dates and one consequence each: Draco 621, Solon 594, Pisistratus tyranny 561–510, Cleisthenes 508/7, Persian Wars 490/480–479, Delian League 478/7, Pericles' citizenship law 451/0, Peloponnesian War 431–404, Thirty Tyrants 404–403, restoration of democracy 403. For institutions, learn who participated, how members were selected (sortition vs. election), and what each body decided.
In syntactic analysis the candidate labels a subordinate clause by its introductory particle alone, e.g. calling every clause introduced by ὅτι a causal clause, or treating ἐάν + subjunctive as a simple future condition without noting it is a future more vivid conditional.
Particles are polysemous (ὅτι = 'that' or 'because'; ὡς = 'as, that, since, in order that'), and candidates do not check the mood of the verb, which is the decisive criterion.
What to do instead
For each subordinate clause, record three things before naming it: the introductory word, the mood and tense of the verb, and the semantic relation to the main clause. Learn the conditional pairs: εἰ + indicative = simple/real; ἐάν + subjunctive = future more vivid; εἰ + optative = future less vivid; εἰ + past indicative = contrary to fact. Likewise distinguish purpose (ἵνα/ὡς + subjunctive/optative) from result (ὥστε + infinitive/indicative).
The candidate leaves a translation with a literal, ungrammatical rendering of Greek word order and idiom - keeping the Greek participle chain, the double negative, or the article-as-pronoun structure (ὁ δέ, οἱ δέ) as if Spanish/Galician syntax were identical, producing a sentence whose meaning cannot be checked against the original.
Under time pressure candidates stop at the first word-by-word pass, and they fear that rewriting means departing from the text, so they preserve structures that the target language cannot carry.
What to do instead
Translate in two passes: a literal draft with every participle and genitive absolute bracketed, then a rewrite in which each bracket becomes a finite clause and each ὁ δέ / οἱ δέ becomes a named or pronominal subject. Read only the final Spanish/Galician sentence aloud; if it is not a well-formed sentence, the analysis is not finished. Reserve the last five minutes to re-read the translation against the Greek for omitted words.