Greek word for letter i

In this basic Greek for beginners article, you can find everything you need to know about the Greek alphabet. I will also show you 20 Greek words that you will find useful!

It’s all Greek to me!

This is what most people say when they try to read the Greek alphabet for the first time. But don’t panic!

Many of the letters are similar to the letters of the Latin alphabet, which you might be more familiar with. And if you remember your Mathematics and Science classes, you may recognize some other Greek symbols, like pi (π) or tau (τ).

Read on to find out more about the Greek alphabet origin, the Greek writing system, and some basic Greek phrases pronunciation!

Short history of the Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet was originally derived at around 1,000 BC from the Phoenician alphabet, which in turn descended from the North Semitic alphabet. If you want to learn a little more about the Semitic languages, have a look here.

The alphabet that Greeks use today took its present form thousands of years ago, during the late 5th century BC, and never changed since. This means that modern-day Greeks can actually read the letters on ancient Greek inscriptions!

You might be surprised to know that all modern European alphabets are actually based on the Greek alphabet. Crazy, eh! 

As for the Greek spoken language, iτ first appeared around the 14th century BCE, and it has the longest history of all Indo European languages. Ancient Greeks pronounced words very differently to modern Greeks.

Here’s a fun video for all the geeks out there – you can hear some cool ancient Greek words 🙂 

The Greek alphabet has 24 letters, of which 17 are consonants and 7 are vowels (marked in red below). Here they are:

Α / α > “a” as in “apple”

Β / β > “v” as in “various”

Γ / γ > “y” as in “yes” (it’s also close to the French “r”)

Δ / δ > “th” as in “the”

Ε / ε > “e” as in “pen”

Ζ / ζ > “z” as in “zip”

Η / η > “e” as in “me”

Θ / θ > “th” as in “theory”

Ι / ι > “e” as in “me”

Κ / κ > “k” as in “key”

Λ / λ > “l” as in “love”

Μ / μ > “m” as in “mother”

Ν / ν > “n” as in “nephew”

Ξ / ξ > “x” as in “fox”

Ο / ο > “o” as in “orange”

Π / π > “p” as in “people”

Ρ / ρ > rolling “r” as in “rrright”

Σ / σ / ς > “s” as in “seat” – notice that there’s a different form of the letter “σ” when it’s at the end of a word, which is similar to “s” in the Latin alphabet: “ς”

Τ / τ > “t” as in “ten”

Υ / υ > “e” as in “me”

Φ / φ > “f” as in “father”

Χ / χ > “ch, h” almost as in “hit” (a bit harsher)

Ψ / ψ > “ps”, almost like in “absent”

Ω / ω > “o” as in “orange”

How to read Greek

Given that the Greek alphabet was an ancestor of all European alphabets, learning to read it isn’t as difficult as you might think.

As you have seen above, most of our uppercase letters also exist in the English / French alphabet. You are already familiar with the letters A, B, E, Z, H, I, K, M, N, O, P, T, Y and X.

Some Greek letters do not exist in any other language. However, you may recognize some of them from your Sciences classes. Take for example the letter sigma (Σ), pi (π), tau (τ), or delta (Δ).

This is not to say that letters that look the same in both alphabets are always pronounced the same. So, for example, the Greek character B is pronounced like the letter V in English.

This causes some confusion among visitors trying to learn a few words in modern Greek. 

Memorizing the alphabet

Memorizing the way we read out the alphabet won’t necessarily serve any purpose if all you want is to be able to read a couple of road signs when you visit. However, most people will learn parts of it sooner or later. Here it is:

Alpha, veeta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeeta, eeta, theeta, giota, kappa, lamda, mee, nee, xee, omikron, pee, roh, sigma, taf, ipsilon, fee, hee, psee, omega. 

Hard to read out? No worries. Here’s a short video with the Greek alphabet.

Letter combinations in Greek

Apart from the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet, we also have a few letter combinations.

There are vowel combinations, marked in red in the table below, and consonant combinations, marked in black.

As the Greek alphabet doesn’t have letters for the sounds “b”, “d”, “g”, “j” and “ch”, we use the consonant combinations above.

Reading Greek is easy… Honest!

Once you’ve learnt how to read and pronounce each individual letter and letter combination in the Greek alphabet, you can more or less read and pronounce ANY Greek word!

This is because in terms of pronunciation, Greek is very straightforward when compared to English, French or other languages.

Here’s why: in English, the same letter can be pronounced in many different ways. Think of the letter “a” in “apple”, “ball”, “man” and “flakes” – it sounds very different!

In Greek, however Greek letters sound the same every time we read them. Exceptions are the letters Γ and Χ, and letters within a letter combination. 

For example, the Greek character “α” sounds the same in all the following words – μαμά, αέρας, καλημέρα, παρακαλώ, αρχή. It always sounds like “a” in the word “apple”. Easy, eh!

Greek vowel sounds – Easier than most languages

While the Greek alphabet has 7 vowels, we only have five vowel sounds: 

• Α / α > “ah” as in “apple”
• Ε / ε and ΑΙ / αι > “eh” as in “pen”
• Η / η, Ι / ι, Υ / υ, ΕΙ / ει and ΟΙ / οι > “ee” as in “me”
• Ο / ο and Ω / ω > “oh” as in “orange”
• ΟΥ / ου > “oo” as in book

As you see, some of our vowels and vowel combinations are pronounced in exactly the same way. 

If you only want to read Greek on a road sign or a taverna menu, this shouldn’t be a problem. You just need to familiarize yourself with each letter or combination, and remember its sound.

Knowing which one to use when you are writing something is another story. Many people who decide to study Greek, and even some Greeks, are often uncertain about the correct spellings of words. 

Do I need to learn Greek before I visit?

Most Greeks speak at least a few words in another language. So you don’t really need to worry about learning Greek at all.

However, if you are planning a trip to Greece, why not try and learn a few Greek words before you travel.

It’s always a nice gesture to try and learn a few words in the Greek language. After all, an effort to speak Greek will attract some smiles, and possibly some treats!

20 useful Greek words

Here are 20 words that you are likely to find useful during your holiday in Greece.

As you can see in the second column, we use a little stress over certain vowels. This denotes the syllable that you need to stress in each word. I’ve used an underlined letter in the third column, to show where the stress goes. 

When trying to read Greek, my advice is to not worry too much about the modern Greek pronunciations. The sounds in Greek will not necessarily correspond with the sounds in your language.

Two great examples are the words OXI, meaning no, and ΕΥΧΑΡΙΣΤΩ, meaning thank you. The sound for the letter X doesn’t really exist in English – it’s something like a harsh “h”. As for the long Greek “thank you” word, it’s off-putting for most visitors!

One great little phrase to learn is yiassou / yiassass. It can mean hello, but also goodbye in Greek, so it can be very useful.  

More fun Greek words

If you were disappointed not to find the word “malakas” in this table, have a look at this other article with more Greek words and useful phrases. Though I guarantee that by the end of your vacation in Greece, you will have heard it often enough to work it out 🙂 Same with “Yiamas”, which means Cheers in Greek.

And, here’s an article that a few readers asked for: Greek swear words! I took it a step further than “malaka” this time…

Is it difficult to learn to read Greek?

While learning to read Greek isn’t too hard, speaking the language properly is a whole different matter.

Here are some of the things that foreigners find difficult while learning Greek:

• There are three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter
• Nouns and adjectives have four cases: nominative, genitive, accusative and vocative
• Greek verbs are conjugated, and while there are solid conjugation rules, many verbs are irregular
• Some letters, especially Γ and Χ, and certain letter combinations, are difficult to pronounce

If your first language is French, Spanish or Italian, you will already be familiar with the concepts of gender, cases and conjugation. Native English speakers often find it hard to get their head around them, especially in the beginning.

All I can say is, don’t get discouraged – and make sure you practice and hang out with Greeks as much as possible!

Where can I learn Greek?

Getting some basic knowledge of Greek is really easy. If you have some degree of self-discipline, you can try hundreds of free YouTube videos and apps, such as Duolingo.

You will listen to real Greek pronunciation, learn how to form complete sentences, build up your vocabulary, and take simple exercises.

Another idea is to take live classes with an online tutor. There are dozens of platforms where you can find someone to teach you one-to-one on Skype, Zoom or a similar channel. A well-known platform is Rosetta Stone.

If you live in Greece, you can look up modern Greek courses at the University of Athens. There is also a variety of Greek classes at private institutions and with one-to-one tutors.

A fun way to learn some Greek if you are visiting for a few days, is to take a Greek cooking class. Sure, you will only learn words relevant to food… and there’s nothing wrong with that!

Whatever course you decide to take, make sure you also have access to a good grammar book, written for foreigners, and maybe a dictionary. No, Google translate isn’t perfect yet!

FAQs about the Greek alphabet:

Here are a few more answers to your questions:

What are the 24 Greek letters?

Here are the 24 Greek capital letters: Α, Β, Γ, Δ, Ε, Ζ, Η, Θ, Ι, Κ, Λ, Μ, Ν, Ξ, Ο, Π, Ρ, Σ, Τ, Υ, Φ, Χ, Ψ, and Ω.

How do I write my name in Greek?

It’s all about pronunciation! Read out your name, and try to break it up in sounds. As an example, my own name, Vanessa, is written Βανέσσα in Greek – though some people will write it as Βανέσα, skipping the second sigma.

Is it easy to learn Greek?

Greek is considered a fairly difficult language to master, especially for native English speakers. The best way to learn Greek is to move to Greece and hang out with Greeks!

Is modern Greek the same with ancient Greek?

Not at all! While the alphabet is the same, the language itself is very different. However, the etymology of many modern Greek words comes from ancient Greek. Words like democracy, philosophy, theatre, have existed for thousands of years.

Do I need to learn Greek before visiting Greece?

No, you don’t. Almost everyone in Greece, especially the people working in the tourism industry, speak at least some words of English, French or another language. However, everyone will appreciate your effort to speak even a few words of Greek.

More Greek culture guides

If you liked this article, you will probably enjoy these other Greece travel guides:

• 50 Greek dishes (with names!)
• 12 Ancient Greek philosophers who changed the world
• How did Athens take its name – featuring Goddess Athena and God Poseidon!
• Best Greek mythology movies
• OXI day in Greece
• Combined ticket for the archaeological sites in Athens 
• The A to Z Guide on How To Experience Greece
• Driving in Greece
• Coffee in Greece
• Little Kook Cafe in Athens

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Hi! I am Vanessa, a blogger and travel writer from Athens in Greece. I hope you have found this introduction to Greek helpful. If there are any other Greek words you’d like to know, please leave a comment below! You can also get in touch through my Real Greek Experiences FB page and FB group.

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Greek alphabet
Ellinikó alfávito «Greek alphabet» in the modern Greek language
Script type	Alphabet
Time period	c. 800 BC – present[1][2]
Direction	left-to-right
Official script	Greece  Cyprus  European Union
Languages	Greek
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Greek alphabet
Child systems	Gothic Glagolitic Cyrillic Coptic Armenian Old Italic and thus Latin Georgian Anatolian
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Grek (200), ​Greek
Unicode
Unicode alias	Greek
Unicode range	U+0370–U+03FF Greek and Coptic U+1F00–U+1FFF Greek Extended

The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE.^[3][4] It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet,^[5] and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants. In Archaic and early Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in many local variants, but, by the end of the 4th century BCE, the Euclidean alphabet, with 24 letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard and it is this version that is still used for Greek writing today.

The uppercase and lowercase forms of the 24 letters are:

Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ/ς, Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, Ω ω.

The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts.^[6] Like Latin and Cyrillic, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter; it developed the letter case distinction between uppercase and lowercase in parallel with Latin during the modern era. Sound values and conventional transcriptions for some of the letters differ between Ancient and Modern Greek usage because the pronunciation of Greek has changed significantly between the 5th century BCE and today. Modern and Ancient Greek also use different diacritics, with modern Greek keeping only the stress accent (acute) and the diaeresis.

Apart from its use in writing the Greek language, in both its ancient and its modern forms, the Greek alphabet today also serves as a source of technical symbols and labels in many domains of mathematics, science, and other fields.

Letters

Sound values

In both Ancient and Modern Greek, the letters of the Greek alphabet have fairly stable and consistent symbol-to-sound mappings, making pronunciation of words largely predictable. Ancient Greek spelling was generally near-phonemic. For a number of letters, sound values differ considerably between Ancient and Modern Greek, because their pronunciation has followed a set of systematic phonological shifts that affected the language in its post-classical stages.^[7]

Examples

Notes

Among consonant letters, all letters that denoted voiced plosive consonants (/b, d, g/) and aspirated plosives (/pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/) in Ancient Greek stand for corresponding fricative sounds in Modern Greek. The correspondences are as follows:

	Former voiced plosives	Former aspirates
Letter	Ancient	Modern	Letter	Ancient	Modern
Labial	Β β	/b/	/v/	Φ φ	/pʰ/	/f/
Dental	Δ δ	/d/	/ð/	Θ θ	/tʰ/	/θ/
Dorsal	Γ γ	/ɡ/	[ɣ] ~ [ʝ]	Χ χ	/kʰ/	[x] ~ [ç]

Among the vowel symbols, Modern Greek sound values reflect the radical simplification of the vowel system of post-classical Greek, merging multiple formerly distinct vowel phonemes into a much smaller number. This leads to several groups of vowel letters denoting identical sounds today. Modern Greek orthography remains true to the historical spellings in most of these cases. As a consequence, the spellings of words in Modern Greek are often not predictable from the pronunciation alone, while the reverse mapping, from spelling to pronunciation, is usually regular and predictable.

The following vowel letters and digraphs are involved in the mergers:

Letter	Ancient	Modern
Η η	ɛː	> i
Ι ι	i(ː)
ΕΙ ει	eː
Υ υ	u(ː) > y
ΟΙ οι	oi > y
ΥΙ υι	yː > y
Ω ω	ɔː	> o
Ο ο	o
Ε ε	e	> e
ΑΙ αι	ai

Modern Greek speakers typically use the same, modern symbol–sound mappings in reading Greek of all historical stages. In other countries, students of Ancient Greek may use a variety of conventional approximations of the historical sound system in pronouncing Ancient Greek.

Digraphs and letter combinations

Several letter combinations have special conventional sound values different from those of their single components. Among them are several digraphs of vowel letters that formerly represented diphthongs but are now monophthongized. In addition to the four mentioned above (⟨ει, οι, υι⟩, pronounced /i/ and ⟨αι⟩, pronounced /e/), there is also ⟨ηι, ωι⟩, and ⟨ου⟩, pronounced /u/. The Ancient Greek diphthongs ⟨αυ⟩, ⟨ευ⟩ and ⟨ηυ⟩ are pronounced [av], [ev] and [iv] in Modern Greek. In some environments, they are devoiced to [af], [ef] and [if] respectively.^[23] The Modern Greek consonant combinations ⟨μπ⟩ and ⟨ντ⟩ stand for [b] and [d] (or [mb] and [nd]) respectively; ⟨τζ⟩ stands for [d͡z] and ⟨τσ⟩ stands for [t͡s]. In addition, both in Ancient and Modern Greek, the letter ⟨γ⟩, before another velar consonant, stands for the velar nasal [ŋ]; thus ⟨γγ⟩ and ⟨γκ⟩ are pronounced like English ⟨ng⟩. In analogy to ⟨μπ⟩ and ⟨ντ⟩, ⟨γκ⟩ is also used to stand for [g]. There are also the combinations ⟨γχ⟩ and ⟨γξ⟩.

Combination	Pronunciation	Devoiced pronunciation
⟨αυ⟩	[av]	[af]
⟨ευ⟩	[ev]	[ef]
⟨ηυ⟩	[iv]	[if]
⟨μπ⟩	[b]	–
⟨ντ⟩	[d]	–
⟨γκ⟩	[ɡ]	–
⟨τζ⟩	[d͡z]	–
⟨τσ⟩	[t͡s]	–

Diacritics

In the polytonic orthography traditionally used for ancient Greek, the stressed vowel of each word carries one of three accent marks: either the acute accent (ά), the grave accent (ὰ), or the circumflex accent (α̃ or α̑). These signs were originally designed to mark different forms of the phonological pitch accent in Ancient Greek. By the time their use became conventional and obligatory in Greek writing, in late antiquity, pitch accent was evolving into a single stress accent, and thus the three signs have not corresponded to a phonological distinction in actual speech ever since. In addition to the accent marks, every word-initial vowel must carry either of two so-called «breathing marks»: the rough breathing (ἁ), marking an /h/ sound at the beginning of a word, or the smooth breathing (ἀ), marking its absence. The letter rho (ρ), although not a vowel, also carries rough breathing in a word-initial position. If a rho was geminated within a word, the first ρ always had the smooth breathing and the second the rough breathing (ῤῥ) leading to the transliteration rrh.

The vowel letters ⟨α, η, ω⟩ carry an additional diacritic in certain words, the so-called iota subscript, which has the shape of a small vertical stroke or a miniature ⟨ι⟩ below the letter. This iota represents the former offglide of what were originally long diphthongs, ⟨ᾱι, ηι, ωι⟩ (i.e. /aːi, ɛːi, ɔːi/), which became monophthongized during antiquity.

Another diacritic used in Greek is the diaeresis (¨), indicating a hiatus.

This system of diacritics was first developed by the scholar Aristophanes of Byzantium (c. 257 – c. 185/180 BC), who worked at the Musaeum in Alexandria during the third century BC.^[24] Aristophanes of Byzantium also was the first to divide poems into lines, rather than writing them like prose, and also introduced a series of signs for textual criticism.^[25] In 1982, a new, simplified orthography, known as «monotonic», was adopted for official use in Modern Greek by the Greek state. It uses only a single accent mark, the acute (also known in this context as tonos, i.e. simply «accent»), marking the stressed syllable of polysyllabic words, and occasionally the diaeresis to distinguish diphthongal from digraph readings in pairs of vowel letters, making this monotonic system very similar to the accent mark system used in Spanish. The polytonic system is still conventionally used for writing Ancient Greek, while in some book printing and generally in the usage of conservative writers it can still also be found in use for Modern Greek.

Although it is not a diacritic, the comma has a similar function as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι (ó,ti, «whatever») from ότι (óti, «that»).^[26]

Romanization

There are many different methods of rendering Greek text or Greek names in the Latin script.^[27] The form in which classical Greek names are conventionally rendered in English goes back to the way Greek loanwords were incorporated into Latin in antiquity.^[28] In this system, ⟨κ⟩ is replaced with ⟨c⟩, the diphthongs ⟨αι⟩ and ⟨οι⟩ are rendered as ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ (or ⟨æ,œ⟩) respectively; and ⟨ει⟩ and ⟨ου⟩ are simplified to ⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩ respectively.^[29] Smooth breathing marks are usually ignored and rough breathing marks are usually rendered as the letter ⟨h⟩.^[30] In modern scholarly transliteration of Ancient Greek, ⟨κ⟩ will usually be rendered as ⟨k⟩, and the vowel combinations ⟨αι, οι, ει, ου⟩ as ⟨ai, oi, ei, ou⟩ respectively.^[27] The letters ⟨θ⟩ and ⟨φ⟩ are generally rendered as ⟨th⟩ and ⟨ph⟩; ⟨χ⟩ as either ⟨ch⟩ or ⟨kh⟩; and word-initial ⟨ρ⟩ as ⟨rh⟩.^[31]

Transcription conventions for Modern Greek^[32] differ widely, depending on their purpose, on how close they stay to the conventional letter correspondences of Ancient Greek-based transcription systems, and to what degree they attempt either an exact letter-by-letter transliteration or rather a phonetically-based transcription.^[32] Standardized formal transcription systems have been defined by the International Organization for Standardization (as ISO 843),^[32][33] by the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names,^[34] by the Library of Congress,^[35] and others.

Letter	Traditional Latin transliteration[31]
Α α	A a
Β β	B b
Γ γ	G g
Δ δ	D d
Ε ε	E e
Ζ ζ	Z z
Η η	Ē ē
Θ θ	Th th
Ι ι	I i
Κ κ	C c, K k
Λ λ	L l
Μ μ	M m
Ν ν	N n
Ξ ξ	X x
Ο ο	O o
Π π	P p
Ρ ρ	R r, Rh rh
Σ σ/ς	S s
Τ τ	T t
Υ υ	Y y, U u
Φ φ	Ph ph
Χ χ	Ch ch, Kh kh
Ψ ψ	Ps ps
Ω ω	Ō ō

History

Origins

During the Mycenaean period, from around the sixteenth century to the twelfth century BC, Linear B was used to write the earliest attested form of the Greek language, known as Mycenaean Greek. This writing system, unrelated to the Greek alphabet, last appeared in the thirteenth century BC. In the late ninth century BC or early eighth century BC, the Greek alphabet emerged.^[2] The period between the use of the two writing systems, during which no Greek texts are attested, is known as the Greek Dark Ages. The Greeks adopted the alphabet from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, one of the closely related scripts used for the West Semitic languages, calling it Φοινικήια γράμματα ‘Phoenician letters’.^[36] However, the Phoenician alphabet is limited to consonants. When it was adopted for writing Greek, certain consonants were adapted to express vowels. The use of both vowels and consonants makes Greek the first alphabet in the narrow sense,^[6] as distinguished from the abjads used in Semitic languages, which have letters only for consonants.^[37]

Greek initially took over all of the 22 letters of Phoenician. Five were reassigned to denote vowel sounds: the glide consonants /j/ (yodh) and /w/ (waw) were used for [i] (Ι, iota) and [u] (Υ, upsilon) respectively; the glottal stop consonant /ʔ/ (aleph) was used for [a] (Α, alpha); the pharyngeal /ʕ/ (ʿayin) was turned into [o] (Ο, omicron); and the letter for /h/ (he) was turned into [e] (Ε, epsilon). A doublet of waw was also borrowed as a consonant for [w] (Ϝ, digamma). In addition, the Phoenician letter for the emphatic glottal /ħ/ (heth) was borrowed in two different functions by different dialects of Greek: as a letter for /h/ (Η, heta) by those dialects that had such a sound, and as an additional vowel letter for the long /ɛː/ (Η, eta) by those dialects that lacked the consonant. Eventually, a seventh vowel letter for the long /ɔː/ (Ω, omega) was introduced.

Greek also introduced three new consonant letters for its aspirated plosive sounds and consonant clusters: Φ (phi) for /pʰ/, Χ (chi) for /kʰ/ and Ψ (psi) for /ps/. In western Greek variants, Χ was instead used for /ks/ and Ψ for /kʰ/. The origin of these letters is a matter of some debate.

Three of the original Phoenician letters dropped out of use before the alphabet took its classical shape: the letter Ϻ (san), which had been in competition with Σ (sigma) denoting the same phoneme /s/; the letter Ϙ (qoppa), which was redundant with Κ (kappa) for /k/, and Ϝ (digamma), whose sound value /w/ dropped out of the spoken language before or during the classical period.

Greek was originally written predominantly from right to left, just like Phoenician, but scribes could freely alternate between directions. For a time, a writing style with alternating right-to-left and left-to-right lines (called boustrophedon, literally «ox-turning», after the manner of an ox ploughing a field) was common, until in the classical period the left-to-right writing direction became the norm. Individual letter shapes were mirrored depending on the writing direction of the current line.

Archaic variants

There were initially numerous local (epichoric) variants of the Greek alphabet, which differed in the use and non-use of the additional vowel and consonant symbols and several other features. Epichoric alphabets are commonly divided into four major types according to their different treatments of additional consonant letters for the aspirated consonants (/pʰ, kʰ/) and consonant clusters (/ks, ps/) of Greek.^[38] These four types are often conventionally labelled as «green», «red», «light blue» and «dark blue» types, based on a colour-coded map in a seminal 19th-century work on the topic, Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Alphabets by Adolf Kirchhoff (1867).^[38]

The «green» (or southern) type is the most archaic and closest to the Phoenician.^[39] The «red» (or western) type is the one that was later transmitted to the West and became the ancestor of the Latin alphabet, and bears some crucial features characteristic of that later development.^[39] The «blue» (or eastern) type is the one from which the later standard Greek alphabet emerged.^[39] Athens used a local form of the «light blue» alphabet type until the end of the fifth century BC, which lacked the letters Ξ and Ψ as well as the vowel symbols Η and Ω.^[39][40] In the Old Attic alphabet, ΧΣ stood for /ks/ and ΦΣ for /ps/. Ε was used for all three sounds /e, eː, ɛː/ (correspondinɡ to classical Ε, ΕΙ, Η respectively), and Ο was used for all of /o, oː, ɔː/ (corresponding to classical Ο, ΟΥ, Ω respectively).^[40] The letter Η (heta) was used for the consonant /h/.^[40] Some variant local letter forms were also characteristic of Athenian writing, some of which were shared with the neighboring (but otherwise «red») alphabet of Euboia: a form of Λ that resembled a Latin L () and a form of Σ that resembled a Latin S ().^[40]

Phoenician model
Southern	«green»									—							—								*	—	—	—	—	—
Western	«red»
Eastern	«light blue»	—
«dark blue»
Classic Ionian	—	—		—	—
Modern alphabet	Α	Β	Γ	Δ	Ε	—	Ζ	—	Η	Θ	Ι	Κ	Λ	Μ	Ν	Ξ	Ο	Π	—	—	Ρ	Σ	Τ	Υ	—	Φ	Χ	Ψ	Ω
Sound in Ancient Greek	a	b	g	d	e	w	zd	h	ē	tʰ	i	k	l	m	n	ks	o	p	s	k	r	s	t	u	ks	pʰ	kʰ	ps	ō

*Upsilon is also derived from waw ().

The classical twenty-four-letter alphabet that is now used to represent the Greek language was originally the local alphabet of Ionia.^[41] By the late fifth century BC, it was commonly used by many Athenians.^[41] In c. 403 BC, at the suggestion of the archon Eucleides, the Athenian Assembly formally abandoned the Old Attic alphabet and adopted the Ionian alphabet as part of the democratic reforms after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants.^[41][42] Because of Eucleides’s role in suggesting the idea to adopt the Ionian alphabet, the standard twenty-four-letter Greek alphabet is sometimes known as the «Eucleidean alphabet».^[41] Roughly thirty years later, the Eucleidean alphabet was adopted in Boeotia and it may have been adopted a few years previously in Macedonia.^[43] By the end of the fourth century BC, it had displaced local alphabets across the Greek-speaking world to become the standard form of the Greek alphabet.^[43]

Letter names

When the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, they took over not only the letter shapes and sound values but also the names by which the sequence of the alphabet could be recited and memorized. In Phoenician, each letter name was a word that began with the sound represented by that letter; thus ʾaleph, the word for «ox», was used as the name for the glottal stop /ʔ/, bet, or «house», for the /b/ sound, and so on. When the letters were adopted by the Greeks, most of the Phoenician names were maintained or modified slightly to fit Greek phonology; thus, ʾaleph, bet, gimel became alpha, beta, gamma.

The Greek names of the following letters are more or less straightforward continuations of their Phoenician antecedents. Between Ancient and Modern Greek, they have remained largely unchanged, except that their pronunciation has followed regular sound changes along with other words (for instance, in the name of beta, ancient /b/ regularly changed to modern /v/, and ancient /ɛː/ to modern /i/, resulting in the modern pronunciation vita). The name of lambda is attested in early sources as λάβδα besides λάμβδα;^[44][11] in Modern Greek the spelling is often λάμδα, reflecting pronunciation.^[11] Similarly, iota is sometimes spelled γιώτα in Modern Greek ([ʝ] is conventionally transcribed ⟨γ{ι,η,υ,ει,οι}⟩ word-initially and intervocalically before back vowels and /a/). In the tables below, the Greek names of all letters are given in their traditional polytonic spelling; in modern practice, like with all other words, they are usually spelled in the simplified monotonic system.

Letter	Name	Pronunciation
Greek	Phoenician original	English	Greek (Ancient)	Greek (Modern)	English
Α	ἄλφα	aleph	alpha	[alpʰa]	[ˈalfa]	(listen)
Β	βῆτα	beth	beta	[bɛːta]	[ˈvita]	, US:
Γ	γάμμα	gimel	gamma	[ɡamma]	[ˈɣama]
Δ	δέλτα	daleth	delta	[delta]	[ˈðelta]
Η	ἦτα	heth	eta	[hɛːta], [ɛːta]	[ˈita]	, US:
Θ	θῆτα	teth	theta	[tʰɛːta]	[ˈθita]	, US: (listen)
Ι	ἰῶτα	yodh	iota	[iɔːta]	[ˈʝota]	(listen)
Κ	κάππα	kaph	kappa	[kappa]	[ˈkapa]	(listen)
Λ	λάμβδα	lamedh	lambda	[lambda]	[ˈlamða]	(listen)
Μ	μῦ	mem	mu	[myː]	[mi]	(listen); occasionally US:
Ν	νῦ	nun	nu	[nyː]	[ni]
Ρ	ῥῶ	reš	rho	[rɔː]	[ro]	(listen)
Τ	ταῦ	taw	tau	[tau]	[taf]

In the cases of the three historical sibilant letters below, the correspondence between Phoenician and Ancient Greek is less clear, with apparent mismatches both in letter names and sound values. The early history of these letters (and the fourth sibilant letter, obsolete san) has been a matter of some debate. Here too, the changes in the pronunciation of the letter names between Ancient and Modern Greek are regular.

Letter	Name	Pronunciation
Greek	Phoenician original	English	Greek (Ancient)	Greek (Modern)	English
Ζ	ζῆτα	zayin	zeta	[zdɛːta]	[ˈzita]	, US:
Ξ	ξεῖ, ξῖ	samekh	xi	[kseː]	[ksi]
Σ	σίγμα	šin	siɡma	[siɡma]	[ˈsiɣma]

In the following group of consonant letters, the older forms of the names in Ancient Greek were spelled with -εῖ, indicating an original pronunciation with -ē. In Modern Greek these names are spelled with -ι.

Letter	Name	Pronunciation
Greek	English	Greek (Ancient)	Greek (Modern)	English
Ξ	ξεῖ, ξῖ	xi	[kseː]	[ksi]
Π	πεῖ, πῖ	pi	[peː]	[pi]
Φ	φεῖ, φῖ	phi	[pʰeː]	[fi]
Χ	χεῖ, χῖ	chi	[kʰeː]	[çi]	(listen)
Ψ	ψεῖ, ψῖ	psi	[pseː]	[psi]	, (listen)

The following group of vowel letters were originally called simply by their sound values as long vowels: ē, ō, ū, and ɔ. Their modern names contain adjectival qualifiers that were added during the Byzantine period, to distinguish between letters that had become confusable.^[11] Thus, the letters ⟨ο⟩ and ⟨ω⟩, pronounced identically by this time, were called o mikron («small o») and o mega («big o») respectively.^[11] The letter ⟨ε⟩ was called e psilon («plain e») to distinguish it from the identically pronounced digraph ⟨αι⟩, while, similarly, ⟨υ⟩, which at this time was pronounced [y], was called y psilon («plain y») to distinguish it from the identically pronounced digraph ⟨οι⟩.^[11]

Letter	Name	Pronunciation
Greek (Ancient)	Greek (Medieval)	Greek (Modern)	English	Greek (Ancient)	Greek (Modern)	English
Ε	εἶ	ἐ ψιλόν	ἔψιλον	epsilon	[eː]	[ˈepsilon]	, some UK:
Ο	οὖ	ὀ μικρόν	ὄμικρον	omicron	[oː]	[ˈomikron]	, traditional UK:
Υ	ὖ	ὐ ψιλόν	ὔψιλον	upsilon	[uː], [yː]	[ˈipsilon]	, also UK: , US:
Ω	ὦ	ὠ μέγα	ὠμέγα	omega	[ɔː]	[oˈmeɣa]	US: , traditional UK:

Some dialects of the Aegean and Cypriot have retained long consonants and pronounce [ˈɣamːa] and [ˈkapʰa]; also, ήτα has come to be pronounced [ˈitʰa] in Cypriot.^[45]

Letter shapes

Like Latin and other alphabetic scripts, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter, without a distinction between uppercase and lowercase. This distinction is an innovation of the modern era, drawing on different lines of development of the letter shapes in earlier handwriting.

The oldest forms of the letters in antiquity are majuscule forms. Besides the upright, straight inscriptional forms (capitals) found in stone carvings or incised pottery, more fluent writing styles adapted for handwriting on soft materials were also developed during antiquity. Such handwriting has been preserved especially from papyrus manuscripts in Egypt since the Hellenistic period. Ancient handwriting developed two distinct styles: uncial writing, with carefully drawn, rounded block letters of about equal size, used as a book hand for carefully produced literary and religious manuscripts, and cursive writing, used for everyday purposes.^[46] The cursive forms approached the style of lowercase letter forms, with ascenders and descenders, as well as many connecting lines and ligatures between letters.

In the ninth and tenth century, uncial book hands were replaced with a new, more compact writing style, with letter forms partly adapted from the earlier cursive.^[46] This minuscule style remained the dominant form of handwritten Greek into the modern era. During the Renaissance, western printers adopted the minuscule letter forms as lowercase printed typefaces, while modeling uppercase letters on the ancient inscriptional forms. The orthographic practice of using the letter case distinction for marking proper names, titles, etc. developed in parallel to the practice in Latin and other western languages.

Inscription	Manuscript	Modern print
Archaic	Classical	Uncial	Minuscule	Lowercase	Uppercase
				α	Α
				β	Β
				γ	Γ
				δ	Δ
				ε	Ε
				ζ	Ζ
				η	Η
				θ	Θ
				ι	Ι
				κ	Κ
				λ	Λ
				μ	Μ
				ν	Ν
				ξ	Ξ
				ο	Ο
				π	Π
				ρ	Ρ
				σς	Σ
				τ	Τ
				υ	Υ
				φ	Φ
				χ	Χ
				ψ	Ψ
				ω	Ω

Derived alphabets

The Greek alphabet was the model for various others:^[6]

• The Etruscan alphabet;
• The Latin alphabet, together with various other ancient scripts in Italy, adopted from an archaic form of the Greek alphabet brought to Italy by Greek colonists in the late 8th century BC, via Etruscan;
• The Gothic alphabet, devised in the 4th century AD to write the Gothic language, based on a combination of Greek and Latin uncial models;^[47]
• The Glagolitic alphabet, devised in the 9th century AD for writing Old Church Slavonic;
• The Cyrillic script, which replaced the Glagolitic alphabet shortly afterwards.
• The Coptic Alphabet used for writing the Coptic language.

The Armenian and Georgian alphabets are almost certainly modeled on the Greek alphabet, but their graphic forms are quite different.^[48]

Other uses

Use for other languages

Apart from the daughter alphabets listed above, which were adapted from Greek but developed into separate writing systems, the Greek alphabet has also been adopted at various times and in various places to write other languages.^[49] For some of them, additional letters were introduced.

Antiquity

• Most of the Iron Age alphabets of Asia Minor were also adopted around the same time, as the early Greek alphabet was adopted from the Phoenician Alphabet. The Lydian and Carian alphabets are generally believed to derive from the Greek alphabet, although it is not clear which variant is the direct ancestor. While some of these alphabets such as Phrygian had slight differences from the Greek counterpart, some like Carian alphabet had mostly different values and several other characters inherited from pre-Greek local scripts. They were in use c. 800–300 BC until all the Anatolian languages were extinct due to Hellenization.^{[50][51][52][53][54]}
• The original Old Italic alphabets was the early Greek alphabet with only slight modifications.
• It was used in some Paleo-Balkan languages, including Thracian. For other neighboring languages or dialects, such as Ancient Macedonian, isolated words are preserved in Greek texts, but no continuous texts are preserved.
• The Greco-Iberian alphabet was used for writing the ancient Iberian language in parts of modern Spain.
• Gaulish inscriptions (in modern France) used the Greek alphabet until the Roman conquest
• The Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Bible was written in Greek letters in Origen’s Hexapla.
• The Bactrian language, an Iranian language spoken in what is now Afghanistan, was written in the Greek alphabet during the Kushan Empire (65–250 AD). It adds an extra letter ⟨þ⟩ for the sh sound [ʃ].^[55]
• The Coptic alphabet adds eight letters derived from Demotic. It is still used today, mostly in Egypt, to write Coptic, the liturgical language of Egyptian Christians. Letters usually retain an uncial form different from the forms used for Greek today. The alphabet of Old Nubian is an adaptation of Coptic.

Middle Ages

• An 8th-century Arabic fragment preserves a text in the Greek alphabet,^[56] as does a 9th or 10th century psalm translation fragment.^[57]
• An Old Ossetic inscription of the 10th–12th centuries found in Arxyz, the oldest known attestation of an Ossetic language.
• The Old Nubian language of Makuria (modern Sudan) adds three Coptic letters, two letters derived from Meroitic script, and a digraph of two Greek gammas used for the velar nasal sound.
• Various South Slavic dialects, similar to the modern Bulgarian and Macedonian languages, have been written in Greek script.^{[58][59][60][61]} The modern South Slavic languages now use modified Cyrillic alphabets.

Early modern

• Turkish spoken by Orthodox Christians (Karamanlides) was often written in Greek script, and called Karamanlidika.
• Tosk Albanian was often written using the Greek alphabet, starting in about 1500.^[62] The printing press at Moschopolis published several Albanian texts in Greek script during the 18th century. It was only in 1908 that the Monastir conference standardized a Latin orthography for both Tosk and Gheg. Greek spelling is still occasionally used for the local Albanian dialects (Arvanitika) in Greece.
• Gagauz, a Turkic language of the northeast Balkans spoken by Orthodox Christians, was apparently written in Greek characters in the late 19th century. In 1957, it was standardized on Cyrillic, and in 1996, a Gagauz alphabet based on Latin characters was adopted (derived from the Turkish alphabet).
• Surguch, a Turkic language, was spoken by a small group of Orthodox Christians in northern Greece. It is now written in Latin or Cyrillic characters.
• Urum or Greek Tatar, spoken by Orthodox Christians, used the Greek alphabet.
• Judaeo-Spanish or Ladino, a Jewish dialect of Spanish, has occasionally been published in Greek characters in Greece.^[63]
• The Italian humanist Giovan Giorgio Trissino tried to add some Greek letters (Ɛ ε, Ꞷ ω) to Italian orthography in 1524.^[64]

In mathematics and science

Greek symbols are used as symbols in mathematics, physics and other sciences. Many symbols have traditional uses, such as lower case epsilon (ε) for an arbitrarily small positive number, lower case pi (π) for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, capital sigma (Σ) for summation, and lower case sigma (σ) for standard deviation. Formerly, the Greek letters were used for naming North Atlantic hurricanes if the normal list ran out. This happened only in the 2005 and 2020 hurricane seasons for a total of 15 storms, the last one being Hurricane Iota. In May 2021 the World Health Organization announced that the variants of SARS-CoV-2 of the virus would be named using letters of the Greek alphabet to avoid stigma and simplify communications for non-scientific audiences.^[65][66]

Astronomy

Greek letters are used to denote the brighter stars within each of the eighty-eight constellations. In most constellations, the brightest star is designated Alpha and the next brightest Beta etc. For example, the brightest star in the constellation of Centaurus is known as Alpha Centauri. For historical reasons, the Greek designations of some constellations begin with a lower ranked letter.

International Phonetic Alphabet

Several Greek letters are used as phonetic symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).^[67] Several of them denote fricative consonants; the rest stand for variants of vowel sounds. The glyph shapes used for these letters in specialized phonetic fonts is sometimes slightly different from the conventional shapes in Greek typography proper, with glyphs typically being more upright and using serifs, to make them conform more with the typographical character of other, Latin-based letters in the phonetic alphabet. Nevertheless, in the Unicode encoding standard, the following three phonetic symbols are considered the same characters as the corresponding Greek letters proper:^[68]

β	beta	U+03B2	voiced bilabial fricative
θ	theta	U+03B8	voiceless dental fricative
χ	chi	U+03C7	voiceless uvular fricative

On the other hand, the following phonetic letters have Unicode representations separate from their Greek alphabetic use, either because their conventional typographic shape is too different from the original, or because they also have secondary uses as regular alphabetic characters in some Latin-based alphabets, including separate Latin uppercase letters distinct from the Greek ones.

Greek letter	Phonetic letter	Uppercase
φ	phi	U+03C6	ɸ	U+0278	Voiceless bilabial fricative	–
γ	gamma	U+03B3	ɣ	U+0263	Voiced velar fricative	Ɣ U+0194
ε	epsilon	U+03B5	ɛ	U+025B	Open-mid front unrounded vowel	Ɛ U+0190
α	alpha	U+03B1	ɑ	U+0251	Open back unrounded vowel	Ɑ U+2C6D
υ	upsilon	U+03C5	ʊ	U+028A	near-close near-back rounded vowel	Ʊ U+01B1
ι	iota	U+03B9	ɩ	U+0269	Obsolete for near-close near-front unrounded vowel now ɪ	Ɩ U+0196

The symbol in Americanist phonetic notation for the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is the Greek letter lambda ⟨λ⟩, but ⟨ɬ⟩ in the IPA. The IPA symbol for the palatal lateral approximant is ⟨ʎ⟩, which looks similar to lambda, but is actually an inverted lowercase y.

Use as numerals

Greek letters were also used to write numbers. In the classical Ionian system, the first nine letters of the alphabet stood for the numbers from 1 to 9, the next nine letters stood for the multiples of 10, from 10 to 90, and the next nine letters stood for the multiples of 100, from 100 to 900. For this purpose, in addition to the 24 letters which by that time made up the standard alphabet, three otherwise obsolete letters were retained or revived: digamma ⟨Ϝ⟩ for 6, koppa ⟨Ϙ⟩ for 90, and a rare Ionian letter for [ss], today called sampi ⟨Ͳ⟩, for 900. This system has remained in use in Greek up to the present day, although today it is only employed for limited purposes such as enumerating chapters in a book, similar to the way Roman numerals are used in English. The three extra symbols are today written as ⟨ϛ⟩, ⟨ϟ⟩ and ⟨ϡ⟩ respectively. To mark a letter as a numeral sign, a small stroke called keraia is added to the right of it.

Use by student fraternities and sororities

In North America, many college fraternities and sororities are named with combinations of Greek letters, and are hence also known as «Greek letter organizations».^[69] This naming tradition was initiated by the foundation of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at the College of William and Mary in 1776.^[69] The name of this fraternal organization is an acronym for the ancient Greek phrase Φιλοσοφία Βίου Κυβερνήτης (Philosophia Biou Kybernētēs), which means «Love of wisdom, the guide of life» and serves as the organization’s motto.^[69] Sometimes early fraternal organizations were known by their Greek letter names because the mottos that these names stood for were secret and revealed only to members of the fraternity.^[69]

Different chapters within the same fraternity are almost always (with a handful of exceptions) designated using Greek letters as serial numbers. The founding chapter of each respective organization is its A chapter. As an organization expands, it establishes a B chapter, a Γ chapter, and so on and so forth. In an organization that expands to more than 24 chapters, the chapter after Ω chapter is AA chapter, followed by AB chapter, etc. Each of these is still a «chapter Letter», albeit a double-digit letter just as 10 through 99 are double-digit numbers. The Roman alphabet has a similar extended form with such double-digit letters when necessary, but it is used for columns in a table or chart rather than chapters of an organization.^{[citation needed]}

Glyph variants

Some letters can occur in variant shapes, mostly inherited from medieval minuscule handwriting. While their use in normal typography of Greek is purely a matter of font styles, some such variants have been given separate encodings in Unicode.

• The symbol ϐ («curled beta») is a cursive variant form of beta (β). In the French tradition of Ancient Greek typography, β is used word-initially, and ϐ is used word-internally.
• The letter delta has a form resembling a cursive capital letter D; while not encoded as its own form, this form is included as part of the symbol for the drachma (a Δρ digraph) in the Currency Symbols block, at U+20AF (₯).
• The letter epsilon can occur in two equally frequent stylistic variants, either shaped (‘lunate epsilon’, like a semicircle with a stroke) or (similar to a reversed number 3). The symbol ϵ (U+03F5) is designated specifically for the lunate form, used as a technical symbol.
• The symbol ϑ («script theta») is a cursive form of theta (θ), frequent in handwriting, and used with a specialized meaning as a technical symbol.
• The symbol ϰ («kappa symbol») is a cursive form of kappa (κ), used as a technical symbol.
• The symbol ϖ («variant pi») is an archaic script form of pi (π), also used as a technical symbol.
• The letter rho (ρ) can occur in different stylistic variants, with the descending tail either going straight down or curled to the right. The symbol ϱ (U+03F1) is designated specifically for the curled form, used as a technical symbol.
• The letter sigma, in standard orthography, has two variants: ς, used only at the ends of words, and σ, used elsewhere. The form ϲ («lunate sigma», resembling a Latin c) is a medieval stylistic variant that can be used in both environments without the final/non-final distinction.
• The capital letter upsilon (Υ) can occur in different stylistic variants, with the upper strokes either straight like a Latin Y, or slightly curled. The symbol ϒ (U+03D2) is designated specifically for the curled form (), used as a technical symbol, e.g. in physics.
• The letter phi can occur in two equally frequent stylistic variants, either shaped as (a circle with a vertical stroke through it) or as (a curled shape open at the top). The symbol ϕ (U+03D5) is designated specifically for the closed form, used as a technical symbol.
• The letter omega has at least three stylistic variants of its capital form. The standard is the «open omega» (Ω), resembling an open partial circle with the opening downward and the ends curled outward. The two other stylistic variants are seen more often in modern typography, resembling a raised and underscored circle (roughly ^o̲), where the underscore may or may not be touching the circle on a tangent (in the former case it resembles a superscript omicron similar to that found in the numero sign or masculine ordinal indicator; in the latter, it closely resembles some forms of the Latin letter Q). The open omega is always used in symbolic settings and is encoded in Letterlike Symbols (U+2126) as a separate code point for backward compatibility.

Computer encodings

For computer usage, a variety of encodings have been used for Greek online, many of them documented in RFC 1947.

The two principal ones still used today are ISO/IEC 8859-7 and Unicode. ISO 8859-7 supports only the monotonic orthography; Unicode supports both the monotonic and polytonic orthographies.

ISO/IEC 8859-7

For the range A0–FF (hex), it follows the Unicode range 370–3CF (see below) except that some symbols, like ©, ½, § etc. are used where Unicode has unused locations. Like all ISO-8859 encodings, it is equal to ASCII for 00–7F (hex).

Greek in Unicode

Unicode supports polytonic orthography well enough for ordinary continuous text in modern and ancient Greek, and even many archaic forms for epigraphy. With the use of combining characters, Unicode also supports Greek philology and dialectology and various other specialized requirements. Most current text rendering engines do not render diacritics well, so, though alpha with macron and acute can be represented as U+03B1 U+0304 U+0301, this rarely renders well: ᾱ́.^{[citation needed]}

There are two main blocks of Greek characters in Unicode. The first is «Greek and Coptic» (U+0370 to U+03FF). This block is based on ISO 8859-7 and is sufficient to write Modern Greek. There are also some archaic letters and Greek-based technical symbols.

This block also supports the Coptic alphabet. Formerly, most Coptic letters shared codepoints with similar-looking Greek letters; but in many scholarly works, both scripts occur, with quite different letter shapes, so as of Unicode 4.1, Coptic and Greek were disunified. Those Coptic letters with no Greek equivalents still remain in this block (U+03E2 to U+03EF).

To write polytonic Greek, one may use combining diacritical marks or the precomposed characters in the «Greek Extended» block (U+1F00 to U+1FFF).

Greek and Coptic[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+037x

Ͱ

ͱ

Ͳ

ͳ

ʹ

͵

Ͷ

ͷ

ͺ

ͻ

ͼ

ͽ

;

Ϳ

U+038x

΄

΅

Ά

·

Έ

Ή

Ί

Ό

Ύ

Ώ

U+039x

ΐ

Α

Β

Γ

Δ

Ε

Ζ

Η

Θ

Ι

Κ

Λ

Μ

Ν

Ξ

Ο

U+03Ax

Π

Ρ

Σ

Τ

Υ

Φ

Χ

Ψ

Ω

Ϊ

Ϋ

ά

έ

ή

ί

U+03Bx

ΰ

α

β

γ

δ

ε

ζ

η

θ

ι

κ

λ

μ

ν

ξ

ο

U+03Cx

π

ρ

ς

σ

τ

υ

φ

χ

ψ

ω

ϊ

ϋ

ό

ύ

ώ

Ϗ

U+03Dx

ϐ

ϑ

ϒ

ϓ

ϔ

ϕ

ϖ

ϗ

Ϙ

ϙ

Ϛ

ϛ

Ϝ

ϝ

Ϟ

ϟ

U+03Ex

Ϡ

ϡ

Ϣ

ϣ

Ϥ

ϥ

Ϧ

ϧ

Ϩ

ϩ

Ϫ

ϫ

Ϭ

ϭ

Ϯ

ϯ

U+03Fx

ϰ

ϱ

ϲ

ϳ

ϴ

ϵ

϶

Ϸ

ϸ

Ϲ

Ϻ

ϻ

ϼ

Ͻ

Ͼ

Ͽ

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 15.0 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Greek Extended[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+1F0x

ἀ

ἁ

ἂ

ἃ

ἄ

ἅ

ἆ

ἇ

Ἀ

Ἁ

Ἂ

Ἃ

Ἄ

Ἅ

Ἆ

Ἇ

U+1F1x

ἐ

ἑ

ἒ

ἓ

ἔ

ἕ

Ἐ

Ἑ

Ἒ

Ἓ

Ἔ

Ἕ

U+1F2x

ἠ

ἡ

ἢ

ἣ

ἤ

ἥ

ἦ

ἧ

Ἠ

Ἡ

Ἢ

Ἣ

Ἤ

Ἥ

Ἦ

Ἧ

U+1F3x

ἰ

ἱ

ἲ

ἳ

ἴ

ἵ

ἶ

ἷ

Ἰ

Ἱ

Ἲ

Ἳ

Ἴ

Ἵ

Ἶ

Ἷ

U+1F4x

ὀ

ὁ

ὂ

ὃ

ὄ

ὅ

Ὀ

Ὁ

Ὂ

Ὃ

Ὄ

Ὅ

U+1F5x

ὐ

ὑ

ὒ

ὓ

ὔ

ὕ

ὖ

ὗ

Ὑ

Ὓ

Ὕ

Ὗ

U+1F6x

ὠ

ὡ

ὢ

ὣ

ὤ

ὥ

ὦ

ὧ

Ὠ

Ὡ

Ὢ

Ὣ

Ὤ

Ὥ

Ὦ

Ὧ

U+1F7x

ὰ

ά

ὲ

έ

ὴ

ή

ὶ

ί

ὸ

ό

ὺ

ύ

ὼ

ώ

U+1F8x

ᾀ

ᾁ

ᾂ

ᾃ

ᾄ

ᾅ

ᾆ

ᾇ

ᾈ

ᾉ

ᾊ

ᾋ

ᾌ

ᾍ

ᾎ

ᾏ

U+1F9x

ᾐ

ᾑ

ᾒ

ᾓ

ᾔ

ᾕ

ᾖ

ᾗ

ᾘ

ᾙ

ᾚ

ᾛ

ᾜ

ᾝ

ᾞ

ᾟ

U+1FAx

ᾠ

ᾡ

ᾢ

ᾣ

ᾤ

ᾥ

ᾦ

ᾧ

ᾨ

ᾩ

ᾪ

ᾫ

ᾬ

ᾭ

ᾮ

ᾯ

U+1FBx

ᾰ

ᾱ

ᾲ

ᾳ

ᾴ

ᾶ

ᾷ

Ᾰ

Ᾱ

Ὰ

Ά

ᾼ

᾽

ι

᾿

U+1FCx

῀

῁

ῂ

ῃ

ῄ

ῆ

ῇ

Ὲ

Έ

Ὴ

Ή

ῌ

῍

῎

῏

U+1FDx

ῐ

ῑ

ῒ

ΐ

ῖ

ῗ

Ῐ

Ῑ

Ὶ

Ί

῝

῞

῟

U+1FEx

ῠ

ῡ

ῢ

ΰ

ῤ

ῥ

ῦ

ῧ

Ῠ

Ῡ

Ὺ

Ύ

Ῥ

῭

΅

`

U+1FFx

ῲ

ῳ

ῴ

ῶ

ῷ

Ὸ

Ό

Ὼ

Ώ

ῼ

´

῾

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 15.0 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Combining and letter-free diacritics

Combining and spacing (letter-free) diacritical marks pertaining to Greek language:

Combining	Spacing	Sample	Description
U+0300	U+0060	(  ̀ )	«varia / grave accent»
U+0301	U+00B4, U+0384	(  ́ )	«oxia / tonos / acute accent»
U+0304	U+00AF	( ̄ )	«macron»
U+0306	U+02D8	( ̆ )	«vrachy / breve»
U+0308	U+00A8	( ̈ )	«dialytika / diaeresis»
U+0313	U+02BC	( ̓ )	«psili / comma above» (spiritus lenis)
U+0314	U+02BD	( ̔ )	«dasia / reversed comma above» (spiritus asper)
U+0342		( ͂ )	«perispomeni» (circumflex)
U+0343		( ̓ )	«koronis» (= U+0313)
U+0344	U+0385	( ̈́ )	«dialytika tonos» (deprecated, = U+0308 U+0301)
U+0345	U+037A	( ͅ )	«ypogegrammeni / iota subscript».

Encodings with a subset of the Greek alphabet

IBM code pages 437, 860, 861, 862, 863, and 865 contain the letters ΓΘΣΦΩαδεπστφ (plus β as an alternative interpretation for ß).

See also

• Greek Font Society
• Greek ligatures
• Palamedes
• Romanization of Greek

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

• Greek and Coptic character list in Unicode
• Unicode collation charts—including Greek and Coptic letters, sorted by shape
• Examples of Greek handwriting
• Greek Unicode Issues (Nick Nicholas) at archive.today (archived August 5, 2012)
• Unicode FAQ – Greek Language and Script
• alphabetic test for Greek Unicode range (Alan Wood)
• numeric test for Greek Unicode range
• Classical Greek keyboard, a browser-based tool
• Collection of free fonts: greekfontsociety.gr

These basic Greek words are easy to learn for your next vacation in Greece. Includes explanations of the Greek alphabet, pronunciation, and everyday Greek words.

It’s all Greek to me

You land in Greece, you see your first poster written with Greek letters, and what’s the thought that immediately springs to mind? It’s all Greek to me!

Greek can be a baffling language to the uninitiated. I’ve lived here for four years, and my own failures to get to grips with the language are almost legendary!

Thankfully, I’ve drafted Vanessa in to write this post as an introduction to basic Greek words. As a native Athenian, she’s created this little introduction to a few everyday Greek words you might find useful.

Do I need to speak Greek to visit Greece?

The simple answer here is no you don’t. The majority of people you are likely to meet will probably speak English to a fairly high standard.

Greece has long attracted visitors from all over the world, and let’s face it, English is the language of travel for most regions. Even on the quietest Greek island you’ll find some locals to communicate with in English.

With that said, it’s always nice to know a few words of the local language, even if you are only on vacation in Greece for a short while. The effort is always appreciated, and it doesn’t take long to learn a few basic Greek words.

You can start with Kalimera, which means Good Morning.

Do I need to read Greek to speak Greek?

You certainly don’t need to read Greek in order to memorise basics such as how to say goodbye in Greek. Most menus you encounter when on holiday in Greece will often be translated into English and other languages as well.

Being able to read some of the alphabet might prove useful though in situations where information such as place names and street names are only written in Greek.

If you plan to take a road trip in Greece, it might also be useful to be able to read Greek words, as not all road signs have Latin characters. 

Most of the places of interest will be signposted with a brown sign in both languages though, as shown in the photo below.

The Greek alphabet

The main reason visitors find Greek hard to read and learn, is the Greek alphabet. Dave often refers to them as a series of squiggles, dots, and triangles!

Some of the letters might remind you of maths classes. Others might seem to resemble Latin letters, but are not the same at all.

Consisting of 19 consonants and 5 vowels, the Greek alphabet is unique. Here is what the Greek alphabet looks like:

As you might have spotted, the obvious problem here is that the Greek language has 24 letters, whilst English has 26. This is where the issues begin, but they don’t end there!

How to pronounce Greek letters

Confusingly, a few vowels are pronounced in exactly the same way. Even worse, some of the Greek letters look exactly like English letters, but the sounds are different.

As an example, the Greek letter “ρ” might look like the English letter “p”, but it sounds like the letter “r” (in fact the sound is that of a rolling r).

At the same time, as you may remember from mathematics, the Greek letter “π” is pronounced like the English letter “p”.

Confused? Read it over and over until it starts to make sense!

If you make an effort to memorize the letters, you will be surprised at how easy it actually is to read Greek words, especially those in capital letters.

Greek letter combinations and sounds

Furthermore, there are certain letter combinations that produce a new sound. As an example, there is no letter for the sound “d” in Greek, so the combination “ΝΤ / ντ” is used instead.

There are about 10-15 of those combinations, using either vowels or consonants, and if you are serious about learning Greek you will need to memorize them. 

And now on to the fun bit – speaking Greek! Here are a few words and Greek phrases that you are likely to find useful during your holiday in Greece. We’ve included the spelling of these essential Greek words in capitals, regular letters, and a way to pronounce them phonetically.

You should stress the letters that are capitalised in the phonetic guidance.

• ΚΑΛΗΜΕΡΑ (καλημέρα) pronounced kalimEHra means Good morning / Good day in Greek
• ΚΑΛΗΣΠΕΡΑ (καλησπέρα) pronounced kalispEHra means Good afternoon / Good evening in Greek
• ΚΑΛΗΝΥΧΤΑ (καληνύχτα) pronounced kalinIHta means Goodnight
• ΓΕΙΑ ΣΟΥ / ΓΕΙΑ ΣΑΣ (γεια σου / γεια σας) pronounced yiA sou / yiA sass means Hello (informal / formal) in Greek
• ΕΥΧΑΡΙΣΤΩ (ευχαριστώ) pronounced efharistO means Thank you in Greek
• ΠΑΡΑΚΑΛΩ (παρακαλώ) pronounced parakalO means Please / You are welcome in Greek
• ΝΑΙ (ναι) pronounced neh means Yes in Greek
• ΟΧΙ – (όχι) pronounced ohi means No in Greek
• ΤΟΥΑΛΕΤΑ (τουαλέτα) pronounced tualEHta means Toilet in Greek
• ΝΕΡΟ (νερό) pronounced nehrO means Water in Greek
• ΚΑΦΕΣ (καφές) pronounced kafEHs means Coffee in Greek
• ΜΠΥΡΑ (μπύρα) pronounced bEEra means Beer in Greek
• ΤΑΒΕΡΝΑ (ταβέρνα) pronounced tavEHrna means Taverna  / restaurant in Greek
• ΟΥΖΟ (ούζο) pronounced OOzo means ouzo in Greek
• ΠΑΡΑΛΙΑ (παραλία) pronounced parahlIa means beach in Greek
• ΘΑΛΑΣΣΑ (θάλασσα) pronounced thAHlassa means sea in Greek
• ΞΕΝΟΔΟΧΕΙΟ (ξενοδοχείο) pronounced ksenodoHIo means hotel in Greek
• ΧΩΡΙΑΤΙΚΗ (χωριάτικη) pronounced horiAtiki means Greek salad in Greek
• ΚΡΑΣΙ (κρασί) pronounced krahsEE means wine in Greek

Speaking Greek

Note that the syllable where the stress goes is very important in Greek. In the above table, the syllable that should be stressed has been capitalized.

For the most part, visitors tend to stress words in the wrong syllable, which apparently many Greeks find quite amusing! The correct Greek pronunciation is quite important. 

Putting together correct sentences in Greek is another matter altogether. This is because the Greek language has three genders, and all words (nouns, verbs etc) are conjugated. 

They didn’t invent the phrase “it’s all Greek to me” for no reason!

Oh, and if you were wondering, the Greeks say “it’s all Chinese to me”!

Basic Greek Phrases

Here are some common phrases that you might want to throw into a conversation as you travel around the Greek islands. It’s fun to see people’s reactions when they realize you might know some Greek words and phrases!

• Where is the bathroom?- Πού είναι η τουαλέτα
• Do you speak English? – Μιλάτε αγγλικά
• How much is it? – Πόσο κάνει αυτό

Learn Greek Before Your Vacation

If you want to explore learning Greek further, you might find some of the following helpful. From Greek phrasebooks and audio books on how to learn basic Greek, to full deep dive courses, take your pick!

Pin this guide to useful Greek phrases for later

Do you have a vacation planning board on pinterest? Please pin this guide to everyday Greek words to use on your vacation for later!

More Posts about Greece

If you’re planning a vacation in Greece, you’ve landed at the right place! I’ve been living in, and writing about Greece for nearly 5 years, and have hundreds of free travel guides for you.

If you’re unsure where to start, I’d suggest signing up for my free guides by using the form in the middle of this post. Otherwise, you might find these of interest.

• Greece Travel Guides – Free guides to the Greek Islands and Mainland
• Ultimate Athens Guide – Plan Your Trip To Athens
• Santorini Travel Blog – Plan your perfect Santorini itinerary
• A guide to the Peloponnese in Greece
• Greek Mythology Tours in Athens
• Philosophy Quotes from Ancient Greece to Modern Times

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English has borrowed many words from the ancient Greek language. Their spelling gives clues to their recognition and pronunciation

HISTORICAL INFLUENCES ON ENGLISH

English is essentially a North-Western European language related to German, Dutch and languages in Scandinavia. However, historical events have caused it to be greatly expanded by borrowings from other languages, especially those of Southern Europe.

French has been a particular influence as a result of Britain being ruled by French-speaking monarchs for about 300 years after 1066 (see 135. French Influences on English Vocabulary). Latin, the language of the ancient Romans, is the ancestor of French, and hence had a great impact on English through it. Later, however, as scholarship advanced, English borrowed more and more words directly from Latin in order to name developing new concepts. More about the influence of Latin on English is in the posts 45. Latin Clues to English Spelling and 130. Formal Abbreviations. Many scholarly words were also borrowed from the language of Ancient Greece. Finally, the growth of Britain as an imperial power caused it to adopt many other new words from right across the world.

The language of Ancient Greece has had almost as important an impact on English as Latin. This is because the Ancient Greeks were the foremost European thinkers before Latin was spread across the continent by the Romans. Words from their language entered English not only directly as names for modern ideas and inventions, but also via Latin, since the Romans themselves used many Ancient Greek words in their learned writings (e.g. philosophia, the Greek word for philosophy).

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HOW TO RECOGNISE ENGLISH WORDS OF GREEK ORIGIN

Being able to recognise that a word is of Greek origin can help you to spell and pronounce it correctly. This is because these aspects follow fairly reliable rules. Indeed, words of Greek origin very rarely have illogical features of the kind discussed in 29. Illogical Vowel Spellings; and 188. Causes of Common Spelling Mistakes; they only seem a problem because their spelling is often quite unusual.

The main clues that a word is of Greek origin are the following:

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1. Special Letter Combinations

Many of these involve the letter “p”. It combines with “h” in words like philosophy, phrase, sphere, emphasis, graph, nymph, symphony and aphrodisiac. In addition, there are “ps” combinations – most disconcertingly at the start of words (psychology, psalm, pseudonym), but also in the middle (rhapsody) – and also “pn” and “pt”, mostly at the beginning of words (pneumatic, pneumonia, pterodactyl, helicopter, symptom).

The letter “y” used as a vowel is also a good clue to a Greek origin, though it is not entirely reliable. It is not Greek at the end of adjectives (happy, easy, ready) and many nouns (discovery, itinerary) and in the -ly and -fy endings, nor in short words like my, why, shy and sky. Words where it is of Greek origin are abyss, analyse, psychology, hypocrite, hypnotise, pyramid, hyperactive, mystery, rhythm, syndrome, syringe, cycle and cyst.

The “ch” spelling is also variably indicative of a Greek origin. It is Greek in anarchy, anchor, character, chiropody, choir, cholesterol, chorus, Christmas, chrome, epoch, orchestra, psychology and scheme; but it is not Greek in chicken, church, chain, change, chief, chimney, lychee, fetch and inch.

Many words with “th” come from Greek, e.g. mathematics, theme, thesis, theatre, thermal, ethics, myth, sympathise and labyrinth. Finally, the combination “rh” is highly indicative of a Greek origin. It exists in words like rheumatism, diarrhoea, rhythm, rhapsody and rhetoric.

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2. Greek Word Endings

The Guinlist post 12. Singular and Plural Verb Choices states that most nouns become plural by adding -s to their singular form, but not all do. Two of the exceptional categories are nouns of Greek origin whose singular forms end in either -on or -is – words like automaton, criterion, phenomenon, oasis, diagnosis, emphasis, thesis, hypothesis, parenthesis, synthesis, analysis, metamorphosis, axis and crisis. The -on ending becomes -a in the plural, the -is one -es (pronounced /i:z/). The underlined -is words are usable as “action” nouns – uncommon for words not of Latin origin (see 249. Action Noun Endings).

A common noun ending in Greek is -ma. These letters at the end of an English noun tend to indicate a Greek origin. Examples are cinema, coma, drama, enigma, magma, panorama, stigma and trauma. There are also some English words that have dropped the -a and just end with -m, e.g. axiom, phlegm, poem, problem, spasm, sperm, symptom and theme. The underlined words in both lists can be made into English adjectives ending -atic – another indicator of a Greek origin. Additional words with it include automatic, emphatic and rheumatic (but not the Latin-derived erratic).

Many other adjectives with -ic show a Greek origin. Common ones are analytic, archaic, comic, cosmic, economic, fantastic, gastric, graphic, historic, histrionic, ironic, manic, panoramic, pathetic, periodic, photographic, poetic, politic, scenic, strategic, synthetic and tragic. Going against this trend, though, are quite a few -ic adjectives of Latin rather than Greek origin, for example civic, frantic, linguistic, prolific, specific, terrific and Teutonic.

In addition to adjectives, -ic is found on many nouns of Greek origin. Examples include antic, comic, critic, graphic, ethic, heretic, logic, mimic, music, mystic, rhetoric, statistic, synthetic, tactic and topic. For more on how a single ending can show different word classes, see 172. Multi-Word Suffixes.

Another adjective ending that commonly shows a Greek origin is -ical. It makes adjectives out of nouns ending in -ology, e.g. biological, psychological and sociological, and out of some other nouns too, such as geographical, pharmaceutical, symmetrical, theatrical and typical. However, there are also some -ical words that are not of Greek origin, including farcical, medical and radical.

The -al ending, common on both nouns and adjectives in English, is not specific to words of Greek origin, but quite commonly makes adjectives out of Greek -ic words. Examples are comical, critical, economical, ethical, graphical, heretical, historical, logical, mathematical, musical, mystical, political, rhetorical, statistical, tactical, topical.

The links in the above lists are to explanations of confusing pairs like economic/economical.

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3. Greek Word Beginnings

The Guinlist post 45. Latin Clues to English Spelling points out that Latin prepositions are found at the beginning of many English words taken from Latin. The same is true of Greek prepositions. Common ones are ana-, anti-, apo-, dia-, en-/em-, epi-, hypo, hyper-, meta-, para-, peri-, pro- and syn-/sym-. Recognising any of these at the beginning of a word can greatly help its identification as Greek.

Examples of words starting with a Greek preposition are analysis, anatomy, antithesis, antonym, apology, apostle, diabetes, dialogue, emblem, empathy, epoch, epistle, epitome, hypodermic, hypothesis, hyperbole, metabolism, metaphor, paradox, paralyse, parallel, paraphrase, perimeter, period, problem, prophylaxis, symbol, synonym and synchronise. The word hyphen (representing a punctuation type considered in depth in this blog in 223. Uses of Hyphens) begins with a modified form of hypo. Parenthesis combines para- (= beside) and -en- (= inside) with -thesis (= placement) (see 294. Parentheses).

Sometimes the rest of a word after a Greek preposition is itself a possible English word, so that the preposition is acting like a true prefix (see 146. Some Important Prefix Types). Examples are para-medic and hyper-inflation. Some other English prefixes are also of Greek origin, for example auto- (= “self-“), pseudo- (= “pretending”) and a- (= “not”). Words with the latter include amorphous, apathetic, apolitical, asexual, atheist and atypical (but not Latin-derived abnormal).

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4. Medical Terms

Medicine is an area where Greek words are especially abundant. Examples are anatomy, antigen, artery, bacteria, cholesterol, dermatology, diarrhoea, gene, larynx, microscope, neurosis, oesophagus, parasite, pathology, physiology, rhesus, sclerosis, syndrome, syringe, thermometer and thrombosis.

The -osis ending (sometimes spelt -asis) means “present and troublesome” and is used to describe a wide range of illnesses (thrombosis for example is the presence of a troublesome blood clot). -osis can even be combined with a non-Greek root, as in tubercul-osis.

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PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK WORDS IN ENGLISH

It is generally well-known that the combination ph- is usually pronounced /f/. The letter “p” in other combinations (pn-, ps- and pt-) is silent at the start of a word (see 155. Silent Consonants) but in other positions is pronounced normally. Pseudonym, for example, begins with /s/, pneumonia with /n/.

The pronunciation of “ch” is usually /k/. Here is where it is important to know whether or not the word is originally Greek, since “ch” in non-Greek words is /t∫/. All of the “ch” words listed above follow this tendency. An exception, though, is arch – pronounced with /t∫/ despite a Greek origin.

Another useful guideline, also mentioned in the post 86. The Pronunciation of “e” and “i”, is that the letter “i” in the Greek prefixes dia-, bio- and micro- is pronounced /aı/ not /ı/. Examples are diabetes, diagonal, diameter, diarrhoea, biology, biopic, biopsy, microbe, microeconomics, micrometer and microscope.

One problem that is unfortunately not so easy to solve is deciding whether to pronounce “y” as /ı/ or /aı/. The former seems more common, occurring for example in analytic, anarchy, cyclic, cyst, embryo, gymnasium, hymn, hypnotise, mystery, physics, pyramid, rhythm, syllable, syringe, system and words beginning with syn-; the latter is exemplified in analyse, cycle, encyclopaedia, gynaecology, paralyse, phylum, psychology, style, tyrant and the prefixes hypo- and hyper-.

Finally, in words of Greek origin the letter “e” at the end does not always make the vowel before it long (as in words like fade, hope, site, use and paralyse), but can instead make a separate syllable (pronounced /ı/). This happens in words like anemo-ne, epito-me, hyperbo-le, synco-pe and the girls’ names Hermio-ne and Daph-ne. The word simi-le, which also has this feature, is of Latin rather than Greek origin.

Hello, my name is Ksenia, I have been living in Greece for several years and teach Greek on Skype at Skype-Language.com. You can read the information about me here. 

While teaching I have often seen learners experience some difficulty with the Greek alphabet. You may also have the same problem of memorizing the stubborn Greek letters and confusing them with the Latin (English) ones. My experience in dealing with it forms the basis of this article. I hope my tips will help you learn the Greek alphabet.

So how can we memorize the Greek alphabet?

First of all, remember that you are not alone, do not take it to heart or even despair! The problems with the Greek alphabet are temporary, you will stop confusing the letter soon, you just need more practice. Some people learn faster, other people learn more slowly. Exercise more patience and put more effort, and reading in Greek is not going to cause any difficulty!

While working on the Greek alphabet, use different video- and audio materials, for example this one:

Or the following examples of words:
а)  ΦΩΝΗΤΙΚO ΑΛΦΑΒΗΤO ME ΠΑΡΑΔΕΙΓΜΑΤΑ

b) 

To make things clear let us divide the letters into the following groups:

The first group — the letters that do not normally cause any difficulty.

Such letters prevail:

Letter	Name	Transcription
Α, α	Alpha	[а]
Β, β	Vita	[v]
Ε, ε	Epsilon	[е]
Ι, ι	Iota	[I]
Κ, κ	Kappa	[к]
Μ, μ	Mu	[м]
Ο, ο	Omicron	[о]
Π, π	Pi	[p]
Τ, τ	Tau	[t]
Φ, φ	Phi	[f]

The second group — the letters that are often confused with the Latin Letters:

Letter	Name	Transcription
Η, η	Eta	[i]
Ν, ν	Nu	[n]
Ρ, ρ	Rho	[r]
Χ, χ	Chi	[h]
Υ, υ	Upsilon	[i]

To deal with this confusion, you need to practise reading in Greek. 

This group — strange, unfamiliar letters:

Буква	Русское название	Звук в русской транскрипции
Ζ, ζ	Zeta	[z]
Ξ, ξ	Xi	[ks]
Ψ, ψ	Psi	[ps]
Σ, σ, ς	Sigma	[s — sh]
Ω, ω	Оmega	[o]

These squiggles either merge with the other letters or weave with each other, you need some practice to remember! 

Attention! Please note the letters that give «special» sounds!

Letter	Name	Sound Description
Γ, γ	Gamma	In most cases it is similar to the Ukranian [g] without aspiration. Before  [i] and [e]  gives [j]
Λ, λ	Lambda	It is between the soft [l’] and hard [l]
Θ, θ	Theta* (a dental sound)	A dental sound like in «three»
Δ, δ	Delta	A voiced dental sound like in «this»

 Let us take another look at the Greek alphabet: 

As you can see, most of the Greek letters are familiar to you, you just need to have a little bit more practice.

If the Greek alphabet is not memorized logically, try to remember your childhood. Your positive attitude and good mood are two ways to success!

Tip №1: Use songs

Here are some songs about the Greek alphabet:
а) ΕΝΑ ΓΡΑΜΜΑ ΜΙΑ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑ | Το Τραγούδι της Αλφαβήτου

b)  «Το τραγούδι της Αλφαβήτας» with subtitles 

c) ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΟ ΑΛΦΑΒΗΤΟ  

d)  Μια τρελή τρελή Αλφαβήτα  

You need not only listen to the songs but also sing and learn by heart.

If children’s songs are not very interesting, here is a philosophical song about the alphabet (the video is subtitled):

The lyrics:

Tip №2:

To memorize the alphabet better, print out its visual version and hang the sheets in a conspicuous place. In the beginning you could also write the translation but remember that not all the Greek letters have correspondences in your language.

Tip №3:

Try to visualize the letters. Think what the most challenging Greek letters look like and  make a funny picture for each letter. Ideas can be taken from Greek cartoons about the alphabet: even if you may not understand the whole text of the cartoon, you are sure to remember a flying and singing letter!

(the cartoon picture)

A cartoon about Ζ:

A cartoon about ξ and ψ:

Tip №4:

Use special programmes for learning the alphabet. A good resource for learning the alphabet is here. 

http://users.sch.gr/cosmathan/ab/acb1_intern.htm

Tips №5:

Finally you can use textbooks:

a)      write each letter several times;

b)      write the dictated letters in alphabetical or random order.                 

The alphabet and pronunciation rules have been learnt, now it is high time you started reading. How to practise reading is going to be another article.

If you need a professional’s help for learning Greek, sign up for a trial lesson with one of our teachers of Greek at skype-language.com!

P. S. How were you trying to remember the Greek alphabet and how long did it take you? Please leave the comments about your own experience and what you think about the article!