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Read and Understand Ancient Greek / Multimedia CD-ROM

ANCIENT GREEK LESSONS
Read and Speak Ancient Greek / Multimedia CD-ROM


ANCIENT GREEK ALPHABET
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Click the Parthenon/Cress image to hear the sound (Modern Greek pronunciation)
Letter Name Word starting with small case letter Word starting with large case letter

a as in art
01


bread,


Ares (Mars), the God of war,

v as in voice
02


book,


Bacchus (a name for Dionysus, god of war),

w as in wood
03


cat,


Gaea (mother of the Titans, worshipped as mother earth),

th as in that
04


tear,


Demosthenes (an Athenian general and a great orator),

e as in egg
05


spring


Hector (son of the king of Troy and a very brave fighter),

z as in zoo
06


belt,


(greatest god, king of mountain Olympus, father of other gods),

ea as in meat
07


sun,


Hercules (son of Zeus and the greatest hero),

th as in think
08


summer,


Theseus (Athenian king who killed Minotaur),

ea as in meat
09


horse,


Icarus (a man who escaped prison by flying using feathers fastened with wax but flew close to the sun whereby the wax melted and fell down to the Icarian sea),

k as in cook
10


dog,


Centaur (son of god Apollo that is half-man and half horse ),

l as in lamp
11


lake,


Leto (mother of Apollo, daughter of one of the Titans),

m as in man
12


apple,


Medusa (a Gorgon that was killed by Perseus, a great Greek hero),

n as in no
13


bat,


Nephele (a cloud-nymph that was the mother of Phrixus and Helle)

x as in taxi
14


wood,


Xerxes (the Persian king that defeated the Greeks at Thermopylae),

o as in horse
15


eye,


Orpheus (an extraordinary musician who went down to Hades, the kingdom of the dead, to bring back his wife Eurydice and almost succeded in doing so),

p as in port
16


child or boy,


Poseidon (god of the sea),

r as in room
17


nose,


Rhea (mother of gods Zeus and Poseidon),

s as in sea


 

18


shadow,


Satyr,

t as in tea
19


cheese,


Titans (The six sons of Uranus and Gaea were banished to the dark abyss of Tartarus but escaped and one of them called Cronus, or Saturn or Time, defeated his father and ruled the world until his son Zeus defeated him.),

ea as in meat
20


water,


Hydra,

f as in fun
21


I blow,


Phrixus (son of Nephele who avoided being sacrificed by riding a golden ram above the seas),

h as in he
22


hand,


Charon (a boatman that ferried the dead souls across the river Styx to Hades, the kingdom of the dead),

ps as in maps
23


scissors,


Psamathia (one of the water nymphs called Nereides),

o as in horse
24


shoulder,


Oceanus (one of the Titans),

Notes:
(1)    The small Greek letter has two versions and .  The first version is used at the beginning and the middle of a word.  The second version  is used at the end of a word.

(2)    If or  is found in front of , then  or  is pronounced z as in zoo. For example, the word  (= world, universe) is pronounced as if the spelling was  but is written .

(3)    Modern Greek has many duplicate sounds.  As an example we note that ,,  have the same sound.  Also,  , and  have the same sound.

(4)    Modern Greek Pronunciation differs substantially from the pronunciation attributed to Classical Greeks.  Classical Greek pronunciations have been inferred from correlating Classical Greek text to sounds we know today and we believe have stayed the same over the years.

The sound of lambs provides an example of sound inference.  In a Classical Greek comedy the sound of lambs is written as . Specificall, Cratinus, who lived between 520-423 BC, wrote .meaning but the idiot as if he were a sheep is walking saying beh beh.  Assuming that (a) the ancient publisher of the text did not misspell the word and (b) the comedy author did not intend to make a pun, one deduces that the Classical Greek sound of  is like b in ball and the sound of  is like ai in air.  Notice that the Modern Greek pronunciation for is like v in voice and for  is like ea in meat.

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Revised: 1 November 2001
Copyright © 1997 Anotek, Inc.
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