Vowels

There are 7 vowel letters in the Greek alphabet

Letter
Greek Name				()
English Name	alpha	epsilon	eta	iota	omicron	upsilon	omega

but only 5 vowel sounds

Latin equivalent	a	e	i	o	u
Greek letters		,	,,,,,	,
English examples	but	bet	beat	bought	boot

Consonants

There are 17 consonant letters in the Greek alphabet

Letter
Greek Name
English Name	beta	gamma	delta	zeta	theta	kappa	lambda

Letter
Greek Name
English Name	mu	nu	ksi	pi	rho	sigma	tau	phi	chi	psi

but as many as 20 primary

Latin equivalent	bh (v)	gh	dh	z	th	k	l	m	n	p	r
Greek letters
English examples	very	fuego (Sp.)	that	zest	thin	task	lead	man	nut	step	pero (Sp.)

Latin equivalent	s	t	ph (f)	kh	b	d	g	ts	dz
Greek letters							,
English examples	sea	but	fire	loch (Sc.)	bet	bad	go	sits	red zone

and 6 secondary sounds

Latin equivalent	gh' (y)	k' (q)	l'	n'	kh'	g'
Greek letters						,
English examples	yield	que (Fr.)	cavallo (Sp.)	lasagna (It.)	hue	guerre (Fr.)

Comments

Latin equivalents

The correspondence between Greek sounds and letters (or combination of letters) from the Latin alphabet is not the standard one that is used in "Modern Greek through English" books. This represention was chosen based on two criteria:

unique decodability : a string of Latin letters should have only one way of pronouncing it (e.g., I couldn't use "th" for

since it's being used for

phonetic relations : e.g.,

is a softer version of the English "g", so "gh" is the most appropriate choice. I couldn't, however, find a good representation for

and

.
Latin text enclosed between stars (*) will denote pronunciation of Greek words according to the previous conventions
See also the phonetics page.

Categories

The consonant sounds in Greek are arranged into 6 categories:

(pertaining to the lips)

Short Long

Voiced b bh

Unvoiced p ph

(pertaining to the teeth)

Short Long

Voiced d dh

Unvoiced t th

(pertaining to the throat)

Short Long

Voiced g gh

Unvoiced k kh

(pertaining to the palate)

Short Long

Voiced g' gh'

Unvoiced k' kh'

(making a whistling sound)

Short Long

Voiced dz z

Unvoiced ts s

(pertaining to the nose)

Long

Voiced m

Unvoiced n

(pertaining to the tongue, lit. "wet")

Short Long

Unvoiced l r

(other palatal)

Short Long

Unvoiced l' n'

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Last modified: Tue Apr 16 18:15:04 1996