The Alphabet
The first barrier that one has to overcome when learning Ancient Greek is to learn the Alphabet. Apart from Chinese, the most famous second languages in the world use the Latin alphabet and that makes them a bit more approachable. But is learning and memorizing the alphabet such a difficulty?
The answer is not at all. The Greek alphabet is really close to the Latin one, with most letters having a resemblance or being the same. Moreover, most English speakers, and especially students are used the sight of Greek letters. They are used in maths, science, engineering and even in college fraternities!
Furthermore, it should be noted that Ancient and Modern Greek use the same alphabet, so by learning it you become able to read script in both languages.
Historical Background
The Greeks where the first Europeans to use an Alphabet to communicate. The Greek Alphabet that we are going to learn was firstly used around the 8th century BC and it was a descendant of the Phoenician alphabet, which is the "Ancestor" of Latin as well.
As you will notice on the following chart there is clear resemblance of the Phoenician alphabet and different variants of Greek script (each city a slightly different script, pronunciation and dialect, especially before the creation of "Koine")
The first barrier that one has to overcome when learning Ancient Greek is to learn the Alphabet. Apart from Chinese, the most famous second languages in the world use the Latin alphabet and that makes them a bit more approachable. But is learning and memorizing the alphabet such a difficulty?
The answer is not at all. The Greek alphabet is really close to the Latin one, with most letters having a resemblance or being the same. Moreover, most English speakers, and especially students are used the sight of Greek letters. They are used in maths, science, engineering and even in college fraternities!
Furthermore, it should be noted that Ancient and Modern Greek use the same alphabet, so by learning it you become able to read script in both languages.
Historical Background
The Greeks where the first Europeans to use an Alphabet to communicate. The Greek Alphabet that we are going to learn was firstly used around the 8th century BC and it was a descendant of the Phoenician alphabet, which is the "Ancestor" of Latin as well.
As you will notice on the following chart there is clear resemblance of the Phoenician alphabet and different variants of Greek script (each city a slightly different script, pronunciation and dialect, especially before the creation of "Koine")
And an Ancient Greek inscription,
The Athenian Decree:
The Athenian Decree:
As you may have already noticed the text is:
1) Connected, Without Spaces - Named "scriptura continua"
2) Does not have Lower case letters.
To avoid confusion the first is just a style of writing. Due to the natural flow of speech, scribes did not find important to use a word divider or a space between words.
In addition, lower case letters did not exist until the the 9th century A.D. in which the use of handwritten letters became widespread and available space was of great importance. An example of using the old writing style with contemporary English would be : THISISANEXAMPLEEVENPUNCTUATIONISDIFFERENT. Pretty difficult to read, eh?
After the 9th century, the minuscule letters became dominant and scribes began writing using the system that is used now.
Presently, scribes and paleographists have done all the "hard work" for us, and every text and inscription has already been transcribed to the "new" system. Thus, even if you plan to become a paleographist you should be able to read and understand the transcribed text which every reader or scholar use at this moment.
Learning the Alphabet
First of all, look at the following table, which solely contains the Greek Letters. Scan it for 3 minutes. Try to find a sound for each letter.
Which are the letters that you already know? Which are totally new?
As you may have already noticed the text is:
1) Connected, Without Spaces - Named "scriptura continua"
2) Does not have Lower case letters.
To avoid confusion the first is just a style of writing. Due to the natural flow of speech, scribes did not find important to use a word divider or a space between words.
In addition, lower case letters did not exist until the the 9th century A.D. in which the use of handwritten letters became widespread and available space was of great importance. An example of using the old writing style with contemporary English would be : THISISANEXAMPLEEVENPUNCTUATIONISDIFFERENT. Pretty difficult to read, eh?
After the 9th century, the minuscule letters became dominant and scribes began writing using the system that is used now.
Presently, scribes and paleographists have done all the "hard work" for us, and every text and inscription has already been transcribed to the "new" system. Thus, even if you plan to become a paleographist you should be able to read and understand the transcribed text which every reader or scholar use at this moment.
Learning the Alphabet
First of all, look at the following table, which solely contains the Greek Letters. Scan it for 3 minutes. Try to find a sound for each letter.
Which are the letters that you already know? Which are totally new?
If you studied the image for 3 minutes, I am sure that you found out only 9 letters that you can't pronounce: Γ, Δ, Θ, Λ, Ξ, Π, Φ, Ψ, Ω
And even if you could not pronounce them, you maybe know their names or just recognize them
Good job! You are only 25 minutes away from learning the Greek Alphabet
Now look at this image which compares the English (Latin) alphabet with the Greek one.
Try to pinpoint the letters that were difficult for you to recognize and those that you were unknown to you.
* Try to remember letters like "ν", "X" and "P" which look exactly like English some letters but are equivalent to others.
Now, grab a piece of paper and try to copy each letter while thinking about its equivalent. If you have difficulty reading it from the table, use the previous image.
There is no reason to memorize the "Name" of each letter. Remembering the sound is enough. For example Ξ,ξ stands for "X" or Χ,χ stands for "Ch".
Now, grab a piece of paper and try to copy each letter while thinking about its equivalent. If you have difficulty reading it from the table, use the previous image.
There is no reason to memorize the "Name" of each letter. Remembering the sound is enough. For example Ξ,ξ stands for "X" or Χ,χ stands for "Ch".
When you are sure that you remember most of the letters progress to the next part.
Even more letters
Bad news: if you thought that until now it is easy enough, you will be disappointed. It is not enough to learn the alphabet to be able to read texts.
The Greek Language contains many diphthongs as well. A vowel, that follows another and, practically, forming a new "letter" in the same syllable.
Not only that but there are a lot of consonant combinations, which are really important to recognize.
Here is another table:
Bad news: if you thought that until now it is easy enough, you will be disappointed. It is not enough to learn the alphabet to be able to read texts.
The Greek Language contains many diphthongs as well. A vowel, that follows another and, practically, forming a new "letter" in the same syllable.
Not only that but there are a lot of consonant combinations, which are really important to recognize.
Here is another table:
Do not panic!
Most of the consonant combinations are rarely used, and you can learn them as you encounter them
The most important ones are:
Ντ,ντ -> which is equivalent to -> D,d (or nd)
Μπ,μπ -> which is equivalent to -> B,b
Γγ,γγ and Γκ,γκ -> which are equivalent to -> a sound between the Greek "Γ" and English "G"
Albeit, what is really important to remember are the diphthongs, which are used as often as normal letters do.
Again a table, only with the Dipthongs:
Most of the consonant combinations are rarely used, and you can learn them as you encounter them
The most important ones are:
Ντ,ντ -> which is equivalent to -> D,d (or nd)
Μπ,μπ -> which is equivalent to -> B,b
Γγ,γγ and Γκ,γκ -> which are equivalent to -> a sound between the Greek "Γ" and English "G"
Albeit, what is really important to remember are the diphthongs, which are used as often as normal letters do.
Again a table, only with the Dipthongs:
To remember such a big amount of sounds is difficult, so lets try and narrow it down a bit:
There are some golden rules that most readers use -especially Greek-.
You don't really need to differentiate between these diphthongs when reading. While in ancient Greek "ει" sounded differently than "ι", in present-day the sound is the same. Due to the Ancient Greek being a language that is not spoken any more, you just need to know that "ει" is similar to an "Ι" or "αι" similar to "E".
The rules:
1)
If you put an "Ι,ι" after an "Α,α" it sounds like an "Ε,ε"
If you put an "Ι,ι" after an "Ε,ε", an "Ο,ι" or an "Υ,υ" it sounds like an "Ι,ι"
So we have two "Ε,ε" : "Ε,ε" and "Αι,αι"
And we have four "Ι,ι": "Ει,ει", "Οι,οι", "Υι,υι" and "Ι,ι"
2)
Ου,ου (Υ after O) does not have a similar sound and needs to be remembered by itself. It sounds like the English "u" or "oo" for example "Soon".
3)
If you put an "Υ,υ" after "Α,α" or "E,ε" the Υ sounds like a Φ (f,ph).
Try to simulate these rules by making the sounds. You don't need to memorize them, you will remember them when you encounter your first diphthongs, and if you don't remember, you can always go back to this page and read the table again, or make small note on your computer.
The most important things is that you remember the Alphabet. If you can't recognize a letter, you would be able to recognize a diphthong as well.
Try yourself with this game, if you fail to find all the letters progress to the next lesson. You don't need to remember the name of the letters.
Answer with the English equivalents of each Greek letter. You need to use only the lower case English letter.