Read and Understand Ancient Greek / Multimedia CD-ROM

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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