Pronouncing Ancient Greek Like Modern Greek

This page will give a rough guide of how to pronounce New Testament Greek with a Modern Greek pronunciation as an English speaker. As with any two languages, these are only approximations; if you use the plain English sounds below, you should be understandable, but you’ll have a strong accent.

If you want to reduce your accent, there’s no replacement for listening to and trying to imitate a native speaker. A native Greek speaker has read the entire New Testament with a Modern Greek accent. You can just listen to get a feel for it, or look for specific passages to listen and see what they sound like.

In Laleo Language’s Koine Greek Study System, each word has a pop-over with the key pronunciation information for that word, with the rules as applied; so there’s no need to memorize all the rules laid out below.

Letters and sounds

Below is a list of Greek letters, with their names, and a rough English equivalent of the pronunciation.

Letter	Name	Rough pronunciation
Α, α	alpha	a in father
Β, β	beta	v in vine
Γ, γ	gamma	g in go or y in yes (see note below)
Δ, δ	delta	th in then
Ε, ε	epsilon	e in met
Ζ, ζ	zeta	z in zoo
Η, η	eta	i in ski
Θ, θ	theta	th in thin
Ι, ι	iota	i in ski
Κ, κ	kappa	k in king
Λ, λ	lambda	l in light
Μ, μ	mu	m in me
Ν, ν	nu	n in no
Ξ, ξ	xi	x in taxi
Ο, ο	omicron	ō in note
Π, π	pi	p in pie
Ρ, ρ	rho	r in roll
Σ, σ, ς	sigma	s in see
Τ, τ	tau	t in stop
Υ, υ	upsilon	i in ski
Φ, φ	phi	f in fish
Χ, χ	chi	ch in loch
Ψ, ψ	psi	ps in lips
Ω, ω	omega	ō in note

Some letters behave differently as pairs:

Letters	Rough pronunciation
ει	i in ski
οι	i in ski
υι	i in ski
αι	e in they
ου	ou in soup
αυ	av or af (see note below)
ευ	ev or ef (see note below)
γγ	ng in hunger
γχ	nch in anchor
γξ	nks in thanks
γκ	g in go
ντ	nd in panda
μπ	b in box

Notes:

• In modern Greek, all of the following are pronounced like the i in ski: η, ι, υ, ει, οι, υι. This shift is called Iotacism.

• σ, ς: The Greek letter sigma has two forms in lower case: σ is used at the beginning or middle of a word, while ς is used at the end of a word. Both are pronounced the same way, like s in see. Example: Ἰησοῦς (Jesus) is pronounced ee-soos

• γ: Technically this is a voiced version of the “ch” in “loch”. This letter has several pronunciations depending on what follows it:

  • The basic sound seems to English speakers like the g in go
  • Before ε, η, ι, υ (the front vowels) it seems to English speakers like y in yes
  • Before γ, κ, χ, ξ it becomes nasal, sounding like ‘n’:
    • γγ sounds like ng in hunger
    • γκ sounds like g in go
    • γχ sounds like nch in anchor
    • γξ sounds like nks in thanks
  • Examples:
    • γέγονεν sounds like ye-go-nen
    • ἄγγελος (angel) sounds like an-ye-lōs

• αι: In modern Greek, this isn’t pronounced as a dipthong (i.e., one vowel sound flowing smoothly into another one), but as a single short vowel sound. Some guides suggest that it sounds like the Greek letter ε (e in met); but although it’s has a similar length, it sounds more like the e in they (before it transitions to the ‘y’ sound); or like the é in the French word thé (tea).

• αυ, ευ: These sound like af or ef (like after or effort) respectively, if followed by an unvoiced consonant (κ, π, τ, φ, χ, θ, σ, ξ), or av or ev (like average or ever) if followed by a voiced consonant (β, γ, δ, ζ, λ, μ, ν, ρ) or a vowel. Examples:

  • Δαυίδ (David) is pronounced tha-veed
  • εὐαγγέλιον (gospel) is pronounced ev-an-yel-ee-ōn
  • αὐτός is pronounced af-tōs
  • ἑαυτοῦ is pronounced e-af-tō

• ου: This combination makes a single sound like ou in soup or oo in boot. Example: μου (“my”) sounds like moo.

• Double consonants:

  • μπ sounds like the b in box. Example: ἔμπροσθεν sounds like eb-ro-sen
  • ντ sounds like nd in panda. Example: πάντα sounds like pan-da

Punctuation

Punctuation for Greek is different than English:

• The full stop / period (.) and comma (,) look like their English counterparts
• A raised dot (·) is a semicolon or a colon
• The question mark (;) looks like an English semicolon

Example:

καὶ ἠρώτησαν αὐτόν·	And they asked him:
Τί οὖν; σὺ Ἠλίας εἶ;	Who then? Are you Elijah?
καὶ λέγει· Οὐκ εἰμί.	And he said: I am not.
Ὁ προφήτης εἶ σύ;	Are you The Prophet?
καὶ ἀπεκρίθη· Οὔ.	And he replied: No.

Other marks

Standard texts of ancient Greek have a number of additional marks, called diacritics. Like lower case letters, these typically aren’t in the original texts, but have been added later to make them easier for people who don’t speak ancient Greek as a living language to pick up nuances. These are discussed below, primarily so that they aren’t mysterious.

Breathing marks

At some point in the distant past, some words which began with vowels were pronounced with an initial ‘h’ sound (aspirated), while others weren’t. To indicate this, a breathing mark was introduced: every word beginning with a vowel or ρ must have either a rough breathing mark (e.g., ἁ) for vowels which should be aspirated, and a smooth breathing mark (e.g., ἀ) for vowels which should not.

In Modern Greek pronunciation, no vowels are aspirated, so this mark is ignored. However, they can be helpful when reading in distinguishing two words that are otherwise identical; for example:

• εἷς is “one”, εἰς is the preposition “in”
• ἥ is the nominative singular feminine form of “the”, ἤ is the conjunction “or”

Accents

Ancient Greek originally had a pitch accent system. It’s far beyond the scope of this guide to describe what this meant; but there were originally three accents: acute, grave, and circumflex, which sometimes change depending on the subsequent words (like “a” may change to “an” in English).

Modern greek uses a stress accent system, sort of like English, where a single syllable gets stress emphasis. As such, modern Greek has only a single accent type; and when reading ancient Greek, any accented syllable becomes a stress accent. Examples:

• ὀνόματά (“names”) would be pronounced ō-no-ma-ta
• πρῶτος (“first”) would be pronounced prō-tōs
• ἀδελφὸς (“brother”) would be pronounced a-thel-phōs

Diaeresis

In some cases, particularly in non-Greek names, vowel pairs which would normally pronounced as a dipthong are actually pronounced distinctly. In this case, one of the letters would have a diaeresis mark (e.g., ϋ) over it to indicate that it’s not part of a dipthong. Examples:

• Μωϋσέως (Moses) is pronounced Mō-ee-se-ōs
• Ἠσαΐας (Isaiah) has a diaeresis over the iota; so it’s pronounced ee-sa-ee-as, not ee-SEY-as“

Iota subscript

The iota subscript is a small mark that looks like a tiny ι written under certain vowels (ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ). It marks places where an ι used to be written on the line but eventually stopped being pronounced. You’ll see these marks frequently in dative case endings and some other grammatical forms.

These subscript iotas are silent: they’re not pronounced in any pronunciation system. However, they’re worth noticing because they often signal important grammatical information about the word. For example:

• αὕτη could mean “she” (feminine nominative), while αὐτῇ could mean “to her” (feminine dative)
• ἡ ἡμέρα means “the day” (nominative), while ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ means “in the day” (dative with iota subscripts)