The Greek Alphabet

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The Greek Alphabet

• By Christos N. Hadjichristidis
• My name in Greek is
• ???st?? ?. ?at?????st?d??

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Introduction a common mistake

• Ge?a sa?. ?e ???e ???st? ?at?????st?d?
• (Transliteration
• y?sas! me léne Chrísto Chatzichristídi)
• The majority of male Greek names surnames end
  in ?. However, this letter is omitted when
• 1. Introducing yourself
• 2. Addressing or greeting someone by name
• About 99.9 of non-native Greeks make this
  mistake so get it right and you will make an
  excellent first impression!!

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A few things about me

• Very High Energy ?-Ray Group, Durham
• Nestor Experiment Neutrinos
• Work for the 21st Century Science Pilot at Tudhoe
  Grange School
• Mail christos.hadjichristidis_at_durham.ac.uk
• Websitehttp//www.dur.ac.uk/christos.hadjichristi
  dis/

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Its all Greek to me!!!

• It was greek to me... exclaims Casca in
  Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar'.
• Graecum est, non legitur by the Medieval
  Scholastics, because they did not understand
  Greek texts ( it is Greek, not possible to be
  read).
• But there are about 46.000 Greek words in English
  (i.e. democracy, idea, politics, theatre .),
  some are harder to detect though (i.e. µ????
  myth, µ?t?? metre, pe???d?? period
• On the other hand, there many English words in
  Greek stress, camping, tennis, fax ..

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Good News Reading Greek is a Piece of Cake!!!!

• Once you have mastered the alphabet some
  special letter combinations you can pronounce any
  word with the exception of my surname!. (i.e.
  Each letter combination of letters sounds the
  same wherever they appear !!!!)
• So without any further ado, lets dive into the
  Greek Alphabet gtgt

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The Greek Alphabet
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Some useful observations

• In modern Greek all ?s and ?s have exactly the
  same pronunciation

• So why bother with so many different ?s ?s ?
• Well this has not always been the case. Indeed,
  in Ancient Greek each letter was pronounced
  differently ( ? as the French ê in tête, ? as
  short French u in lune, while ? as aw in saw
  or long o in go). In order to both preserve
  the beauty of the Greek Language and be able to
  trace modern words back to their ancient
  origins, we keep the different ?s and ?s even
  though we pronounce them in exactly the same way.
  

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The stress-mark

• The stress mark (?) is used, in every word with
  more than one syllable (with few exceptions), to
  show the primary or main stressed syllable in the
  word.
• Some simple rules
• 1. The stress mark always falls on one of the
  vowels and never on a consonant
• 2. The stress mark is placed over the
  appropriate vowel if lower-case, and beside it if
  upper-case
• ? but ?, ? but ?, ? but ?, ? but ?, ? but ?,
  ? but ?
• 3. If a word is entirely in upper-case letters,
  the stress accent is omitted altogether. However,
  if a word stars with upper-case letter and
  lower-case letters follow then a stressed mark is
  required i.e.
• ???d?? but ?????S (Exit)
• Be careful sometimes the meaning of otherwise
  identical words is determined the position of the
  stress-mark i.e.
• ? ????? The old man, but ?e??? robust,
  able bodied

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Lets practice

• Exercise 1
• Match the following lower-case vowels with their
  upper-case equivalents

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Lets practice

• Exercise 2
• Match the following lower-case consonants with
  their upper-case equivalents

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Some simple expressions
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Some simple expressions
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Greetings farewells

• We are going to introduce ourselves to all the
  other members of the group according to the
  following dialogue. Remember to shake hands when
  you say Pleased to meet you

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Now you should all have Greek names

• Practice the following informal conversation

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and a more formal greeting