Free guide
The Greek alphabet for English speakers
Twenty-four letters, about half of which you already half-know. Here is the whole thing, including the six that will trip you up and the letter pairs no beginner guide bothers to explain.
It is 24 letters, and about half of them you already know
The Greek alphabet is the part of Greek that frightens people most and takes the least time. Ten of the letters look and sound roughly like their English counterparts. Six look familiar but say something else — those are the ones worth your attention. Eight are genuinely new shapes. Most adults can read Greek aloud, slowly, within a week, long before they understand what they are reading.
Reading aloud without understanding sounds useless. It isn't. Once signs, menus and shop fronts stop being decoration, Greece starts teaching you vocabulary for free.
The six false friends
These cause more early mistakes than everything else combined.
| Letter | Looks like | Actually says | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Β β | B | “v” in very | βιβλίο vee-VLEE-o — book |
| Η η | H | “ee” in see | ήλιος EE-lyos — sun |
| Ν ν | v | “n” in net | νερό ne-RO — water |
| Ρ ρ | P | a rolled “r” | ρόδι RO-dhee — pomegranate |
| Χ χ | X | “ch” in Scottish loch | χαρά kha-RA — joy |
| Ω ω | w | “o” in got | ώρα O-ra — hour |
There is no letter for the English “b”, “d” or hard “g” sound. Greek builds them from pairs of letters instead, which is the next section.
Five ways to write the same “ee”
This is the single most disorienting thing about Greek spelling, so it is better to meet it early than to discover it by being wrong. ι, η, υ, ει and οι are all pronounced identically — “ee”. Likewise ο and ω both say “o”, and ε and αι both say “e”.
The good news: this only makes spelling hard, never reading. Every Greek word is pronounced exactly as written, with no silent letters and no exceptions worth the name. Compare English “though”, “through” and “thought”. Greek learners of English have it far worse.
Letter pairs that make new sounds
Learn these ten and you can read essentially anything. Without them, words like μπύρα stay unreadable.
| Pair | Sound | Example |
|---|---|---|
| μπ | b at the start, mb inside a word | μπύρα BEE-ra — beer |
| ντ | d at the start, nd inside | ντομάτα do-MA-ta — tomato |
| γκ / γγ | hard g | αγγλικά an-glee-KA — English |
| τσ | ts | τσάι TSA-ee — tea |
| τζ | dz | τζατζίκι dza-DZEE-kee — tzatziki |
| ου | oo | ούζο OO-zo — ouzo |
| αι | e as in bed | καιρός ke-ROS — weather |
| ει / οι | ee | είναι EE-ne — is |
| αυ | av or af | αύριο AV-ree-o — tomorrow |
| ευ | ev or ef | ευχαριστώ ef-kha-ree-STO — thank you |
The accent mark, and why it is not optional
Modern Greek uses exactly one accent mark. Every word of two or more syllables carries it, and it marks the stressed syllable. Greek stress is not predictable from spelling, so the accent is doing real work — it is not decoration, and leaving it out is a spelling mistake.
It also changes meaning outright. πότε (PO-te) means “when”. ποτέ (po-TE) means “never”. Same letters, opposite use. In text set in all capitals the accent is dropped, which is why signs can be briefly ambiguous even to Greeks.
Sigma has two lowercase forms
σ is used everywhere inside a word, and ς only at the end of one. So “Greek man” is Ελληνας, with both forms in the same word. It is the only Greek letter that does this, and it is purely positional — the sound never changes.
A realistic one-week plan
- Days 1–2 — the easy ten. Α Ε Ζ Ι Κ Μ Ο Σ Τ behave about as you would expect, and Β looks familiar but says “v”.
- Day 3 — the six false friends. The table above. Say each one aloud with its example word; the word is what makes it stick, not the letter.
- Day 4 — the eight new shapes. Γ Δ Θ Λ Ξ Π Φ Ψ. No English lookalikes to unlearn, so these are easier than day 3.
- Day 5 — the letter pairs. Without them you cannot read a beer label.
- Day 6 — accents, then read something real. Menus and street signs, not a textbook. Aim to decode, not to understand.
- Day 7 — write. Your own name, your street, and ten words you actually expect to use. Writing fixes letter shapes far faster than reading does.
There is an interactive alphabet lab on the home page with all 24 letters, an example word for each, and a quiz that keeps going until you stop.