Hello, this is Pastor Steven Anderson from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona,
here to teach you the Greek alphabet, which is going to be the first step in learning
how to speak and read Greek.
Now, Greek has a completely different alphabet from English, but the good news is that Greek
is a very phonetic language, meaning that once you learn the alphabet, things are going
to be spelled exactly how they sound.
And so once you memorize these 24 letters, it's going to be pretty easy for you to read
Greek.
It's not going to be that hard at all.
Now, the pronunciation that I'm going to be teaching you is modern Greek pronunciation.
Even if you're learning biblical Greek, it makes way more sense to learn the modern Greek
pronunciation.
If you go to Bible college or seminary or any of these type of places, they're not going
to teach you modern Greek pronunciation.
They're going to teach you a reconstructed pronunciation of what scholars think it was
pronounced like thousands of years ago, but of course there's no tape recorder to show
us exactly what it sounded like back then.
They can speculate and make an educated guess, but there's really no way of knowing whether
or not the reconstructed pronunciation is even right.
Whereas with modern Greek pronunciation, you can actually learn how to pronounce words
in a way that is correct and will be understood by Greek people.
Obviously the Bible is not written in modern Greek.
It's written in an older dialect known as Koine Greek, but that being said, it's not
so different that you cannot communicate with modern Greek speakers using Koine Greek and
be understood.
They are different dialects, but they are the same language and they are very similar
in fact.
They have differences, but they also have a lot of similarities.
So it would make more sense if you're going to learn biblical Greek to learn the modern
pronunciation because that will allow you to communicate with modern day Greek speakers.
And not only that, but the reconstructed pronunciation is really an American thing in a lot of ways
because if you were to go to Greece, for example, or talk to people who are Greek, even when
they study biblical New Testament Greek or even when they study classical Greek, going
back even further than that, they use the modern pronunciation.
They don't use the reconstructed pronunciation.
In fact, Greek people will mock and make fun of the American reconstructed pronunciation
and say that it's like, you know, Plato in cowboy boots and that it just sounds American.
It just doesn't sound Greek.
So it makes more sense to learn the legitimate modern Greek pronunciation.
Also you can get an audio Bible of the New Testament in Greek being read by a modern
Greek speaker and so you wouldn't be able to use that tool if you're on the reconstructed
pronunciation.
I'll talk more about that in the next video about some resources and tools that you can
use to help you learn Greek.
But let's get started with the alphabet.
The first letter of the Greek alphabet is the letter alpha.
And basically it's made by taking your pen and starting at the top at this little line
right here and then you come around and make a loop and then just like that.
Now the best way to learn the alphabet is to grab a piece of paper and a pen as you're
watching this video and actually just write out a row of 20 of each letter.
As I'm explaining these to you and talking to you about the letters, just write them
down.
That's the best way to learn it.
Okay.
This letter is called alpha and alpha makes an ah sound, okay?
So after the letter alpha is going to be the letter vita, vita.
And of course if you're used to the Americanized pronunciation or the reconstructed pronunciation,
you would know this as beta.
But it's actually pronounced vita and it makes a v sound like a v.
And vita is basically just like a capital B, but it has this little tail going down
below it, vita.
So it goes alpha, vita.
Now let me stop at this point and explain to you that the letters that I'm teaching
you here are all lowercase letters.
Even though this looks like an uppercase B, this is actually a lowercase vita.
And I would highly recommend that you learn the lowercase letters first in Greek.
There is an uppercase Greek alphabet, but honestly if you read Greek or if you read
a Greek New Testament, the uppercase letters are used very seldom because they don't start
a sentence with a capital letter, for example.
The only time you see the capitals is on proper names, you know, a few other things.
But honestly the lowercase is way more important when you're learning Greek.
So I would learn the uppercase later.
You don't really need it right now.
The main thing to learn is the lowercase letters.
So so far we've got two letters.
We've got alpha and vita right there.
And then the third letter is going to be gamma, gamma.
And gamma is similar to a lowercase English Y, but it's got that little loop and it's
basically symmetrical from one side to the other.
So this is the letter gamma.
So alpha, vita, gamma.
And then after gamma is velta.
Now velta looks similar to an English D, but it has this curvy thing going on.
To me it kind of looks like one of those bombs, you know, the little black round bomb with
the wick coming out of it.
So this letter is velta.
And it is basically pronounced like the T-H in the word the.
Okay.
If you speak Spanish you're probably used to pronouncing the D's in this way.
But this is velta, velta.
So alpha, vita, gamma, velta.
All right.
And then after velta we've got epsilon.
And epsilon looks very similar to an English E, just two little loops like that.
That's the lowercase epsilon.
And epsilon makes the eh sound.
Now remember the Greek alphabet, the first sound of the name of the letter tells you
what sound that letter makes.
So alpha says ah, vita says vuh, gamma says guh, velta says thuh, and then epsilon says
eh.
Eh, eh, epsilon.
Now the good thing about these vowels is that they only make one sound.
Now we'll talk a little bit later about combining vowels into diphthongs, but epsilon basically
just makes one type of a sound.
It's not like in English where we have these dramatically different sounds, ee, eh, eh.
It just makes an eh as an epsilon.
Sometimes it'll be longer like eh, eh, eh, I mean but it's not that big of a difference.
So after epsilon is the letter zita and zita is a little loop thing at the top and then
it swings out like that and comes back.
So it kind of looks like a C but it's got these other decorations on it.
So again the zita, you just start at the top, make a little loop and then make a big giant
loop and then come back like that.
That is zita, okay?
Then after zita, you have the letter eta.
Now eta is basically like an English lowercase n but then the front just comes down a little
bit further.
So it's like you're writing an English lowercase n but then you just come down a little bit
further.
This letter is pronounced eta.
So we have zita and then we have eta.
Zita says zz and eta makes an ee sound.
This is a vowel that makes an ee sound, eta.
And then after eta, you have theta.
Theta is basically just an oval with a line across it.
And you probably remember this from math.
In math, you call this theta using an American pronunciation but this letter in Greek is
the letter theta and it makes a th sound.
Now the difference between this and theta is that theta makes the th sound like in the
word the, velta, whereas theta makes the sound as in the word thick, the harder th
sound.
Thick.
Theta.
All right?
Then after theta, you have the letter yota which yota is just like a lowercase i that
you don't dot, okay?
That's yota.
Just like an English lowercase i except you're not going to be dotting it.
Just make a line like that, lowercase.
That's yota.
And then after yota, you have kappa.
Now the lowercase kappa basically looks like you took an English capital K and just shrunk
it down.
Okay?
And I hope you're writing these down as we go and practicing these.
But it basically is just like the uppercase K in English except you're just writing it
like half the height because it's lowercase.
So this is kappa, all right?
And then after kappa, you have the letter lambda.
And lambda basically looks like this.
So it curves down and then it has these two legs at the bottom.
So let me just talk about these three letters for a moment, yota, kappa, lambda.
Now yota, if we were to pronounce it in slow motion, would be iota, iota.
And it makes an E sound because it starts on an E, iota, yota.
So that one is a little tricky.
But yota makes an E sound.
It makes the identical sound as the letter eta that we saw earlier.
Kappa makes a hard k sound.
And then lambda makes the L sound.
So these are not that different from I, K, and L in English, yota, kappa, lambda.
And then after lambda, we have the letter me, me.
Now me basically looks like a lowercase U in English, but then it just has this extra
long leg at the front added on, okay?
So basically you start out by making a straight line like that, and then you just kind of
turn it into a little lowercase U alongside of it.
And that is the letter me.
Now if you look really closely at this letter, it sort of resembles an M in a way.
When you look at it, it's just kind of a warped M. But the way that I like to remember it
is just as a lowercase U with this other extra long leg on the left side, and this letter
is called me, all right?
Now the next letter is pretty tricky.
It is called knee, okay?
So we have me and knee.
Knee looks just like an English lowercase V, okay?
So when you're reading something in Greek and you see this letter, you're going to want
to pronounce it like a V sound.
But it doesn't make a V sound, it makes an N sound.
This is knee, knee.
So you got to get used to pronouncing this as an N, knee.
This letter makes knee.
Another me and knee, we have xi.
Xi is basically the X sound.
And this one, you start out with a little loop at the top, then you make two big loops,
and then you come back like this.
So it's almost like a backwards three, okay?
But it has some other little frills going on here.
So it does resemble a backwards three.
So you start out by making a little loop at the top, and then you loop down, and then
another loop in the middle, and then you come back at the bottom.
Now this letter was actually pretty easy for me to learn because when I was a child
and we did cursive handwriting in elementary school, this is what they taught us as an
uppercase X, okay?
I know I've talked to other people who learned a different uppercase X when they were doing
English cursive handwriting, but for some reason, this is what they taught us.
So this was pretty easy for me to learn because I learned it as a child in school.
But anyway, this is xi.
Xi makes the X sound.
So we have mi, ni, xi.
The next letter is omicron.
Omicron is identical to our English lowercase o, and it makes an o sound, omicron.
Now where omicron gets its name is o obviously and then micron.
Micron means small in Greek.
So this is basically a little o, omicron, omicron, okay?
Now you've probably heard of the last letter of the Greek alphabet, which is omega.
Well, mega means big or large.
So basically what you have in Greek is the little o, omicron, and the big o, omega, okay?
And they both make the same sound in modern Greek, which is an o sound, okay?
So this is omicron, just like a lowercase o.
After omicron, we have the letter p.
You probably, again, learned this in math as pi, but in Greek it's pronounced p, okay?
Let me draw it for you nice and big here, p, okay?
So you probably noticed, and I'm going to get to this in a minute when I teach you how
to memorize these, because at the end of the video I'm going to teach you how to memorize
the order.
I have a few little tricks for how I memorize it.
But you probably noticed that the order of the letters resembles the order of the English
letters because we have, you know, lamva, mi, ni, that's pretty similar to like lmn,
okay?
And then op, we have omicron, p.
So what do you expect to come next?
If we've got omicron and then we've got p, we're expecting an r next, right?
Okay?
Well, the next letter is called ro.
Now, I can't roll my r's, you know, you probably can't either if you're an American as I am.
But you know, a lot of Americans can roll their r's pretty well, especially if you've
learned Spanish at a young age, but I am unable to roll my r's, so I just say ro.
I can't really do a fancy sounding r, but the ro is a little bit tricky because it looks
an awful lot like a lowercase p in English, right?
But you can't let that confuse you because remember, this is p, okay?
So you don't want to confuse these two things because the p is this symbol right here, okay?
This is ro, so you don't want to get those two mixed up.
Whenever you see this when you're reading Greek, you need to get used to pronouncing
this as an r sound and not as a p sound, and just keep in mind what the p looks like.
Remember it from math, okay?
So this is ro, and that is an r sound in Greek.
The next letter is going to be the s sound, which is sigma, and sigma is basically just
a circle with a little line sticking out to the right like that.
So this letter is sigma.
So we have p, ro, sigma, and then after sigma, we have tof.
Now tof, tof looks like a capital T, but just shrunk it down to half size because it's a
lowercase letter.
So this letter tof makes the t sound, so these are both pretty easy, sigma, tof, and then
after tof, we have the letter ipsilon.
Now ipsilon looks very similar to an English u, it's a little bit fancier on the edges,
but again this is ipsilon, and ipsilon makes an e sound.
So keep in mind, so far we've learned three letters that all make the same sound in modern
Greek.
One of them was eta, makes an e sound, right?
Yota makes an e sound, and then also ipsilon makes an e sound.
So it's great, once you learn these three letters, you know that they all make the same
sound, e, alright, so it's pretty easy.
After ipsilon, we have the letter phi.
Now this is one that we don't have in English, but it's basically the f sound or the ph sound.
It's just a circle with a line through it coming down, so this letter is phi.
Then after phi, we have he, okay, and this is basically like the ch in German.
If you know how to speak German, the ch is a hard breathing.
It's like an h, but just a harder h, he.
Just move more air, breathe, and say he, he.
It's kind of like a cross between a k and an h.
Think about something halfway between a k and an h, he.
And the way you make he is sort of like an x, okay, but it kind of goes below the line.
So if this were the line, it would kind of go below the line a little bit, okay?
So that letter is he.
So again, we have phi, all right, and then we have he, he, he, okay, he, he.
So we have phi, he, and then we have another one that you're probably not going to be used
to, which is psi.
Now psi is pretty much like an ipsilon with a line coming right down through the middle
of it.
And psi is our p-s sound, okay?
You know, we have a lot of words in English that start with p-s, but we usually don't
pronounce the p, right?
For example, the book of Psalms, we don't call it psalms, we just call it Psalms.
Psychologists, we would not pronounce the p, but in Greek they do have that p-s sound,
and this will often be at the beginning of a word in Greek.
For example, we say in English someone's psyche.
Well psyche comes from the Greek word psihi, psihi, and they do pronounce that p-s at the
beginning of the word psihi, okay?
So this right here is the psihi, and a trick for remembering this one is if you remember
there's that Greek false god called Poseidon, and he's got that trident in his hand, right?
Well this basically looks a lot like a trident, doesn't it?
And so maybe that'll help you, Poseidon is carrying a thing that looks like this, and
this is a p-s.
Another way that I like to remember it is if you remember there's a Japanese weapon
known as psi, now that starts with a t-s, but that kind of helps me remember that this
is a p-s, p-s, okay?
And then of course the last letter is a very famous letter that everyone's heard of, but
you may not be very familiar with the symbol of it though, even though you've heard it
a lot, omega, you probably don't know the symbol, basically is like a rounded W, okay?
So the lowercase omega is like a rounded W. So there you go, that's all the letters.
So now I'm going to write them all out in a row, and I'm going to teach you how to remember
the order that they come in, okay?
So first of all I'm going to write out the first five, because I like to memorize these
in groups, okay?
And it's easier to learn that way if you break down the 24 letters into smaller groups.
So first of all, let's just do the first five, okay?
Which are alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, okay?
Hopefully you can see that, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon.
Now the reason I like to group these five together is because these resemble the A,
the B, and then if you skip gamma, the D and the E of the English alphabet.
So these five don't really look that different from the first five letters of the English
alphabet.
So it's pretty easy to get your bearings and to remember these five, alpha, beta, gamma,
delta, epsilon.
So I would just learn those five and just memorize those five.
Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, okay?
Then once you get those five down, I like to group the next three into a group, okay?
And if you remember, the next three are going to be zeta, eta, and theta.
Now you can probably guess why I like to group these three, but it's because they rhyme.
So if I can remember, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, and then I have the three
that rhyme, zeta, eta, theta, all right, so that's pretty easy to remember, right?
Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, and then after theta, I like to
think of the next three as a group also, which are yoda, kappa, and lambda, all right?
And the reason I group yoda, kappa, and lambda is because they are similar to English letters
I, K, and L. Our alphabet goes I, J, K, L. So just forget the J, and you've got yoda,
kappa, lambda.
So alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta is a nice little triplet.
Then you've got yoda, kappa, lambda.
And then the next group that I like to do is mi, ni, xi, omicron, pi.
And again, this makes a nice little rhyme when you do this.
Mi, ni, xi, omicron, pi.
So you can use that rhyme to learn these five as a little group.
Mi, ni, xi, omicron, pi.
And then after pi, of course, we have an R sound is what we're looking for.
So the next group I like to remember is rho, sigma, taf, epsilon.
And the reason I like these four together like this is because in English, it goes R-S-T-U,
right?
And the epsilon, even though it makes an E sound, it looks a lot like a U when you write
it out.
So it's pretty easy to remember the order here.
R-S-T-U in English, rho, sigma, taf, epsilon, okay?
So that's the next four.
Then I like to do a triplet of the three kind of strange letters in Greek, the three that
are probably the most unfamiliar to us.
I like to put them together because they all rhyme as well.
And if you remember those, they are phi, he, psi, all right?
And then, of course, omega, you're not going to forget that because it's the last letter.
Jesus said, I'm alpha and omega.
It's pretty easy to remember omega as being the last letter, okay?
So again, remember how we have these grouped, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon.
Those five are easy to remember.
They're similar to the first five English letters.
Then we got our triple here, zeta, eta, theta.
Then we've got yota, kappa, lambda.
And another nice rhyme of these five, mi, ni, xi, omicron, pi.
Then we have the next group of four, rho, sigma, taf, epsilon.
Then we have the three kind of strange symbols, which are phi, he, and psi.
And then we have omega, all right?
So I would recommend you memorize in the Greek alphabet if you have any interest in learning
Greek, because this is where it all begins.
You have to learn how to pronounce these letters.
And once you learn how to pronounce these letters,
you're gonna be able to read the Greek language.
Whereas if you don't learn the alphabet, I mean, you're gonna look at it and
it's gonna look like complete gibberish to you.
You're not gonna know what you're looking for.
And I would recommend memorizing in these groups.
So maybe today, your goal could be to just learn these five.
And then maybe the next day, you could try to learn the three.
And then the next day, learn three more.
And if it's hard for you, you can do it over the course of a week like that.
Otherwise, if you wanna be ambitious about it,
you might as well just learn the whole thing in one day.
It's definitely possible, okay?
Now, before I end the video, learning the alphabet has gotten you about 90% of
the way to being able to read a Greek Bible or
read anything that you want in Greek as far as just pronouncing the words.
Obviously, you don't know what the words mean, but
at least this will help you be able to pronounce the words.
So the next step is gonna be to learn a few letter combinations.
Now, I'm not gonna sit here and
teach you every combination of letters that could possibly occur in Greek that
has a unique sound.
The best way to learn how to pronounce stuff is to get a Greek New Testament and
audio version, also just to get a Greek learning course.
Like for example, Pimsleur does a Greek audio learning course that's really good.
And it's all audio, so it's all done just by listening.
So that's gonna help you pronounce things the best,
is obviously just learning to listen to native speakers.
A native speaker reading the Greek Bible or
a native speaker teaching you through the Pimsleur course.
That's gonna give you all the nuances and all the different tricky things,
rather than trying to memorize a bunch of rules, in my opinion.
But there are a few basic letter combinations that you need in addition to
knowing the Greek alphabet, if you're gonna be able to read Greek, okay?
So let me show you these diphthongs or
combinations of two vowels that you're gonna need to know.
First of all, there's a group of them that ends in iota, okay?
So first of all, we've got alpha iota, okay?
And then we've got epsilon iota.
Then we've got ocrone iota.
And then we've got epsilon iota, all right?
So we've got these combinations right here.
Now here's the good news.
All three of these make the same sound, and they basically make an E sound.
And then this one right here, the alpha iota, makes the sound of epsilon, okay?
So when we come across alpha iota, that combination of two letters,
it looks like an A and an I, that's gonna be pronounced A or E like epsilon, okay?
So that's pretty easy.
And then just remember, anything else other than the alpha iota,
anything else ending in iota, just pronounce it like a iota.
So this is E, this is E, this is E, all of it's E, okay?
And again, we're using modern pronunciation, okay?
So that's these diphthongs here that end in E.
Now, another couple of diphthongs that you need to learn is basically alpha
epsilon and epsilon epsilon, okay?
These are a little bit tricky because the alpha epsilon is basically
pronounced like of or of, okay?
So when we come to this, we're either gonna pronounce it of or of.
And then this one is going to be of or of, all right?
So we got of or of, all right?
So these two are a little tricky.
So in addition to memorizing the 24 letters, in addition to memorizing those
four other diphthongs that end in iota, you need to learn this is of or of, and
this is of or of, okay?
And then there's one more that's pretty important.
And again, I'm not teaching you everything, but
I'm teaching you like 99% of what you need.
The rest of it you can just pick up as you go, in my opinion.
The other one that you're gonna need is just this one right here,
which is the omicron epsilon, and that's just pronounced oo, oo.
That makes your oo sound, okay?
So basically, it's not a whole lot of diphthongs that you have to learn in Greek.
Basically this one, what's this one say again?
A or eh, it's just like an epsilon.
Whenever you see this, just think of it as epsilon.
And then of course, we've got the triplicate here.
All three of these make the same ee sound, ee, ee.
And if you remember, this makes ee, this makes ee, and this makes ee.
So basically, you have six different vowel and
vowel combinations that all make the ee sound.
So here's a tip, when you're reading in Greek,
if you don't know what sound something makes, just if you guess ee,
well, you're probably right, that's the most common sound, okay?
So those all say ee, and then you've got your two here, of, off, or ev, f, all right?
And then you've got this one that says oo, and that's it.
So if you've learned the whole Greek alphabet, and
if you've learned all those diphthongs, you're pretty much ready to read Greek.
And the great thing about reading the Greek New Testament is that it has
these accent marks.
So it makes it really easy to know where to put the accent on which syllable, and
we'll talk more about that later.
But in the next video,
I basically just want to give you some resources for learning Greek.
You've learned the alphabet, hopefully you were writing it down as you watched
the video, because writing these out 20, 30 times and chanting them over and
over again is the best way to learn the Greek alphabet, in my opinion.
But once you've learned the Greek alphabet, where do you go next to learn more?
Well, I'm gonna give you some resources in the next video that will help you
as you're learning Greek.
If you didn't already watch the introduction video that explains why I'm
even teaching this and why you should even think about learning Greek, or
if you should even think about learning Greek, go ahead and
watch the introduction video.
Otherwise, you can continue on to the next video if you like, and
I'll give you some resources for learning Greek.