Greek Accents & Letters

Modern Greek has one accent, the tonos (τόνος, 'stress'), a small stroke over the vowel that is said loudest: Αθήνα Athína, καλημέρα kaliméra, ευχαριστώ efcharistó. Every word of two or more syllables gets one, on one of the seven vowels ά έ ή ί ό ύ ώ. Leaving it out is a spelling mistake, and moving it can change the word: πότε means 'when' but ποτέ 'never', νόμος is a law and νομός a prefecture.

Words of one syllable normally have no accent (και, να, θα, γεια), with a few exceptions written to tell words apart: ή 'or' against η 'the', and the question words πού 'where?' and πώς 'how?' against που 'that' and πως 'that'. On a vowel pair said as one sound (αι, ει, οι, ου, αυ, ευ) the tonos goes on the second letter: είναι 'is', ούζο ouzo.

On a capital that starts a word, the tonos sits at its upper left: Άννα, Έλενα, Ήλιος, Όλγα, Ώρα. Text written entirely in capitals drops it, so street signs and headlines read ΑΘΗΝΑ and ΚΑΛΗΜΕΡΑ. Until 1982 Greek was written in the polytonic system, with three accents and two breathing marks (ἀ ἁ ά ὰ ᾶ); the single tonos replaced them, and the old marks now live on in Ancient Greek, church books and some literary printing.

Dialytika: ϊ ϋ ΐ ΰ, two vowels said apart

The two dots of the dialytika (διαλυτικά) appear only on ι and υ. They say that the letter is its own syllable instead of joining the vowel before it into a pair. The classic example: παιδάκια (pe-DHA-kia) are little children, but παϊδάκια (pa-i-DHA-kia) are grilled lamb chops. Others are Ευρωπαϊκός 'European' and προϋπόθεση 'precondition'.

When the stress falls on that same ι or υ, it carries both marks, ΐ or ΰ: πρωτεΐνη 'protein', καΐκι 'caique', the mountain Ταΰγετος Taygetos. When the stress is on the first vowel, the tonos already shows the split and no dots are needed: τσάι 'tea', ρολόι 'clock'.

In all capitals the dialytika stays and is added where the dropped tonos used to keep two vowels apart: ΠΡΩΤΕΪΝΗ, ΤΣΑΪ. That is why Ϊ and Ϋ exist as capitals while ΐ and ΰ have only small forms.

The modern Greek alphabet in order, and final sigma ς

The Greek alphabet has 24 letters: Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ ς, Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, Ω ω. Accented letters are not separate letters and sort with their plain ones, so ά files under α in a dictionary. In modern Greek β sounds like v, δ like th in 'this', and five spellings, ι η υ ει οι, all say 'ee'; ου says 'oo', and μπ ντ γκ write b, d and g (mb, nd, ng inside many words).

Sigma has two small forms: σ at the start or in the middle of a word, ς only at the end: σοφός, Σωκράτης, never σοφόσ. Greek keyboards put ς on its own key, and spell-checkers flag a σ at the end of a word.

Many Greek capitals look exactly like Latin ones (Α Β Ε Η Ι Κ Μ Ν Ο Ρ Τ Υ Χ Ζ) but are different characters; a word that mixes the two will fail in search and spell-check, so copy the Greek one. For the letters as maths and science symbols (π, Σ, Δ, μ) and the archaic letters such as digamma Ϝ and koppa Ϙ, see the Greek Letters collection.

Greek punctuation: the Greek question mark ; and the upper dot ·

Greek asks questions with a mark that looks exactly like the English semicolon: Τι κάνεις; 'How are you?', Πού είσαι; 'Where are you?'. Unicode gives it its own code, U+037E ;, but defines it as canonically equivalent to the semicolon, so normalization maps it to a plain ; and on a Greek keyboard you type the Q key, which produces ;. The Greek semicolon is the ano teleia, a raised dot · (U+0387), used much less often today.

Quotations go in angle quotes « », with “ ” for quotes inside quotes. Novels set dialogue with a dash — at the start of the line. The apostrophe ’ marks a dropped vowel: σ’ αγαπώ (σε αγαπώ, 'I love you'), τ’ όνομα 'the name'.

Greek letters can also be numbers. A keraia after a letter makes it a numeral, used for kings, popes and school years: Φίλιππος Β΄ 'Philip II', Α΄ Λυκείου 'first year of upper secondary school'. Unicode's own sign is ʹ (U+0374), but in everyday text people type the stand-alone tonos ΄, which looks the same. A lower keraia ͵ before a letter multiplies it by a thousand: ͵α is 1000.

How to type Greek accents on a keyboard and phone

Windows: Settings, Time & language, Language & region, Add a language, Greek; switch with Windows + Space. Mac: System Settings, Keyboard, Input Sources, add Greek. On the Greek layout the letters sit on their Latin look-alikes and sound-alikes (A α, B β, D δ, G γ, L λ, P π), with θ on U, ψ on C, ω on V, ξ on J, ς on W and ; on Q.

The accent is a dead key: press the key to the right of L (where ; is on an English keyboard), then the vowel, and you get ά έ ή ί ό ύ ώ; with Shift first you get the dialytika, ϊ ϋ. Press it before a capital for Ά Έ Ή. ΐ and ΰ are rare enough that copying them from this page is usually quicker.

Phones: add the Greek keyboard (iPhone: Settings, General, Keyboard; Android Gboard: Languages) and long-press a vowel to pick ά, ϊ or ΐ. Word: type the code and press Alt+X, for example 03AC Alt+X for ά and 03C2 Alt+X for ς. HTML: ς gives ς and numeric codes such as ά give ά. Many Greeks texting in a hurry write Greeklish, Greek in Latin letters (kalimera, efxaristw); for anything that matters, the real letters with their tonos read right.

Where Greek is spoken

Greek is spoken by roughly 12 million people as estimated by CLDR: about 10.4 million in Greece 🇬🇷 and about 1.3 million in Cyprus 🇨🇾, where it is an official language alongside Turkish. It is also one of the official languages of the European Union 🇪🇺, and both countries pay in euros €; Greece used the drachma ₯, one of the oldest currency names in the world, until 2002. See the Greece and Cyprus collections for their flags, food and emoji.

Large Greek-speaking communities live abroad, with estimates of around 300,000 in Germany 🇩🇪, 250,000 in the United States 🇺🇸, 240,000 in Australia 🇦🇺, where Melbourne has one of the biggest Greek communities outside Greece, 150,000 in Canada 🇨🇦 and 75,000 in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧. Old Greek-speaking minorities live in southern Albania and in southern Italy, where Griko is still spoken in a few villages of Salento and Calabria.

Greek forms a branch of the Indo-European family on its own, so it has no close sister languages, only its own varieties such as Cypriot Greek and Pontic. Its alphabet, though, is the parent of others: the Latin alphabet came from it through the Etruscans, and the Cyrillic alphabet of Russian and Bulgarian and the Coptic alphabet were built on Greek letters.