It’s All Greek to Us
Let’s start with the alphabet (or αβ?) We’re not going to bother covering all twenty-four letters here, just what you need to read a little Greek at the end. First vowels: the easy ones are α (alpha) which is really just an a; ε (epsilon) an e; and ο (omicron) which is an o. All of these are ‘short’ vowels — so you pronounce then as in pat, pet or pot. The final vowel we learn is η (eta) which is kind of a ‘long’ e or the ‘ay’ in say.
The consonants we will learn nearly all have direct English equivalents: first we have γ (gamma) equivalent to a hard g, λ (lambda) equivalent to l, ρ (rho) equivalent to an r , ν (nu) equivalent to an n and finally σ (sigma) equivalent to an s. Watch out for ρ and ν as they look rather like a ‘p’ and ‘v’ respectively. If σ appears at the end of a word it is written ς (don’t ask why). The final consonant we learn is χ (chi) which has a hard ch sound, as in Christis!
| α | a |
| ε | e |
| ο | o |
| η | long e |
| γ | hard g |
| λ | l |
| ν | n |
| ρ | r |
| σ/ς | s |
| χ | hard ch |
It might be worth reading the table a couple of times, saying the letters aloud. Now vocabulary: Greek for ‘in’ is εν [en]; the Greek for ‘he was/she was/it was/there was’ is ην [ayn]. The word for ‘beginning/ principle/chief’ in Greek is αρχη [archay] and the word for ‘word’ is λογος [logos]. There is also something called the definite article or ‘the’ which we need. In the example below ο [ho] means ‘the’. Why the h sound? Well I’m cheating a little by leaving off breathing marks (little squiggles that tell you how to pronounce words starting with vowels or diphthongs — something else I’m not covering). So now we can read Greek!
εν αρχη ην ο λογος
(en archay ayn ho logos)
Impressed? Well probably not — it is a rather short sentence after all. The main problem with learning Greek is the different alphabet — you can’t even seriously begin until you have become comfortable with it, making it more difficult (at the outset at least) than most of the foreign languages that you are likely to know. However, it is useful. Perhaps more useful than most of the foreign languages you are likely to know.
The New Testament was originally written in a form of Greek, the reading of which is probably enough of a reason to learn Greek. However, getting to a high enough standard is hard (at least I assume it is, I’m certainly nowhere near there). Aiming a little lower, it is rather useful for reading major theological works where Greek is often quoted or alluded to; and, of late, Christis articles (do they count as major theological works?). Finally, even a very rudimentary knowledge can be useful for biblical study (along with suitable tools such as concordances, which give the Greek words).