Lesson 1 | The Basics
Grammar Point 3: Accents and Pronunciation
Now, we have learned the Greek alphabet and vowel combos. There is one more thing to learn for this lesson: accents, punctuation, and breathing marks in the text. There are three different Greek accents, four punctuation markers, and three kinds of marks in the text. With modern Greek pronunciation, accents show you which syllable to emphasize, and breathing marks do not affect how we say the word at all. However, they do help us distinguish between words and verb tenses. For example, ἀλλά is a connector between sentences (a conjunction), but ἄλλα is an adjective. What is different between these two words? The letters are the same but the accents and breathing marks help us tell them apart.
