The Greek alphabet should look suspiciously familiar to any English speaker. Originally borrowed from the Phoenicians, two-and-a-half thousand years of use and the spelling needs of the western European languages transformed the Greek alphabet into the Greco-Roman one (note the Greco-) we use today.

Plato would take a big red pen to most modern editions of his Republic. Even the untranslated versions: the spelling used in most latter-day representations of ancient Greek is a slightly more modern version of the Greek alphabet, with a full complement of lowercase letters and accents which would have been unfamiliar to Plato, and some letters which were adopted by the Athenians in Plato’s lifetime.

Greek has seventeen consonants and seven vowels: twenty-four letters total. The order (and the shapes and sounds of the letters, to be honest: this is not the alphabet you’re used to. Unless you’re an ancient Greek, in which case, call me) is different from that of our alphabet:

Uppercase: ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩ
Lowercase: αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρστυφχψω

Consonants

Ββ Γγ Δδ Ζζ Θθ Κκ Λλ Μμ Νν Ξξ Ππ Ρρ Σσς Ττ Φφ Χχ Ψψ

β, δ and γ are like the English b, d and g, respectively, but γ is always a hard g sound, as in “get”.

π, τ and κ are like English p, t and k, but do not have the extra puff of air (aspiration) that accompanies the sounds at the start of English words. If you’re not clear about this, hold a piece of loosely in front of your mouth and say “pop, tat, cook” and pay attention to how the paper flutters at the first consonant in each word, but not the second.

φ, θ and χ are English p, t and k with aspiration. People unaccustomed to distinguishing between those sounds (like most English speakers) pronounce these letters like philosoph, theatre and loch; inaccurate but much easier to say. Also, the people who can rightly correct you on your pronunciation are all dead. Go nuts.

λ, μ, ν and ρ: l, m, n and r.

σ is an English s. That’s not enough to get it its own paragraph, but this is: at the end of a word, just to trip you up, a lowercase σ is written ς: Σωκρατης (or Socrates, as we like to call him). In uppercase letters there’s only the one version: ΣΩΚΡΑΤΗΣ.

ξ and ψ are ks (like English x) and ps respectively.

ζ is some combination of s and d: most people say sd, some people say ds.

Watchlist: ρ = r, not p. χ = kh, not x. ν = n, not v.

Vowels

Αα Εε Ηη Ιι Οο Υυ Ωω

Slightly oddly, Greek has only five vowel sounds and seven vowel letters.

A sound: like in father. Written α for both short and long variants.

E sound: like in bet. Written ε for the short variant and η for the long.

I sound: like in machine. Written ι for both short and long variants.

O sound: like in hot. Written ο for the short variant and ω for the long.

U sound: like in the French word lune or German über. Written υ for both short and long variants.

Watchlist: η and ω are vowels, not consonants like their English impersonators h and w.