So, the thing about ancient Greek is that it expresses relationships between words in a fundamentally different way to English.  If you’ve ever studied Latin you can probably skip most of this.

In English, we might say, for instance,

“The farmer looks at the house.”

And that would be fine.  There is a house, there is also a farmer, and he is looking at it.  All is right with the world.  But we could also rearrange the words, and say,

“The house looks at the farmer.”

What?  There’s still a house, and there’s still a farmer, but now it is looking at him? Where does that start to work out?  It gets even worse if we say,

“Looks at the farmer the house.”

What does that even mean?  At least the last one was a proper sentence; it was bizarre and unsettling, but it did say something.  This is just gibberish.

Now let’s do this with the same sentence in Greek.

“ὁ αὐτουργος τον οἰκον βλεπει."  The farmer looks at the house.  Fine.

"τον οἰκον ὁ αὐτουργος βλεπει."  This still means "the farmer looks at the house.”

“βλεπει τον οἰκον ὁ αὐτουργος."  Still means the same thing.

"ὁ τον βλεπει οἰκον αὐτουργος.” This one would sound really weird and people would probably look at you funny if you said it outside of poetry, but it still means “the farmer looks at the house.”

So how the hell do we say “the house looks at the farmer?” Assuming we ever want to, for whatever reason.

Like this:

“ὁ οἰκος τον αὐτουργον βλεπει."  Can you see what the difference is between this and the second sentence?  Look back and figure it out.  I’ll wait.

…

So, you’ve worked it out?  The ends of the words have changed – in the second sentence, the word for "farmer” ended with -ος (αὐτουργος) and the word for “house” ended with -ον (οἰκον).  In the last sentence, those endings are reversed – the words became αὐτουργον and οἰκος.  The order of the words has no signficance here, as it does in English.  The different forms – what we call the inflection of the words – conveys that information instead.

In English, a simple sentence normally begins with its ‘subject,’ which is the technical term for the person or thing performing the action (or existing in the state) described by the sentence.  Now, when you use the word ‘subject’ in a non-technical context, you might mean what the sentence is ‘about’ – if you see a sentence like “he sees the house,” you might think that sentence is ‘about’ the house, but that doesn’t make the house the ‘subject’ of the sentence in grammatical terms.  The subject of that sentence is ‘he,’ because ‘he’ is the one doing the seeing, whereas the house is being seen.  The person or thing on the receiving end of an action – ‘the house’ here – is called the ‘object,’ and in an English sentence the object normally comes after the verb.  We determine which noun is the subject and which is the object based on where the words appear in the sentence.  Ancient Greek does not work this way.

Nouns in Greek have five different forms called ‘cases,’ all of which have fancy names.  We’ve just met two of them – the nominative and the accusative.  When a noun is the subject of a sentence, it will appear in its nominative form, like ὁ αὐτουργος or ὁ οἰκος (this is the form that will be listed in a dictionary if you look the word up).  When a noun is the object of a sentence it will appear in its accusative form, like τον αὐτουργον or τον οἰκον.  You can tell from the words themselves which one is the subject and which one is the object.

The other cases get brought in for more complicated sentences.  One is called the genitive, and it is used to show possession or origin – if I want to say, for instance, "the slave sees the farmer’s house,“ the word for farmer appears in its genitive form, to show that the farmer is the person to whom the house belongs, and that looks like this: "ὁ δουλος τον του αὐτουργου οἰκον βλεπει.” See how the word for farmer has changed again?  The other commonly used case is called the dative, and it denotes what we call the ‘indirect object’ of a sentence.  Some verbs naturally have two different objects – ‘give,’ for instance; think “he gives the farmer the rock."  The subject of that sentence is ‘he’ – the one doing the giving – but what’s the object here?  Is it ‘the farmer’ or ‘the rock’?  Well, the rock is the thing being given, so it’s the regular sort of ‘object’ which goes into the accusative form.  The person (or thing) to whom something is given, shown, or told, or for whose benefit something is done, is the ‘indirect object’ – not actually on the receiving end of the verb as such, but still somehow impacted by it – and this is what the dative form is for.  The sentence we end up with is "τῳ αὐτουργῳ τον λιθον διδωσι."  There’s the word for farmer again, in another form.  The last case is called the vocative, and it’s not really very important, partly because it doesn’t come up as often as the others, partly because it’s very easy to recognise when it does.  The vocative is the form used in direct speech for addressing a person – so if you’re talking to a farmer, he is "ὠ αὐτουργε."  It’ll normally be obvious from context that a word is vocative, so you don’t really need to devote a whole lot of effort to learning the vocative forms of words.

These forms still exist in modern Greek, but have become less and less important over the last couple of centuries as people rely more on word order to convey grammatical information, in the English fashion.  You don’t really need to know them to make yourself understood (…more or less) when speaking modern Greek, and they’ll probably drop out of the language completely, given time.  The same thing is starting to happen in German, and actually happened to English as well at a much earlier stage of its development – we retained our cases only for some of our pronouns.  ‘I,’ for instance, is nominative, while ‘me’ is accusative/dative and ‘my’ is genitive.  Similarly, ‘who’ is nominative, ‘whom’ is accusative/dative and ‘whose’ is genitive – and now you know when it is and is not correct to use ‘whom’ ("I saw the farmer who gave me the rock” – ‘who’ is the subject of ‘gave’ – versus “I saw the man whom Achilles killed” – ‘whom’ is the object of ‘killed’).

All of these cases have separate forms for singular and plural as well – if you’re talking about multiple farmers, they could be οἱ αὐτουργοι (nominative – subject), τους αὐτουργους (accusative – object), των αὐτουργων (genitive – possessor) or τοις αὐτουργοις (dative – indirect object).  To make matters worse, there are three different families of nouns in ancient Greek, known as ‘declensions’ – and each declension has its own set of case endings, as well as a few clusters of weird variations – but I’ve probably terrorised you all enough for one day.

Okay, so, the first thing that always trips everyone up is the alphabet but DON’T PANIC; it’s actually not that different from the Roman alphabet (which is what English uses) – it’s sort of halfway between Roman and Cyrillic.  It was adapted from the alphabet which was used by Phoenician traders who visited Greece around 700 BC, maybe a little earlier, and is therefore a cousin of the Hebrew alphabet.  The Greeks reworked it quite a bit, though – the Phoenician alphabet had no vowels (the Greek alphabet was the first in the region to make that particular innovation) so they took some of the less important consonants and used them as vowels instead (for instance, aleph, the Phoenician equivalent to alpha, originally made a strange sort of choking noise that I’ve never quite been able to do).  Anyway, here we go…

Α α – Alpha.  You all know this one; it’s an “ah” sound, and can be either long – like in “Gengar” – or short – like in “Gyarados.”

Β β – Beta.  That’s right; it’s a “b” sound – but be careful because in modern Greek it makes a “v” sound and is pronounced “veeta" (that sound doesn’t exist in ancient Greek).

Γ γ – Gamma.  A "g” sound.  A double gamma – γγ – makes an “ng” sound, like in “Chingling."  Something similar happens with γκ, γξ and γχ; the gamma makes an "n” or “ng” sort of sound (as in, say, Shinx).

Δ δ – Delta.  The Greek “d."  The English word "delta” – meaning the area where a river forks just as it meets the sea, creating a whole lot of little islands – comes from the shape of a capital delta – Δ.

Ε ε – Epsilon.  A short “e,” like the sound in “Tangela” or “Shellder."  To be distingushed from eta, which I’ll come to in a bit.

Ζ ζ – Zeta.  This is not quite a "z” sound – it’s an “sd” or “zd" sound, like in "Misdreavus,” which means that the king of the Greek gods, Zeus, is actually pronounced something like “Zdyoos” in ancient Greek.

Η η – Eta.  This is the long “e," and in English we often use an "a” to make this sound; it’s the sound that you find in, say, “Wailmer,” “Banette,” or “Rayquaza."  Yes, the capital looks exactly like an H, but don’t let that fool you – there’s actually no letter in ancient Greek that makes the "h” sound.  More on that later.

Θ θ – Theta.  A “th” sound, but be careful; it’s not the soft “th” we have in English, it’s a hard sound like in “Hoothoot."  Beware modern Greek once again, where θ makes the soft English "th,” δ makes this hard “th” (and is known as “thelta”), and, having exhausted all the other letters, the Greeks are forced to use ντ to make a “d” sound.

Ι ι – Iota.  An “i” sound, which like α can be short – as in “Hitmonchan” – or long, which is a sound often made by “ee” in English – as in “Hitmonlee."  It’s the origin of the English phrase "it doesn’t matter one iota” – a story I’ll tell you some other time.

Κ κ – Kappa.  Exactly what it says on the tin.

Λ λ – Lambda. The “l” sound.  You might have seen this symbol on pictures of Greek hoplite shields.  As a matter of tradition, all Spartans had the same shield device: Λ, the first letter of Λακεδαιμων, which is the Spartans’ word for themselves.  So, yeah, while other Greeks have pictures of gorgons or thunderbolts or whatever, the Spartans go into battle waving a big capital L.  Now that’s confidence.

Μ μ – Mu.  The “m” sound (shockingly enough.)  This is the funny little symbol that appears in μm (micrometres), μg (micrograms) and so on.

N ν – Nu.  Yes, it’s an “n” but the little one looks like a “v.”  No, I don’t care.

Ξ ξ – Xi.  An “x” sound.  A lowercase xi is just about the fiddliest god-damn letter in the whole language and you would best avoid them.

Ο ο – Omikron.  A short “o,” like the sound in “Rhydon” or “Onix.” The name of this letter, omikron, literally means “the little o” – ο μικρον (think “micro” in English).

Π π – Pi.  You recognise this from your maths class, right?  I hope so, anyway.  Pi is a “p” sound (though it’s worth noting that the name of the letter, “pi,” is actually pronounced the same way as the English equivalent – “pee” – not “pie” as it’s usually pronounced in maths and physics).

Ρ ρ – Rho.  Yes, I know it looks like a p, but it’s actually an “r” sound – or, more accurately, an “rh” sound, since Greek r’s are always rolled and have a bit of breath behind them.

Σ σ ς – Sigma.  An “s” sound.  There are two variants to the lower-case sigma – the second one, ς, is used only at the end of a word, while the first is used everywhere else.

Τ τ – Tau.  It looks like a “t.”  It is a “t.” Praise the gods.

Υ υ – Upsilon.  This is the Greek “u,” and the sound it makes is a bit tricky to get right because it’s not exactly like an English u – it’s almost more like an “ew” sound, a little like the sound on the end of “Pachirisu” but not quite.  Best not to worry too much about it.

Φ φ – Phi.  This is the origin of the English “ph,” but like θ it’s not quite the same as our equivalent – it’s a harder sound.  No-one’s going to call you out if you just pronounce it like an “f,” though.

Χ χ – Chi.  This is NOT a “ch” sound.  Get that notion OUT of your head. That sound – the sound in, say, “Pikachu” – does not exist in Greek.  Chi is best pronounced as a sort of hacking noise in the back of your throat, but if you can’t manage that you should go with the hard “kh” sound in “Chimecho” or “Archeops.”  Incidentally, this letter is the reason why calling the abbreviation “Xmas” an “attack on Christmas,” as people sometimes do, is horrifyingly ignorant and fundamentally absurd – X has been used for more than a thousand years as an abbreviation for the Greek word Χριστος – Christ.

Ψ ψ – Psi.  This is probably the least-used letter in the whole alphabet, and makes a “ps” sound, like at the end of “Kabutops” and “Dusclops.”

Ω ω – Omega.  This is the twin to omikron, the “big O” (ω μεγα).  It makes a long “oh” sound, as in “Electrode” or “Tauros.”

There are also some combinations of vowels that are important to know:

αυ – this makes an “ow” sound, like in “Drowzee” or “Meowth.”

οι – this makes an “oy” sound, like in “Baltoy” or “Cloyster.”

αι – this makes the sound we think of in English as a long i, the sound in “Scyther” or “Mr. Mime.”

ει – this makes a long “e” sound which, to my ears, is indistinguishable from the sound of an eta, but supposedly there is a subtle difference.

ευ – this makes a “yu” sound like the sound in “Kyurem” or “Staryu.”

ηυ – this makes a weird sort of “eouw” sound that I don’t think we have in English, or in Pokémon for that matter.  It doesn’t turn up very often, so feel free to disregard it.

Next thing is accent marks.

Greek has three types of accent marks – the acute ά, the grave ὰ, and the circumflex ᾶ, and most words will have one of them somewhere.  However, accent in ancient Greek does not work the same way as it does in most European languages (or, for that matter, in modern Greek) – most European languages have a stress accent, meaning that we place heavier emphasis on one syllable in each word.  Ancient Greek, like Chinese, has a pitch accent – the speaker’s pitch rises and falls as he or she speaks.  The acute accent indicates a rising pitch, the grave a falling pitch, and the circumflex a brief rise followed immediately by a fall.  There are very few people who can speak Greek like this today; it has a beautiful melodic quality to it, as though the speaker is singing.  I can manage a few lines, given time to practice them beforehand.  You can probably ignore the accent marks without feeling too guilty about it (honestly, I never learned where the accents go on most words).

What you cannot ignore is breathing marks.  I mentioned earlier that Greek has no letter for the “h” sound.  Instead, any word that begins with a vowel will have a little apostrophe-like mark over the first letter (or the second letter, if the word begins with one of those double-letter sounds I listed above).  It looks like this: ἀ or ἁ, αἰ or αἱ.  If the mark curves inward, like ἀ, it’s a ‘smooth’ breathing, and the word does not begin with an h sound.  If it curves outward, like ἁ, it’s a ‘rough’ breathing, and the word does begin with an h sound.  Breathings only appear on words that begin with vowels – an ancient Greek word never has an h sound in the middle.  A word that begins with a rho – there are very few – will always have a rough breathing, like this ῥ, because the letter rho is always pronounced with some breath behind it.

The other little thing that pops up from time to time in Greek spelling is the iota subscript.  Alpha, eta and omega will occasionally have a little iota hanging out underneath, like this ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ.  This may have had a subtle impact on the pronunciation, we’re not sure, but you can probably just pronounce these as regular alphas, etas and omegas – just pay attention to them when reading and writing, because words and forms that have them are very easy to identify.  If a word is spelled with an iota subscript, it means that the word used to have an iota in it, in an older form of the language – or possibly in one of the other dialects. We normally teach and learn Attic Greek, the dialect spoken in and around Athens, but there were a number of other dialects used in other regions of Greece, such as Doric (the Spartan dialect), Ionic (the dialect spoken along the coast of Turkey) and Arcado-Cypriot (the dialect spoken in the two far-separated regions of Cyprus and Arcadia – based purely on its distribution, Arcado-Cypriot is probably the most similar to the ‘ancestral’ Greek from which all the dialects evolved). Attic is actually one of the most bizarre and demented dialects of the lot, but since the Athenians were the most prolific writers, most of the examples of written Greek that survive are in Attic, so we just have to deal with it.

More to follow.