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This article deals with the phonology and phonetics of
Standard Modern Greek The linguistic varieties of Modern Greek can be classified along two principal dimensions. First, there is a long tradition of sociolectal variation between the natural, popular spoken language on the one hand and archaizing, learned written form ...
. For phonological characteristics of other varieties, see varieties of Modern Greek, and for Cypriot, specifically, see .


Consonants

Greek
linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingui ...
s do not agree on which consonants to count as
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
s in their own right, and which to count as conditional
allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...
s. The table below is adapted from , who considers the
palatal The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separ ...
s and both
affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair ...
s, and , to be allophonic. The alveolar nasal is assimilated to following obstruents; it can be labiodental (e.g. 'doubt'), dental (e.g. 'flower'), retracted alveolar (e.g. 'pliers'),
alveolo-palatal In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (or alveopalatal) consonants, sometimes synonymous with pre-palatal consonants, are intermediate in articulation between the coronal and dorsal consonants, or which have simultaneous alveolar and palatal arti ...
(e.g. 'to annoy'), or velar (e.g. 'stress'). Voiceless stops are
unaspirated In linguistics, a tenuis consonant ( or ) is an obstruent that is voiceless, unaspirated and unglottalized. In other words, it has the "plain" phonation of with a voice onset time close to zero (a zero-VOT consonant), as Spanish ''p, t, ch, ...
and with a very short voice onset time. They may be lightly voiced in rapid speech, especially when intervocalic. 's exact
place of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
ranges from alveolar to
denti-alveolar In linguistics, a denti-alveolar consonant or dento-alveolar consonant is a consonant that is articulated with a flat tongue against the alveolar ridge and the upper teeth, such as and in languages such as French, Italian and Spanish. That is, ...
, to dental. It may be fricated in rapid speech, and very rarely, in function words, it is deleted. and are reduced to lesser degrees in rapid speech. Voiced stops are
prenasalised Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rath ...
(which is reflected in the orthography) to varying extents, and sometimes not at all. The nasal component—when present—does not increase the duration of the stop's closure; as such, prenasalised voiced stops would be most accurately transcribed or , depending on the length of the nasal component. Word-initially and after or , they are very rarely, if ever, prenasalised. In rapid and casual speech, prenasalisation is generally rarer, and voiced stops may be lenited to fricatives. This also accounts for Greeks having trouble disambiguating voiced stops, nasalised voiced stops, and nasalised voiceless stops in borrowings and names from foreign languages; for example, ''d'', ''nd'', and ''nt'', which are all written ντ in Greek. and are somewhat retracted (); they are produced in between English alveolars and postalveolars . is variably fronted or further retracted depending on environment, and, in some cases, it may be better described as an advanced postalveolar (). The only Greek rhotic is prototypically an alveolar tap , often retracted (). It may be an
alveolar approximant The voiced alveolar approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the alveolar and postalveolar approximants is , a lowercase letter ''r'' rotated 1 ...
intervocalically, and is usually a
trill TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is an Internet Standard implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and is the application of link-state routing to the VLAN-aware cust ...
in clusters, with two or three short cycles. Greek has palatals which are allophones of the velar consonants before the front vowels . The velars also merge with a following nonsyllabic to the corresponding palatal before the vowels , e.g. (= ) 'snow', thus producing a surface contrast between palatal and velar consonants before . and occur as allophones of and , respectively, in (consonant–glide–vowel) clusters, in analyses that posit an
archiphoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
-like glide that contrasts with the vowel . All palatals may be analysed in the same way. The palatal stops and fricatives are somewhat retracted, and and are somewhat fronted. is best described as a postalveolar, and as
alveolo-palatal In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (or alveopalatal) consonants, sometimes synonymous with pre-palatal consonants, are intermediate in articulation between the coronal and dorsal consonants, or which have simultaneous alveolar and palatal arti ...
. Finally, Greek has two phonetically affricate clusters, and . is reluctant to treat these as phonemes on the grounds of inconclusive research into their phonological behaviour. The table below, adapted from , displays a near-full array of consonant phones in Standard Modern Greek.


Sandhi

Some assimilatory processes mentioned above also occur across word boundaries. In particular, this goes for a number of grammatical words ending in , most notably the negation particles and and the
accusative The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...
forms of the personal pronoun and definite article and . If these words are followed by a voiceless stop, either assimilates for place of articulation to the stop, or is altogether deleted, and the stop becomes voiced. This results in pronunciations such as ('the father' ACC) or ('it doesn't matter'), instead of and . The precise extent of assimilation may vary according to dialect, speed and formality of speech. This may be compared with pervasive
sandhi Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
phenomena in Celtic languages, particularly nasalisation in
Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
and in certain dialects of Scottish Gaelic.


Vowels

Greek has a system of five vowels . The first two have qualities approaching their respective
cardinal vowels Cardinal vowels are a set of reference vowels used by phoneticians in describing the sounds of languages. They are classified depending on the position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth, how far forward or back is the highest po ...
, the mid vowels are true-mid and the open is near-open central . There is no phonemic length distinction, but vowels in stressed syllables are pronounced somewhat longer than in unstressed syllables. Furthermore, vowels in stressed syllables are more peripheral, but the difference is not large. In casual speech, unstressed and in the vicinity of voiceless consonants may become devoiced or even elided. Modern Greek retains the fricativization that has existed in many varieties of Greek since at least the first century BCE. The phonetic values of ⟨αυ⟩, ⟨ευ⟩ and ⟨ηυ⟩ are , and when they appear before a voiced consonant or a vowel and , and otherwise (before voiceless consonants).


Stress

Unlike Ancient Greek, which had a pitch accent system, Modern Greek has variable (phonologically unpredictable) stress. Every multisyllabic word carries stress on one of its three final syllables.
Enclitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...
s form a single phonological word together with the host word to which they attach, and count towards the three-syllable rule too. In these cases, primary stress shifts to the second-to-last syllable (e.g. 'my car'). Phonetically, stressed syllables are longer, or carry higher amplitude, or both. The position of the stress can vary between different inflectional forms of the same word within its inflectional paradigm. In some paradigms, the stress is always on the third last syllable, shifting its position in those forms that have longer affixes (e.g. 'I called' vs. 'we called'; 'problem' vs. 'problems'). In some word classes, stress position also preserves an older pattern inherited from Ancient Greek, according to which a word could not be accented on the third-from-last syllable if the last syllable was long, e.g. ('man', nom. sg., last syllable short), but ('of men',
gen. The Book of Genesis (from Greek ; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית ''Bəreʾšīt'', "In hebeginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, ( "In the beginning"). ...
pl., last syllable long). However, in Modern Greek this rule is no longer automatic and does not apply to all words (e.g. 'monk', 'of monks'), as the phonological length distinction itself no longer exists.


Sample

This sample text, the first sentence of
Aesop's fable Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to m ...
"
The North Wind and the Sun The North Wind and the Sun is one of Aesop's Fables (Perry Index 46). It is type 298 (Wind and Sun) in the Aarne–Thompson folktale classification. The moral it teaches about the superiority of persuasion over force has made the story widely know ...
" in Greek, and the accompanying transcription, are adapted from .


Orthographic version


Transcription


Notes


References

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Further reading

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External links


About the Greek Language – Harry Foundalis Segmentals and suprasegmentals in Modern Greek with pronunciation
{{Language phonologies Phonology Greek phonologies