Transliteration of Greek into English

From Freepedia

This table lists several transcription schemes from the Greek alphabet to the Latin alphabet.

Greek	Traditional	Scientific	BGN/PCGN	UN/ELOT
	Classical Greek		Modern Greek
α	a	a	a	a
β	b	b	v	v
γ	g	g	g, y1	g
δ	d	d	dh, d2	d
ε	e	e	e	e
ζ	z	z, zd	z	z
η	e	ē	i	i
θ	th	th	th	th
ι	i	i	i	i
κ	c	k	k	k
λ	l	l	l	l
μ	m	m	m	m
ν	n	n	n	n
ξ	x	x	x	x
ο	o	o	o	o
π	p	p	p	p
ρ	r, rh3	r, rh3	r	r
σ ς	s	s	s4	s
τ	t	t	t	t
υ	y	u	i	y
φ	ph	ph	f	f
χ	ch	ch	kh	ch
ψ	ps	ps	ps	ps
ω	o	ō	o	o
Vowel combinations11
αι	ae, e	ai	e	ai
αυ	au	au	av	av5, af6
ει	i	ei	i	ei
ευ	eu	eu	ev	ev5, ef6
ηυ	eu	ēu	iv	iv5, if6
οι	oe, e	oi	i	oi
ου	u	ou	u	ou
υι	ui	ui	i	yi
Consonant combinations
γγ	ng	ng	ng	ng
γξ	nx	nx	nx	nx
γκ	nc	nk	g7, ng8	gk
γχ	nch	nch	nkh	nch
μπ	mp	mp	b7, mb8	b7, mp8
ντ	nt	nt	d7, nd8	nt
Modifiers (only classical Greek)
̔	h9	h9	(spiritus asper)
̓	none	none	(spiritus lenis)
ͅ	i?	i?	(iota subscript)10

Notes:

1. before αι, ε, ει, η, ι, οι, υ, υι.
2. between ν and ρ.
3. with spiritus asper.
4. sometimes doubled between vowels (e.g. Larissa).
5. before β, γ, δ, ζ, λ, μ, ν, ρ and vowels.
6. before θ, κ, ξ, π, σ, τ, φ, χ, ψ and at the end of a word.
7. at the beginning of a word.
8. in the middle of a word.
9. on vowel: h before the vowel; on ρ: rh.
10. under long vowels.
11. except when there is a diaeresis ( ¨ ) on the second vowel

Diacritics

Ancient Greek was a polytonic language. Through the ages, the tone system has been simplified, leaving most of the diacritics (including spiritus asper and spiritus lenis) meaningless. In 1982, monotonic orthography was officially introduced for modern Greek. The only diacritics that remain are the acute accent (indicating stress) and the diaeresis (indicating that two consecutive vowels should not be combined). The acute accent and the diaeresis are kept in both the BGN/PCGN and the UN/ELOT romanization systems. There is one exception: in the vowel combinations αυ, ευ and ηυ the accent moves from the υ (that becomes v or f) to the preceding vowel.

See also

• English words of Greek origin
• List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names for help with Greek-derived scientific names of organisms
• List of Greek words with English derivatives
• List of English words containing the prefix, iso-

References

• Transliteration of Non-Roman Scripts, a collection of writing systems and transliteration tables, by Thomas T. Pederson. Includes PDF reference charts for many languages’ transliteration systems.
• The Working Group on Romanization Systems of the United Nations.
• Transliteration chart of the Library of Congress.