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Pay attention to the following
before you start reading.
In phonetics where you see:
Capital letters is where the word is accented.
ee or i is pronounced as the ee in word beet.
e as the e in the word bet.
a as the a in the word father.
o as the o in the word only.
ou as the ou in the word Lou.
x as the x in the word fox.
th like the th in think, (bold).
th like the th in this.
(bold and underline)
Where you see a (red) " g " in the phonetics for that
word, that " g " is
pronounced like the y in yes, or
like the w in wad
There is another mark that you need to know about.
It's called "Διαλυτικά". This is related to the
accent (τόνος).
As we know there are seven double vowels. The second letter
of these doubles is either "ι" or "υ".
What if a double vowel needs to be read separately. Let's see an
example:
The word "γαιδούρι" means donkey and is pronounced "gai-THOU-ri".
But according to what we've learned we should pronounce it "ge-THOU-ri.
That's where Dialytika comes to play. By putting the ¨ on top of the
"ι", we show that we need to read the double vowels not as one sound, but as
two separate sounds.
So the correct writing is "γαϊδούρι", and the correct pronunciation
is "gai-THOU-ri".
From now on when you see this mark in books you know that you should separate the
double vowel to the sounds of each letter.
- Dialitika is not used when the accented letter is the first letter
of a double vowel.
Example: in the word "ρολόι", the "οι"
is separated to its sounds because the accent is on top of "ο".
Thus it is pronounced "ro-LO-i".
- We always use Dialitika when the word is written with capital letters.
Example: ΓΑΪΔΟΥΡΙ, ΡΟΛΟΪ.
The reason for the above is that we don't use an accent in words written
all in capital.
Related Subjects:
Accent
Accent Rules
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