Elementary New Testament Greek, 2014a

Greek Word…
Broken Into Syllables
(Since is not a diphthong, each vowel must be
sounded separately.)
Consonants pairs that can begin a word* remain together, beginning the next syllable.
CvCvCCvCv [] should be read as
Cv-Cv-CCv-Cv []
One consonant found between vowels (or diphthongs) will go with the following
vowel, beginning a new syllable. The following notations are merely a sampling of
the many possible patterns tting this circumstance:
Greek Word…
vCv
vCvCv
CvCv
CvCvv
Broken Into Syllables
v-Cv
v-Cv-Cv
Cv-Cv
Cv-Cv-v
would be divided as .
2) Consonant Pairs found between vowels (or diphthongs) will be treated as
follows:
Note: You can look in a Greek dictionary (often called a lexicon) to see if any words
begin with a given cluster. In the examples above, you will nd no Greek word
beginning with , but many with . Therefore, the latter consonantal cluster will
remain together, beginning the next syllable.
3) In spite of the guidelines above, we must always honor the components
that have contributed to the construction of a compound word. Thus for
the English word “overestimate,” we would never say “o-ve-re-sti-mate,”
because the “r” belongs with “over,” clearly a xed building block used
to form the composite (over + estimate = overestimate). So the (xi) in
μ (“I am going out”) should not follow the advice of #2 above,
since represents a basic building block in this compound word (
μ, in an overly literal sense: “out ()—I am going (μ)”).
As your experience grows, you will easily recognize many of these
building blocks.
Consonants pairs that are doubled consonants will be divided (one closing the rst
syllable; one opening the second).
CvCCv [] should be read as CvC-Cv []
Consonants pairs that cannot begin a word* will be divided (one closing the rst
syllable; one opening the second).
CvCCv [] should be read as CvC-Cv []
1: Reading Greek Aloud
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