One mark, one job

The little stroke you see over Greek vowels is called the τόνος (accent). Older Greek had several accents and breathing marks, but Modern Greek since 1982 uses only this one. Its job is simple: it shows you which syllable to stress. In καλημέρα (good morning) the mark sits on the έ, so you say ka-li-ME-ra, leaning on that syllable.

Every word of two or more syllables has exactly one

This is the rule that makes Greek reading predictable. If a word has two or more syllables, it carries one accent, no more and no less. Single-syllable words normally take none. So you never have to guess where the stress falls: the writing tells you, every time. That is a real gift compared with English, where nothing on the page tells you whether to say REcord or reCORD.

Why it changes the meaning

The accent is not decoration. Move it and you can change the word. These pairs are spelled with the same letters and differ only in where the stress lands.

πότε	PO-te	when
ποτέ	po-TE	never
νόμος	NO-mos	law
νομός	no-MOS	county
άλλα	A-la	other things
αλλά	a-LA	but

The accent can move

When a word changes form, the stress sometimes shifts, and the written accent moves with it. The word for teacher is δάσκαλος (DHA-ska-los), but in another grammatical form it becomes δασκάλου(dha-SKA-lu). You do not need to master why yet. Just know that the mark always points at the stressed syllable, so wherever it is, that is where you lean.

The other mark: two dots

You will also meet two dots over a vowel, the diaeresis. It is not an accent. It tells you to read two vowels separately instead of as a pair, as in λαϊκός (la-i-KOS, of the people), where the dots keep αι from merging into one sound. A word can even carry both marks at once when the separated vowel is also the stressed one.

Hear the stress in real stories

Reading with audio is the quickest way to make stress automatic: you see the mark and hear the emphasis at the same time. Get the tricky consonants right first in Greek pronunciation, or jump straight into an A1 story and read along with the read-aloud audio.

Generate your first story