Greek Gods

There are only 24 letters in the Greek alphabet, instead of the 26 letters that are in the English language. The letters also have names. They are, Alpha (a), Beta (v), Gamma (gh), Delta (th), Epsilon (e), Zeta (z), Eta (i), Theta (th), Iota ( i), Kappa (Kk), Lambda ( l), Mu (m), Nu (n), Ksi ks), Omicron (0), Pi (p), Rho (rh), Sigma (s), Tau (t), Upsilon (yu), Phi (circle with line down through it), Chi (Xx), Psi (u with line down through it), and Omega (horseshoe shape and w). The syllables and sounds of the letters and words of the Greek language are also different than the English language. One would think that some of the sounds are missing because it seems that all of the letters are not there. Some sounds in other languages do not exist in the Greek language.

To the Greeks there are no single letters. All of their sounds are written as two letter combinations. Greek words end in ‘s’ (sigma) most of the time so when the English speaking people say a word with ‘sh’ in it, it sounds very strange to them. In the Greek language today, the accent mark is put in the lowercase writing and only over the vowel of the stressed syllable. This was not the case in ancient Greek language. In classic Greek there were no lowercase letters at all, only capital letters, and there were not any accent marks over the letters. Lowercase letters were not introduced into the language until the Hellenistic era. The Hellenistic era was the last three centuries before the birth of Christ. (B.C.). The accent marks were also introduced at this same time. The language was difficult because there were three marks for the stress and two aspiration marks. These were placed over the vowel in the word. The way it turns out some of the Greek words were easy to translate to English and others could not.

This is a very good explanation as to why some the different translations of the ancient Greek myths were so different. Sometimes the names were even mixed up and spelled differently. Mother Earth had several different versions of her name. They were Gaia, Gaea, Ge, Mother Earth, and just Earth. Some names sounded completely different were also spelled differently. This may be why it was so hard to translate it. In some cases the names of the gods were also mixed up. Who the parents were of some of the gods or goddesses was also different, in some cases, depending on who translated what. The Greek myths are very interesting to read and there is a lot of useful information online and in the Greek mythology books in libraries.