Koine Greek Pronunciation

Learn Koine Greek pronunciation from scratch — no prior experience needed. In this complete beginner’s guide, you’ll learn every letter and the exact sound it makes, then start sounding out real Greek words like αγάπη (love) and Χριστός (Christ). This is the perfect starting point if you’ve ever wanted to read the New Testament in its original language. Forget memorizing letter names — Joseph focuses on what actually matters: pronunciation. By the end, you’ll be reading Koine Greek out loud.

After publishing this video I realized I misspoke at timestamp 9:56. The three aspirates are θ, φ, χ. The letter ψ is a compound (π + σ) but not an aspirate.

Benjamin Kantor’s work on pronunciation is extremely rigorous. While many old-fashioned professors still teach Erasmian pronunciation, in recent years there has been a distinct shift towards Historical Koine and Modern Greek pronunciation. Joseph highly recommends you use Historical Koine (as in this video) or Modern Greek pronunciation, as both of these are real languages used by real people. Using Erasmian pronunciation will greatly hamper your ability to read and recall Greek. Erasmian is not now, and never has been, used by real people to carry on real conversations.

Benjamin Kantor’s books are scholarly works, don’t judge them by review counts:

• A Short Guide to the Pronunciation of New Testament Greek (https://amzn.to/4dAAQUM)
• The Pronunciation of New Testament Greek: Judeo-Palestinian Greek Phonology and Orthography from Alexander to Islam (https://amzn.to/4o0Q5tI)

Timestamps can be found on the slider at the bottom of the video.

Greek Fonts used in this video:
Gentium (Serif) – https://software.sil.org/gentium/download/
Alegreya Sans – https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Alegreya+Sans

Books mentioned in this video:
Greek-English Interlinear ESV New Testament (https://amzn.to/4flD8Zj)

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