Greek Accents and Breathings: Rules + 8 Solved Exercises

In Ancient Greek, breathings and accents are not decoration: they are part of the spelling. Writing ανθρωπος with no marks is as wrong as writing “dont” for “don’t”, with one extra difficulty: the Greek accent moves depending on the grammatical form of the same word. Below you will find every table you need and the two laws that decide where the accent may fall.

Breathings: two marks, only one is pronounced

Every word beginning with a vowel carries a breathing on that initial vowel. There are only two.

Breathing	Mark	Greek name	Value	Example
smooth	᾿	ψιλή (psilḗ)	silent	ἀγορά → “agora”
rough	῾	δασεῖα (daseîa)	aspiration, an h	ἵππος → “hippos”

Two cases are automatic and worth memorising straight away:

• every initial υ always takes the rough breathing: ὕδωρ, ὑπέρ, ὕπνος;
• every initial ρ always takes the rough breathing: ῥήτωρ, ῥόδον.

In every other case the breathing is learned together with the word, the way you learn which English words start with a silent h. If you have not revised the letters yet, start from the guide to the Greek alphabet and its pronunciation: breathings and accents are written above those vowels.

The three accents

Accent	Mark	Greek name	Which vowels	Which syllables
acute	´	ὀξεῖα (oxeîa)	short and long	last, second-to-last, third-to-last
grave	`	βαρεῖα (bareîa)	short and long	last only
circumflex	῀	περισπωμένη (perispōménē)	long vowels and diphthongs only	last and second-to-last

The grave is not a free accent: it appears only in place of the acute of an oxytone when that word is followed by another word with no punctuation in between. ἀγαθός in isolation, but ὁ ἀγαθὸς ἄνθρωπος in running text.

What Greek words are called, by accent

The technical name of a Greek word depends on two things: which accent it carries and which syllable that accent sits on, counting from the end.

Name	Accent	Syllable	Example
oxytone	acute	last	ἀγαθός
paroxytone	acute	second-to-last	λόγος
proparoxytone	acute	third-to-last	ἄνθρωπος
perispomenon	circumflex	last	τιμῶ, νοῦς
properispomenon	circumflex	second-to-last	δῶρον, σῶμα
barytone	any accent not on the last syllable	penult or antepenult	λόγος, δῶρον, ἄνθρωπος

“Barytone” is not a sixth independent category: it is the umbrella label for every word that is not accented on its final syllable.

Vowel quantity decides everything

Before applying any rule you have to know whether a syllable is short or long, because both Greek accent laws are built on that distinction.

Vowels	Quantity
ε, ο	always short
η, ω	always long
α, ι, υ	doubtful (short or long depending on the word)
diphthongs	long
word-final -αι and -οι	count as short

That last row causes most mistakes: ἄνθρωποι stays proparoxytone precisely because the final -οι counts short. The exception to the exception is the optative, where final -αι and -οι count long again.

First law: the law of limitation

The Greek accent cannot retreat as far back as it likes. Two limits, both worth memorising:

1. the accent never goes back beyond the third-to-last syllable;
2. if the final syllable is long, the accent stops at the penult.

This produces the behaviour you see throughout the declensions: ἄνθρωπος in the nominative (short final -ος, accent on the antepenult) becomes ἀνθρώπου in the genitive, because the long final -ου pushes the accent forward. The same happens in θάλαττα → θαλάττης. It is the Greek counterpart of the Latin rule that fixes the accent by looking at the penult; if you study both languages, compare it with what happens across the Latin declensions.

Second law: the sotera rule

The formula is short: accented long penult + short final syllable = compulsory circumflex.

• σωτῆρα (accusative of σωτήρ): accented long ω, short -α → circumflex.
• δῶρον: accented long ω, short -ον → circumflex.
• δώρου: accented long ω, but -ου is long → the condition fails, so acute.

The name of the rule is a memory aid: the word σωτῆρα is itself an instance of it.

Where the marks are written

• Proper diphthongs (αι, ει, οι, αυ, ευ, ου, ηυ): breathing and accent go on the second vowel — αὐτός, οἶκος, εὑρίσκω.
• Improper diphthongs (ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ): the marks go on the vowel written on the line, since the iota is subscript — ᾄδω, ᾅδης.
• Capitals: the marks sit in front of the letter, at the upper left, not above it — Ἀθῆναι, Ἕλληνες.
• Order of marks on the same vowel: with the acute and the grave, the breathing goes to the left of the accent (ἄ, ἃ); with the circumflex, the accent is written above the breathing (ὧ, ἇ).

Enclitics and proclitics

A few very short words have no accent of their own.

• Proclitics lean on the word that follows and stay unaccented: the articles ὁ, ἡ, οἱ, αἱ, the prepositions ἐν, εἰς, ἐκ, and also ὡς, εἰ, οὐ.
• Enclitics lean on the word before them and hand over their accent: μου, σου, τις, ποτε, ἐστί. This is why ἄνθρωπος can appear with two accents in ἄνθρωπός τις, “a certain man”.

They deserve a chapter of their own, but the point to take away now is that an unaccented word in a Greek text is almost always a proclitic, not a typo.

The most common mistakes

1. Leaving out the breathing. It is not a graphic detail: ἀγορά without a breathing is a misspelled word.
2. Putting the marks on the first vowel of a diphthong. It is οἶκος, never *ὄικος.
3. Using a circumflex on ε or ο. Impossible: they are always short, and the circumflex needs a long vowel or a diphthong.
4. Keeping the accent on the antepenult when the final syllable is long. *ἄνθρωπου does not exist; it is ἀνθρώπου.
5. Treating final -αι and -οι as long. The nominative plural is ἄνθρωποι, not *ἀνθρώποι.
6. Forgetting the acute → grave switch inside a sentence. An isolated oxytone has the acute, but in running text it takes the grave.
7. Using the grave on any syllable but the last. The grave exists nowhere else.

How to use the exercises

The eight exercises below follow the order in which Greek is actually learned: first the two breathings and the technical names of words, then where the marks go on diphthongs and capitals, then the two laws applied to a genitive and an accusative, and finally error spotting and the edge case of final -αι and -οι, the one that tells παιδεῦσαι apart from παιδεύσαι. For the historical background of the language, see the summary of Ancient Greece.