Last updated on April 20th, 2025

Table of Contents

• Questions, Answers, and Disagreements
• Important Things to Consider
  1. Ancient Greek and Modern Greek Are One Language
  2. Ancient Greek Has Many Forms
• What are the differences between Ancient and Modern Greek?
  • Pronunciation
  • Grammar
  • Vocabulary
  • Syntax & Word Order
• Will I understand Ancient Greek if I study Modern Greek?
  • Homeric Greek (c. 1100–750 BCE)
  • Classical Greek (5th–4th centuries BCE)
  • Koine Greek (c. 4th century BCE – 6th century CE)
  • Medieval Greek (c. 6th–18th century CE)
• What about Katharevousa?
• I studied Ancient Greek in the past. Will I be able to understand Modern Greek easily?
• Is It Useful to Learn Ancient Greek Today?
• Conclusion

Questions, Answers, and Disagreements

—What are the differences between Ancient and Modern Greek?
—Can I read the Bible if I learn Modern Greek?
—I studied Ancient Greek in the past. Will I be able to understand Modern Greek easily?
—Will I understand Ancient Greek if I study Modern Greek?
—Is learning Ancient Greek useful today?

These are some common questions Greek learners ask. The answers on the internet seem to vary, thus creating a bit of uncertainty among learners and even a lot of disagreements among Greeks, turning comment sections on the internet into the digital Agora of our times.

What I notice, though, is that such disagreements oftentimes come either from a lack of information or from not seeing a broader picture in the sense that we Greeks have the advantage of understanding more, not only because of our language but also because of our educational system.

Did you know that by the time we graduate from high school, we receive a minimum of 4 years of compulsory Ancient Greek studies (or more, depending on the generation)? I, for example, took the class for 4 years plus two more by choice. So 6 years in total.

So answering these questions from a position of advantage could lead to subjective answers when we κρίνουμε εξ ίδίων τα αλλότρια (krínume ex idíon ta alótria), a famous archaic expression meaning expressing judgments or opinions about something using ourselves as a criterion or measure of evaluation, forgetting that others might not have the same advantage.

So, what are the right answers?

Important Things to Consider

With this article, I hope to clarify the relationship between Ancient and Modern Greek (also called Demotic or Δημοτική), highlight their key differences, and address all these common questions I mentioned above from a learner’s point of view so I can be as objective as possible. But first, I need to make two things clear.

1. Ancient Greek and Modern Greek Are One Language

Despite all the variations of Greek throughout time, one thing is certain; Greek is one of the oldest continuously spoken languages in the world, with a recorded history spanning over 3,000 years. It has undergone significant evolution, however, it still retains strong ties to its historical roots. Ancient Greek and Modern Greek are the same language. And that’s because it has maintained such cohesion of structure and vocabulary that linguists consider them one.

2. Ancient Greek Has Many Forms

The term ‘Ancient Greek’ does not refer to one particular version of the language but is rather an umbrella term for different versions of Greek spanning many centuries, including various old dialects and subdialects such as Aeolic, Doric, Ionic, Attic, and more recent versions such as Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament.

What are the differences between Ancient and Modern Greek?

While Modern Greek retains many elements of its ancient predecessors, for example, the Greek alphabet has remained almost the same since its creation, significant linguistic changes have occurred over the centuries. What characterizes these changes is a tendency for grammar simplification. Some of the key differences include:

Pronunciation

The pronunciation has changed significantly. There has been a massive vowel shift since centuries ago. Some diphthongs (two vowel sounds pronounced in the same syllable) became digraphs (two letters for a single sound), long vowels became short, and aspirated sounds indicated by a special diacritic ( ῾ ) no longer exist. This, as well as other diacritics which belong to the so-called ‘polytonic’ system, were abolished in 1982, favoring a ‘monotonic’ system.

What’s interesting, though, is that Latin adopted many of these words with aspirated sounds and used the letter H instead of ( ῾ ) to indicate the aspiration. As a result, words such as “history” or “harmony” in today’s English come from those old Latin loans from the Greek ἱστορία (istoría) and ἁρμονία (armonía) respectively.

Another example is the vowel η, pronounced as a long /ɛː/ in Classical Greek, but is now a short /i/ in Modern Greek. That would explain why today we say ‘Hellenic’ for ‘Greek’ in English with an /e/ sound, but ελληνικός (elinikós) in Greek with an /i/ sound. A common mistake Greek learners make (please pay attention here!) is to say ελλενικά (eleniká) instead of ελληνικά (eliniká), meaning “Greek (language)”.

This brings me to the next point:

When reading ancient Greek texts, today’s Greeks use the modern Greek pronunciation because it’s how we learn it in school. However, outside of Greece, many scholars, teachers, and university professors use the Erasmian (reconstructed and… debatable) pronunciation, which many Greeks are unfamiliar with because it’s not taught in schools. The Greek state simply never recognized it for various reasons. This is why when speaking about this topic in English, where the pronunciation of the word ‘Koine’ is usually /koɪˈnɛː/, Greeks get triggered and immediately point out that the speaker doesn’t know what he or she is talking about because the correct way to say ‘Koine’ is /ciˈni/. I have been criticized for this pronunciation! But, as I said at the beginning, this is due to a lack of information and therefore not being aware that outside of Greece, the Erasmian pronunciation is more common than the one used in Greece. If I use the Erasmian pronunciation, for example, when I say /koɪˈnɛː/, I do it because that’s the term English speakers are more familiar with. For example, I wouldn’t say ‘Parí’ with a throaty accent if I were referring to the French capital of Paris while speaking in English. It would sound… pretentious! Oh… and the same goes for “croissant’ 🥐.

Grammar

Modern Greek has a simpler grammar today. In declension, there used to be five cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative), but now the dative has been eliminated, with only some relics left in specific archaic expressions. Also, some inflected forms used to have a dual number in addition to the singular and the plural. Regarding verbs, Ancient Greek verbs had four moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and optative), three voices (active, middle, and passive), and a more complicated verb augmentation system in the past tenses. Today, we don’t have the optative mood or the middle voice, and the verb augmentation is simpler. So, verb conjugation is more streamlined today compared to Ancient Greek.

Vocabulary

While many words have remained the same, others have evolved in meaning or fallen out of use. For example, the Ancient Greek δημοκρατία (dimokratía), ‘democracy’, is still around, but αγορά (agorá) changed its meaning from a public open space used for assemblies of all sorts (athletic, artistic, business, social, spiritual, and political) to ‘purchase’ or ‘market’ today. Meanwhile, ίππος (ípos, ‘horse’) has been replaced by άλογο (álogo), although it still exists as a root, e.g., ιππόδρομος (ipódromos) ‘hippodrome’ and ιπποδρομία (ipodromía) ‘horse race.’

Syntax & Word Order

Due to the declension system, word order has been flexible in Greek throughout history. However, classical Greek tends to have an SOV (subject, object, verb) syntax while modern Greek, just like English, follows an SVO (subject, verb, object) syntax.

For example:

Τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὁ ἀετὸς ὁρᾷ. [Classical Greek (SOV)]
“(It is) the man (that) the eagle sees.”

Ο αετός βλέπει τον άνθρωπο. [Modern Greek (SVO)]
“The eagle sees the man.”

SOV sounds more poetic, doesn’t it?

Also, Ancient Greek had no definite articles in its earliest forms, but Modern Greek relies heavily on them, especially before the names of persons, which is something many English speakers struggle with.

Will I understand Ancient Greek if I study Modern Greek?

The answer depends on which form of Ancient Greek we’re discussing. The older the form, the harder it is to understand if you know Modern Greek.

Let’s see them in chronological order:

Homeric Greek (c. 1100–750 BCE)

This is the language of The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer’s famous epics that blend various dialects, mostly an archaic form of Ionic with Aeolic, and are studied during middle school in Greece. You can consider those as the Netflix series of their time, full of drama, action, romance, and larger-than-life characters. Think of The Iliad as an intense war series like Game of Thrones, and The Odyssey as an epic adventure, like Vikings meets Pirates of the Caribbean. They had gods playing favorites, epic battles, and enough betrayals to rival any modern-day binge-worthy show.

While reading, many words here and there will be familiar to a Greek or at least will make sense via etymological references, it’s impossible, though, for average folk to understand a text 100% without a translation and formal study, because many words that are key to the meaning will be incomprehensible. Here’s an example of a passage from the Odyssey that is neither a hard one nor an easy one, with a translation to give you an idea:

οὐ γάρ πω τέθνηκεν ἐπὶ χθονὶ δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς […] (original)
u gar po téthniken epí chthoní díos Odiséfs […] (today’s pronunciation)
Ωστόσο δεν πέθανε στο χώμα ο θείος Οδυσσέας […] (Modern Greek translation)
Ostóso den péthane sto hóma o thíos Odiséas […] (today’s pronunciation)
For not yet has divine Odysseus perished on the earth […] (English translation)

In the above sentence, many Greeks would understand that τέθνηκεν means “he died” because the root θνη reminds us of other words related to death (e.g., θνητός, thnitós, ‘mortal’). Morphologically, we also understand it’s a verb in the past tense due to the ending εν and the syllabic augmentation τε, which we learned in Ancient Greek class was a characteristic of the past tense. What would be harder to understand is the inflected form χθονί because χθ doesn’t ring a bell immediately, although it refers to χώμα (hóma), meaning ‘earth’ or ‘soil’. So, making such connections is the tricky part and key to ‘deciphering’ in a way the deeper meanings. And then it’s all the small words like γαρ and πω that add more difficulty.

In addition, the pronunciation must have been so different back then that listening to Odysseus speak would probably sound like Old English (see Beowulf) to an English speaker today; Completely bizarre, almost like a foreign language.

So, Homeric Greek requires translation and study to be fully understood by Greeks and Greek learners. If anyone claims they can easily understand it, they have probably already done an extensive analysis or are wearing smarty pants that day 🥸.

Classical Greek (5th–4th centuries BCE)

The language of famous philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, aka the OG influencers of the ancient world. Classical Greek includes multiple dialects, with Attic Greek (spoken in Athens then) being the most influential one, almost like a prestigious dialect. Out of all the Ancient Greek texts that have survived, a rough 80% are written in Attic Greek, making it the main dialect studied in schools today.

Even though native speakers have the advantage of the language feel and instinct to distinguish roots in unfamiliar words to understand their meaning, the level of comprehension can be around 60-70% without a translation. But it could be more or less depending on the kind of text, dialect, style, and the person. Some can understand more, others less. If it were straightforward, all Greek students would equally succeed in Ancient Greek class, and that’s not the case. Many even fail the class, while others ace it. So for a non-native without a high level of feel for the language, the difference is even more amplified. Think of it very roughly as what Middle English would be for an English speaker today (Canterbury Tales, anyone?).

Koine Greek (c. 4th century BCE – 6th century CE)

Often called “Biblical Greek.” This was the common language of the Hellenistic world and the Eastern Roman Empire. It simplified many aspects of Classical Greek and became the foundation for later forms of Greek. It is well-understood by Greeks today, about 80-90%, but depending on the person and their education, this percentage can go a bit more or less. It shouldn’t be too hard for an advanced Greek learner to figure out at least the general meaning. That said, if your goal is to learn Greek to study the New Testament alone, it would be best to find a course that focuses on Koine Greek specifically so you learn more efficiently and save yourself from potential frustration due to all the grammatical differences.

Medieval Greek (c. 6th–18th century CE)

Also known as Byzantine Greek, this transitional phase shows a clear evolution toward Modern Greek, with even more grammatical simplifications and vocabulary changes. It was very close to Modern Greek in terms of syntax and pronunciation, similar to Shakespearean English compared to Modern English. You wouldn’t need subtitles to understand his plays. So, a non-native proficient Greek speaker should be able to understand almost everything.

What about Katharevousa?

This is the elephant in the room. Katharevousa (Late 18th century CE – 1976 CE) was an invented and conservative form of Modern Greek, anachronistic in many ways. It was an artificial attempt to “purify” (as its name suggests) the Greek language by reviving ancient grammatical structures and vocabulary from Attic Greek while keeping some modern elements. The result? A language that no one actually spoke naturally, but was used for official purposes like government, law, and academia. It was essentially a linguistic throwback, trying to bridge Ancient and Demotic Greek (the actual spoken language of the people), but it never fully caught on with everyday speakers. Eventually, Demotic Greek won out, becoming the official form of Modern Greek in 1976.

I studied Ancient Greek in the past. Will I be able to understand Modern Greek easily?

The truth is that it will be easier to transition from the more complex Ancient Greek to the less complex Modern Greek than the opposite. However, the changes in the vocabulary and the morphological differences of verbs will still require proper study. And, of course, it also depends on the person, their feel for the language, and their ability to spot the roots of words and make semantic connections.

My suggestion is to focus on your language goal and study the corresponding form of Greek. Modern Greek to speak with people today, Koine Greek to study the New Testament, and Ancient Greek (Attic and Ionian dialects) to study texts by philosophers, tragedians, historians, rhetors, and more.

Is It Useful to Learn Ancient Greek Today?

Learning Ancient Greek can be highly rewarding, depending on one’s goals:

• For Biblical Studies – Those wanting to read the New Testament in its original language will benefit from studying Koine Greek.
• For Classical Literature and Philosophy – A solid understanding of Classical Greek is essential for reading works by Plato, Aristotle, and Sophocles in their original form.
• For Etymology and Linguistics – Many English and European words have Greek origins, so learning Ancient Greek can help understand language development.
• For Modern Greek Learners – While knowledge of Ancient Greek can help understand the roots of Modern Greek, it is NOT necessary for fluency.
• For Greeks – It helps them understand their language more, not just from a historical point of view, but mainly from a linguistic point of view. Popular archaic expressions today, word roots, and verb structures make more sense with knowledge of Ancient Greek. It also helps to enrich the already large vocabulary of Modern Greek speakers, making our speech more refined, poetic, sentimental, or formal as circumstances might require. Think of language as a toolbox; the more tools you have, the greater things you can make!

Conclusion

The Greek language has evolved significantly over thousands of years, and while Modern Greek and Ancient Greek share deep connections and are considered the same language, they are distinct in many ways. Understanding Ancient Greek requires different levels of effort depending on the form of the language being studied, with Koine Greek being very accessible to Modern Greek speakers. Whether or not learning Ancient Greek is useful depends on one’s personal and academic interests, but it remains a fascinating language that offers insight into history, philosophy, and religion.

For those learning Greek to study the Bible, it’s important to recognize that Koine Greek is a middle stage between Ancient and Modern Greek. If your goal is to communicate with Greeks today, learning Modern Greek is the way to go, but if you’re interested in historical texts, Ancient Greek will be incredibly valuable.

No matter which form of Greek you choose to study, engaging with the language opens a window into one of the richest linguistic and cultural traditions in the world.