Accent

One final thing to learn today. What is that mark over the first alpha?

It is called an accent mark. There are three of them in Greek. (We will see the other ones in a bit.) The accent mark shows what syllable receives the stress when you say it.

It is really important that you stress the right syllable. It is hard to memorize Greek words and hard to talk with others if you stress any old syllable. Just say the following four forms, stressing the accented syllable, and hear how different they sound.

Really different. So pay close attention and say the words properly.