Expert: Maria - 1/10/2008

Question
Maria could you please tell me how the translation of the word IMMORTAL would look in the Greek alphabet.Thank you very much for any help you can give me.

Answer
Hello,

The Ancient Greek translation of the English adjective IMMORTAL is the following:

- Αθάνατος (nominative masculine/ feminine). ‘Athánatos’ in Latin transliteration, i.e. in Latin alphabet we use still today.

- Αθάνατον (nominative neuter). Latin transliteration: Athánaton

Please note that this ancient Greek adjective must be inflected as Ancient Greek is an inflected language with three declensions and five cases. Moreover it must be agreed in the masculine/feminine/neuter singular /plural with the term it refers to.

Finally I have to tell you that I'm afraid you cannot read the Greek letters of Αθάνατος / Αθάνατον  because the system often does not allow you to read them, and then  I think it’s better that I write the name of  each Greek letter of this adjective  so that you can see and copy them  a the sites you can read below.

Αθάνατος (Athánatos) : alpha with the smooth breathing-theta-alpha with the acute accent-nu-alpha-tau-omicron- final sigma

Αθάνατον (Athánaton) : alpha with the smooth breathing -theta-alpha with the acute accent-nu-alpha-tau-omicron-nu

Best regards,
Maria
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See the Ancient Greek alphabet at:
http://www.dur.ac.uk/stat.web/greek.htm
http://www.ibiblio.org/koine/greek/lessons/alphabet.html

The ‘smooth breathing’ looks like a regular comma written over a vowel and denotes absence of aspiration.

The final sigma is the one written at the end of a word; it looks like a S.