Online Greek courses for Modern Greek from A1 to C2

Modern Greek is the official language of Greece and, alongside Turkish, one of the two official languages of Cyprus. Since 1981 it has also been one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Large Greek-speaking communities live in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany, among other countries.

People learn Greek for very different reasons, and the reason decides the level you need. Levels follow the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), a six-level scale from A1 for beginners to C2 for near-native command.

Even basic Greek makes menus, road signs and conversations at the market understandable. English speakers also gain insight into their own vocabulary, because many English words come from Greek, such as democracy, therapy and telephone.

The Greek alphabet has 24 letters. You know many of them from maths and science, such as pi, sigma and delta. The main difficulty is that some letters look like Latin ones but sound different.

Modern Greek has only five vowel sounds: a, e, i, o and u. Unlike English vowels, they stay short and pure, without gliding into a second sound. The sound i has six spellings: η, ι, υ, ει, οι and υι, and the sound u is written ου. For b, d and g Greek uses letter pairs: μπ, ντ and γκ. The pairs αυ and ευ sound like av or af and ev or ef depending on the next sound, as in αυτό, pronounced afto, which means this.

English speakers have an advantage with θ and δ, which sound like th in thin and this. The new sounds are χ, a rough ch as in loch, and γ, a soft friction g that sounds almost like y before e and i.

Since 1982 Greek has used a single accent mark, the tonos, which shows the stressed syllable. Stress can change meaning: πότε means when, while ποτέ means never.

Greek grammar has three genders and a definite article that changes with the noun. A case is a form that shows the role of a word in the sentence. Greek has four cases: nominative, genitive, accusative and vocative. English keeps cases only in pronouns such as he, him and his, so learning to decline nouns, articles and adjectives takes practice. Modern Greek uses the old dative only in fixed expressions.

The biggest hurdle is verbal aspect. Aspect shows whether an action is seen as a whole or as a process. Many verbs therefore have two stems, such as γράφ- for writing as an ongoing activity and γράψ- for a single, completed act of writing. So θα γράφω means I will write regularly, while θα γράψω means I will write once. Textbooks usually list both stems together.

The missing infinitive surprises many learners. Where English says I want to write, Greek says literally I want that I write. In return, verb endings are fairly regular and word order is flexible.

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the language school of the US Department of State, estimates study times for English-speaking diplomats. It places Greek in Category III, with about 44 weeks or 1,012 class hours. The target is professional working proficiency in speaking and reading. A typical FSI week has 23 class hours and 17 hours of self-study.

These figures describe full-time training, and the FSI notes that the real time varies with aptitude, prior language experience and time in class. Most adults learn part-time, and the table shows what the same number of class hours means at a lower weekly pace.

For holidays and everyday life you need far less. CEFR level A2 stands for simple conversations about familiar topics. It takes only a fraction of the FSI hours, because you do not need to handle specialist texts or negotiations. Regularity matters more than session length: three short sessions a week achieve more than one long one.

Online courses teach Standard Modern Greek, the form used in schools, media and government in Greece. It is based on the spoken language, Dimotiki (Demotic Greek). Since 1976 Demotic has been the official language of education and the state, replacing the learned Katharevousa.

In Cyprus many people speak Cypriot Greek in daily life. It differs clearly in pronunciation and vocabulary, but the written standard remains Modern Greek. There are also regional dialects, for example on Crete, and Pontic Greek, the language of the Black Sea Greeks.

Ancient Greek is the language of Homer and Plato. The New Testament was written in a later form called Koine. Schools and universities in English-speaking countries and in Germany usually read Ancient Greek with a reconstructed pronunciation known as Erasmian. In Greece, people read old texts with modern pronunciation.

German universities ask for the Graecum or sufficient Greek mainly in theology and classics. If you know Modern Greek, you have a head start in Ancient Greek vocabulary, but you still need to learn its forms and syntax. A Modern Greek course therefore does not prepare you for the Graecum, and you need a separate Ancient Greek course.

Online Greek courses differ by goal and target group.

1 General course from A1 to C2

A general course covers reading, listening, writing and speaking and follows the levels of the CEFR.

2 Conversation and everyday life

Conversation courses train dialogues for holidays, shopping and neighbours. They usually assume you can read the alphabet and know the basics.

3 Heritage learner course

Children and adults from Greek families often understand a lot but write with uncertainty. These courses build on listening skills and close gaps in spelling and grammar.

4 Greek for work

Work-focused courses practise emails, phone calls and specialist vocabulary for jobs in Greece or Cyprus.

5 Exam preparation

These courses prepare you for the Ellinomatheia certificate or the citizenship test and train the task types.

6 Ancient and Biblical Greek

Ancient Greek courses lead to reading classical texts or the New Testament, and on request up to exams such as the German Graecum.

The state certificate for Modern Greek is called Ellinomatheia, roughly knowledge of Greek. It is awarded by the Centre for the Greek Language, a body of the Greek Ministry of Education. The levels follow the CEFR from A1 to C2.

The main Ellinomatheia exam takes place once a year in May, in Greece and at exam centres abroad. In 2026 there was an extra session in October for A2 for professional purposes and B1, held only in Greece.

The PEGP is the certificate of sufficient knowledge for naturalisation in Greece. The Greek Ministry of the Interior runs the exam. It tests Greek at about B1 together with knowledge of the country and its institutions.

Check every offer against these eight points.

1. The course names its target level on the CEFR.
2. The first lessons practise the alphabet with real words.
3. All materials show the accent, and the teacher corrects your stress.
4. Verbs are introduced with both aspect stems.
5. You get your own speaking time in every lesson.
6. Listening texts come from native speakers and cover everyday life and media.
7. For exam goals, the course uses tasks in the Ellinomatheia format.
8. The teacher is a native speaker or has studied Greek and can explain grammar in English.

1. Read real words every day in your first week, such as menus, place names or headlines. The alphabet sticks faster this way than with tables.
2. Write down every new word with its accent and say it aloud. The stress belongs to the word just like its letters.
3. Learn verbs in pairs, with the stem for the ongoing action and the stem for the completed one.
4. Learn nouns with their article, because the article shows gender and case.
5. Listen to ten minutes of Greek every day, such as radio, podcasts or news with subtitles.