Reading Greek ASCII

As a service to Greek speakers who may not have the necessary Greek fonts installed on their computers, HRI and other organizations regularly convert Greek text such as newspaper reports to what is known as Greek ASCII—or sometimes ASCII Greek, or even Greeklish—that is, Greek written in Latin characters.

The resulting text, although perfectly logical and consistent, takes some getting used to (the mysterious "Kwsta Shmith", for example, turns out to be the prime minister Costa Simiti). The following table lists the letters most likely to cause confusion:

ASCII	Greek	Example	Meaning	Mnemonic
C	Ψ Psi	Cari	psari ψάρι	Psi resembles C with a line through it
H	Η Eta	Ellhnas	Ellinas Έλληνας	capital Eta
J	Ξ Xi	Eji	Exi έξι	Jaguar XJ??
Q	Θ Theta	Aqhna	Athina Αθήνα	both Theta & Q are O with extra line
W	Ω Omega	wra	ora ώρα	lower case Omega resembles W
X	Χ Chi	oxi	okhi όχι	capital Chi = X
Y	Υ Upsilon	dyo	dio δύο	capital Upsilon = Y

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