Greek Language/Diphthongs

In linguistics, a diphthong is a structure consisting of two vowels, which are pronounced as two phthongs but in the time of one syllable. In modern Greek there are 7 diphthongs, presented in the following table.

You may have noticed that most diphthongs look like the two-vowels vowels and combinations ευ and αυ. However, they are distinguished by the fact that over ι and υ there are special signs, similar to the Umlaut of the German language. These signs are called 	diaeresis (Greek: διαλυτικά) and are always used to separate a vowels' digraph, requiring as a result the independent pronunciation of each vowel the digraph is consisted of.