The smooth breathing ( grc, ψιλὸν πνεῦμα, psilòn pneûma; ell, ψιλή ''psilí''; la, spīritus lēnis) is a
diacritical mark used in
polytonic orthography. In
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
, it marks the absence of the
voiceless glottal fricative
The voiceless glottal fricative, sometimes called voiceless glottal transition, and sometimes called the aspirate, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages that patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant '' phonologically'', bu ...
from the beginning of a word.
Some authorities have interpreted it as representing a
glottal stop, but a final vowel at the end of a word is regularly elided (removed) when the following word starts with a vowel and
elision would not happen if the second word began with a glottal stop (or any other form of stop consonant). In his ''Vox Graeca'',
W.S. Allen accordingly regards the glottal stop interpretation as "highly improbable".
The smooth breathing mark ( ) is written as on top of one initial
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...
, on top of the second vowel of a
diphthong or to the left of a capital and also, in certain editions, on the first of a
pair of
rho
Rho (uppercase Ρ, lowercase ρ or ; el, ρο or el, ρω, label=none) is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 100. It is derived from Phoenician letter res . Its uppercase form uses the sa ...
s. It did not occur on an initial
upsilon
Upsilon (, ; uppercase Υ, lowercase υ; el, ''ýpsilon'' ) or ypsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, grc, Υʹ, label=none has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw .
E ...
, which always has
rough breathing (thus the early name ''hy'', rather than ''y'') except in certain
pre-Koine dialects which had lost aspiration much earlier.
The smooth breathing was kept in the traditional polytonic orthography even after the sound had disappeared from the language in
Hellenistic
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...
times. It has been dropped in the modern monotonic orthography.
History
The origin of the sign is thought to be the right-hand half ( ┤ ) of the letter H, which was used in some
archaic Greek alphabets as while in others it was used for the vowel
eta
Eta (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἦτα ''ē̂ta'' or ell, ήτα ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative in most dialects, ...
. It was developed by
Aristophanes of Byzantium to help readers discern between similar words. For example, ὅρος ''horos'' 'boundary' (rough breathing) and ὄρος ''oros'' 'mountain' (smooth breathing).
In medieval and modern script, it takes the form of a closing half moon (reverse C) or a closing single quotation mark:
*
*
Smooth breathings were also used in the
early Cyrillic and
Glagolitic alphabets when writing the
Old Church Slavonic language. Today it is used in
Church Slavonic
Church Slavonic (, , literally "Church-Slavonic language"), also known as Church Slavic, New Church Slavonic or New Church Slavic, is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bosnia and Her ...
according to a simple rule: if a word starts with a vowel, the vowel has a psili over it. From the
Russian writing system, it was eliminated by
Peter the Great during his alphabet and font-style reform (1707). All other Cyrillic-based modern writing systems are based on the Petrine script, so they have never had the smooth breathing.
Coronis
The coronis (, ''korōnís'', "
crow's beak" or "bent mark"), the symbol written over a vowel contracted by
crasis, was originally an
apostrophe after the letter: . In present use, its appearances in
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
are written over the medial vowel with the smooth breathing mark——and appearances of crasis in
modern Greek
Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
are not marked.
Letters with smooth breathing mark
Unicode
In
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
, the
code points assigned to the smooth breathing are for Greek and for Cyrillic. The pair of space + spiritus lenis is . The coronis is assigned two distinct code points, and .
See also
*
Greek diacritics
**
Rough breathing
*
Modifier letter right half ring (ʾ)
**
Aleph
References
{{Navbox diacritical marks
Greek-script diacritics
Cyrillic-script diacritics
Ancient Greek