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Greek orthography has used a variety of
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s starting in the Hellenistic period. The more complex polytonic orthography ( el, πολυτονικό σύστημα γραφής, translit=polytonikó sýstīma grafī́s), which includes five diacritics, notates Ancient Greek phonology. The simpler monotonic orthography ( el, μονοτονικό σύστημα γραφής, translit=monotonikó sýstīma grafīs), introduced in 1982, corresponds to Modern Greek phonology, and requires only two diacritics. Polytonic orthography () is the standard system for Ancient Greek and Medieval Greek. The
acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
(´), the
circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
(ˆ), and the
grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...
(`) indicate different kinds of pitch accent. The rough breathing () indicates the presence of the sound before a letter, while the smooth breathing (᾿) indicates the absence of . Since in Modern Greek the pitch accent has been replaced by a dynamic accent (stress), and was lost, most polytonic diacritics have no phonetic significance, and merely reveal the underlying Ancient Greek etymology. Monotonic orthography () is the standard system for Modern Greek. It retains two diacritics: a single accent or ''tonos'' (΄) that indicates stress, and the diaeresis ( ¨ ), which usually indicates a hiatus but occasionally indicates a
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
: compare modern Greek (, "lamb chops"), with a diphthong, and (, "little children") with a simple vowel. A ''tonos'' and a ''diaeresis'' can be combined on a single vowel to indicate a stressed vowel after a hiatus, as in the verb (, "to feed"). Although it is not a diacritic, the
hypodiastole The hypodiastole (Greek: , , ), also known as a diastole,''Oxford English Dictionary'', "diastole, ''n.''" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1895. was an interpunct developed in late Ancient and Byzantine Greek texts before the separation o ...
(
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline ...
) has in a similar way the function of a sound-changing diacritic in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing (, "whatever") from (, "that").Nicolas, Nick.
Greek Unicode Issues: Punctuation
". 2005. Accessed 7 Oct 2014.


History

The original Greek alphabet did not have diacritics. The Greek alphabet is attested since the 8th century BC, and until 403 BC, variations of the Greek alphabet—which exclusively used what are now known as
capitals Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...
—were used in different cities and areas. From 403 on, the Athenians decided to employ a version of the Ionian alphabet. With the spread of Koine Greek, a continuation of the
Attic An attic (sometimes referred to as a '' loft'') is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building; an attic may also be called a ''sky parlor'' or a garret. Because attics fill the space between the ceiling of the ...
dialect, the Ionic alphabet superseded the other alphabets, known as epichoric, with varying degrees of speed. The Ionian alphabet, however, also only consisted of capitals.


Introduction of breathings

The
rough Rough may refer to: * Roughness (disambiguation) * Rough (golf), the area outside the fairway on a golf course Geography * Rough (facility), former gas field now gas storage facility, off the Yorkshire coast of England People * Alan Rough (born 1 ...
and smooth breathings were introduced in classical times in order to represent the presence or absence of an in
Attic Greek Attic Greek is the Greek language, Greek dialect of the regions of ancient Greece, ancient region of Attica, including the ''polis'' of classical Athens, Athens. Often called classical Greek, it was the prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige diale ...
, which had adopted a form of the alphabet in which the letter Η (
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, ...
) was no longer available for this purpose as it was used to represent the
long vowel In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...
.


Introduction of accents

During the Hellenistic period (3rd century BC),
Aristophanes of Byzantium __NOTOC__ Aristophanes of Byzantium ( grc-gre, Ἀριστοφάνης ὁ Βυζάντιος ; BC) was a Hellenistic Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other ...
introduced the breathings—marks of aspiration (the aspiration however being already noted on certain inscriptions, not by means of diacritics but by regular letters or modified letters)—and the accents, of which the use started to spread, to become standard in the Middle Ages. It was not until the 2nd century AD that accents and breathings appeared sporadically in
papyri Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, ''Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a d ...
. The need for the diacritics arose from the gradual divergence between spelling and pronunciation.


Uncial script

The
majuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
, i.e., a system where text is written entirely in
capital letters Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
, was used until the 8th century, when the
minuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
polytonic supplanted it.


Grave accent rule

By the Byzantine period, the modern rule which turns an
acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
(''oxeia'') on the last syllable into a
grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...
(''bareia'')—except before a punctuation sign or an enclitic—had been firmly established. Certain authors have argued that the grave originally denoted the absence of accent; the modern rule is, in their view, a purely orthographic convention. Originally, certain
proclitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a wo ...
words lost their accent before another word and received the grave, and later this was generalized to all words in the orthography. Others—drawing on, for instance, evidence from ancient Greek music—consider that the grave was "linguistically real" and expressed a word-final modification of the acute pitch.


Stress accent

In the later development of the language, the ancient pitch accent was replaced by an intensity or stress accent, making the three types of accent identical, and the sound became silent.


Simplification

At the beginning of the 20th century (official since the 1960s), the grave was replaced by the acute, and the iota subscript and the breathings on the rho were abolished, except in printed texts. Greek typewriters from that era did not have keys for the grave accent or the iota subscript, and these diacritics were also not taught in primary schools where instruction was in
Demotic Greek Demotic Greek or Dimotiki ( el, Δημοτική Γλώσσα, , , ) is the standard spoken language of Greece in modern times and, since the resolution of the Greek language question in 1976, the official language of Greece. "Demotic Greek" (w ...
.


Official adoption of monotonic system

Following the official adoption of the demotic form of the language, the monotonic orthography was imposed by law in 1982. The latter uses only the acute accent (or sometimes a
vertical bar The vertical bar, , is a glyph with various uses in mathematics, computing, and typography. It has many names, often related to particular meanings: Sheffer stroke (in logic), pipe, bar, or (literally the word "or"), vbar, and others. Usage ...
, intentionally distinct from any of the traditional accents) and diaeresis and omits the breathings. This simplification has been criticized on the grounds that polytonic orthography provides a cultural link to the past.


Modern use of polytonic system

Some individuals, institutions, and publishers continue to prefer the polytonic system (with or without grave accent), though an official reintroduction of the polytonic system does not seem probable. The Greek Orthodox church, the daily newspaper ''
Estia ''Estia'' ( el, Ἑστία, , hearth) is a Greek national daily broadsheet newspaper published in Athens, Greece. It was founded in 1876 as a literary magazine and then in 1894 has been transformed into a newspaper, making it Greece's oldest dail ...
,'' as well as books written in '' Katharevousa'' continue to use the polytonic orthography. Though the polytonic system was not used in Classical Greece, these critics argue that modern Greek, as a continuation of Byzantine and post-medieval Greek, should continue their writing conventions. Some textbooks of Ancient Greek for foreigners have retained the breathings, but dropped all the accents in order to simplify the task for the learner.


Description

Polytonic Greek uses many different diacritics in several categories. At the time of Ancient Greek, each of these marked a significant distinction in pronunciation. Monotonic orthography for Modern Greek uses only two diacritics, the ''tonos'' and ''diaeresis'' (sometimes used in combination) that have significance in pronunciation. Initial is no longer pronounced, and so the rough and smooth breathings are no longer necessary. The unique pitch patterns of the three accents have disappeared, and only a
stress accent In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as ...
remains. The iota subscript was a diacritic invented to mark an etymological vowel that was no longer pronounced, so it was dispensed with as well. The transliteration of Greek names follows Latin transliteration of Ancient Greek; modern transliteration is different, and does not distinguish many letters and digraphs that have merged by iotacism.


Accents

The accents ( grc, τόνοι, tónoi, singular: grc, τόνος, tónos, label=none) are placed on an accented vowel or on the last of the two vowels of a diphthong (ά, but αί) and indicated pitch patterns in Ancient Greek. The precise nature of the patterns is not certain, but the general nature of each is known. The
acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
( grc, ὀξεῖα, oxeîa, sharp, label=none or "high") '' marked high pitch on a short vowel or rising pitch on a long vowel. The acute is also used on the first of two (or occasionally three) successive vowels in Modern Greek to indicate that they are pronounced together as a stressed diphthong. The
grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...
( grc, βαρεῖα, bareîa, heavy, label=none or "low", modern ''varia'') '' marked normal or low pitch. The grave was originally written on all unaccented syllables. By the Byzantine period it was only used to replace the acute at the end of a word if another accented word follows immediately without punctuation. The
circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
( grc, περισπωμένη, perispōménē, twisted around, label=none) '' marked high and falling pitch within one syllable. In distinction to the angled Latin circumflex, the Greek circumflex is printed in the form of either a tilde () or an inverted breve (). It was also known as "high-low" or "acute-grave", and its original form ( ) was from a combining of the acute and grave diacritics. Because of its compound nature, it only appeared on long vowels or diphthongs.


Breathings

The breathings were written over a vowel or ρ. The rough breathing ( grc, δασὺ πνεῦμα, dasù pneûma, link=no; Latin )—''—indicates a voiceless glottal fricative () before the vowel in Ancient Greek. In Greek grammar, this is known as aspiration. This is different from aspiration in phonetics, which applies to consonants, not vowels. *
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 ...
(Ρρ) at the beginning of a word always takes rough breathing, probably marking unvoiced pronunciation. In Latin, this was transcribed as '' rh''. * Upsilon (Υυ) at the beginning of a word always takes rough breathing. Thus, words from Greek begin with ''hy-'', never with ''y-''. The smooth breathing ( grc, ψιλὸν πνεῦμα, psilòn pneûma, label=none; Latin )—''—marked the absence of . A double rho in the middle of a word was originally written with smooth breathing on the first rho and rough breathing on the second one (). In Latin, this was transcribed as ''rrh'' (''diarrhoea'' or ''diarrhea'').


Coronis

The coronis ( grc, κορωνίς, korōnís, curved, label=none) marks a vowel contracted by crasis. It was formerly an apostrophe placed after the contracted vowel, but is now placed over the vowel and is identical to the smooth breathing. Unlike the smooth breathing, it often occurs inside a word.


Subscript

The iota subscript ( grc, ὑπογεγραμμένη, hypogegramménē, written under, label=none)—''—is placed under the long vowels , η, and ω to mark the ancient long diphthongs ᾱι, ηι, and ωι, in which the ι is no longer pronounced.


Adscript

Next to a capital, the iota subscript is usually written as a lower-case letter (Αι), in which case it is called
iota adscript The iota subscript is a diacritic mark in the Greek alphabet shaped like a small vertical stroke or miniature iota placed below the letter. It can occur with the vowel letters eta , omega , and alpha . It represents the former presence of an ...
( grc, προσγεγραμμένη, prosgegramménē, written next to, label=none).


Diaeresis

In Ancient Greek, the diaeresis ( el, διαίρεσις, link=no or el, διαλυτικά, dialytiká, distinguishing, label=none) – – appears on the letters and to show that a pair of vowel letters is pronounced separately, rather than as a
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
or as a digraph for a simple vowel. In Modern Greek, the diaeresis usually indicates that two successive vowels are pronounced separately (as in , "I trick, mock"), but occasionally, it marks vowels that are pronounced together as an unstressed diphthong rather than as a digraph (as in , "I boycott"). The distinction between two separate vowels and an unstressed diphthong is not always clear, although two separate vowels are far more common. The diaeresis can be combined with the acute, grave and circumflex but never with breathings, since the letter with the diaeresis cannot be the first vowel of the word. In Modern Greek, the combination of the acute and diaeresis indicates a stressed vowel after a hiatus.


Vowel length

In textbooks and dictionaries of Ancient Greek, the macron—''—and breve—''—are often used over , , and to indicate that they are long or short, respectively.


Nonstandard diacritics


Caron

In some modern non-standard orthographies of Greek dialects, such as Cypriot Greek and Griko, a caron (ˇ) may be used on some consonants to show a palatalized pronunciation. They are not encoded as precombined characters in Unicode, so they are typed by adding the to the Greek letter. Latin diacritics on Greek letters may not be supported by many fonts, and as a fall-back a caron may be replaced by an iota ⟨ι⟩ following the consonant. Examples of Greek letters with a combining caron and their pronunciation: ζ̌ , κ̌ or , λ̌ , ν̌ , ξ̌ , π̌ , σ̌ ς̌ , τ̌ , τζ̌ or , τσ̌ τς̌ or , ψ̌ .


Dot above

A dot diacritic was used above some consonants and vowels in
Karamanli Turkish Karamanlı Turkish ( tr, Karamanlı Türkçesi, el, Καραμανλήδικα, Karamanlídika) is a dialect of the Turkish language spoken by the Karamanlides. Although the official Ottoman Turkish was written in the Arabic script, the Karam ...
, which was written with the Greek alphabet.


Position in letters

Diacritics are written above lower-case letters and at the upper left of capital letters. In the case of a digraph, the second vowel takes the diacritics. A breathing diacritic is written to the left of an acute or grave accent but below a circumflex. Accents are written above a diaeresis or between its two dots. Diacritics are only written on capital letters if they are at the beginning of a word with the exception of the diaeresis, which is always written. Diacritics can be found above capital letters in medieval texts.


Examples


Computer encoding

There have been problems in representing polytonic Greek on computers, and in displaying polytonic Greek on computer screens and printouts, but these have largely been overcome by the advent of Unicode and appropriate
font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mod ...
s.


IETF language tag

The IETF language tags have registered subtag codes for the different orthographies: * for monotonic Greek. * for polytonic Greek.


Unicode

While the ''tónos'' of monotonic orthography looks similar to the ''oxeîa'' of polytonic orthography in most fonts, Unicode has historically separate symbols for letters with these diacritics. For example, the monotonic "Greek small letter alpha with ''tónos''" is at U+03AC, while the polytonic "Greek small letter alpha with ''oxeîa''" is at U+1F71. The monotonic and polytonic accent however have been '' de jure'' equivalent since 1986, and accordingly the ''oxeîa'' diacritic in Unicode decomposes canonically to the monotonic ''tónos''—both are underlyingly treated as equivalent to the multiscript acute accent, U+0301, since letters with ''oxia'' decompose to letters with ''tonos'', which decompose in turn to base letter plus multiscript acute accent. For example: U+1F71 GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA
➔ U+03AC GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH TONOS
➔ U+03B1 GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA, U+0301 COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT. Below are the accented characters provided in Unicode. In the uppercase letters, the iota adscript may appear as subscript depending on font.


Upper case


Lower case


See also

*
Acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
* Voiceless glottal fricative * DiaeresisSynaeresis * Greek language * Koine Greek phonology * Modern Greek grammar * Greek alphabet * Greek language question *
Greek ligatures Greek ligatures are graphic combinations of the letters of the Greek alphabet that were used in medieval handwritten Greek and in early printing. Ligatures were used in the cursive writing style and very extensively in later minuscule writin ...
*
Greek braille Greek Braille is the braille alphabet of the Greek language. It is based on international braille conventions, generally corresponding to Latin transliteration. In Greek, it is known as Κώδικας Μπράιγ ''Kôdikas Brég'' "Braille Code". ...
* Greek minuscule * Textual criticism *
Aristarchian symbols Aristarchian symbols are editorial marks developed during the Hellenistic period and the early Roman empire for annotating then-ancient Greek texts—mainly the works of Homer. They were used to highlight missing text, text which was discrepant be ...
* Obelism * Dagger (typography) * Greek numerals * Attic numerals * Isopsephy *
Ancient Greek Musical Notation Ancient Greek Musical Notation is a Unicode block A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes (code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative and docume ...
*
Byzantine Musical Symbols Byzantine Musical Symbols is a Unicode block containing characters for representing Byzantine-era musical notation. Block History The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Byza ...


References


Further reading

* Panayotakis is critical of the adoption of monotonic, and also provides a useful historical sketch. * See also


External links

General information:
Accentuation history and tutorial

Citizens' Movement for the Reintroduction of the Polytonic System
in Greek and English
How the law to abandon polytonic orthography was passed in the Greek parliament
in Greek
Greek polytonic to monotonic converter
(free online tool)

Polytonic Greek fonts:


Public domain Greek polytonic unicode fonts


public domain polytonic Greek font How-to guides for polytonic keyboard layouts:
Google Docs guide for Linux
Covers installation of layouts, use of dead-keys etc. Updated to 2010. {{Navbox diacritical marks Hellenic scripts, Diacritics Diacritics Diacritics Diacritics Orthographies by language Orthography Spelling reform Keyboard layouts