Greek orthography
The
Early Greek writing in the Greek alphabet was phonemic, different in each dialect. Since the adoption of the Ionic variant for Attic in 403 BC, however, Greek orthography has been largely conservative and historical.
Given the phonetic development of Greek, especially in the Hellenistic period, certain modern vowel phonemes have multiple orthographic realizations:
- /i/ can be spelled η, ι, υ, ει, οι, or υι (see Iotacism);
- /e/ can be spelled either ε or αι;
- /o/ can be spelled either ο or ω.
This affects not only lexical items but also inflectional affixes, so correct orthography requires mastery of
Similarly, the orthography preserves ancient doubled consonants, though these are now pronounced the same as single consonants, except in Cypriot Greek.
Digraphs and diphthongs
A digraph is a pair of letters used to write one sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters in sequence. The orthography of Greek includes several digraphs, including various pairs of vowel letters that used to be pronounced as diphthongs but have been shortened to monophthongs in pronunciation. Many of these are characteristic developments of modern Greek, but some were already present in Classical Greek. None of them is regarded as a letter of the alphabet.
During the Byzantine period, it became customary to write the silent iota in digraphs as an iota subscript.
Letters | Ancient Greek |
Modern Greek | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Transcription
|
Pronunciation | Transcription
|
Pronunciation | |
αι, αι | ai | [ai̯] | e | [e̞] |
αι, ᾳ | āi | [aːi̯] | a | [a] |
ει, ει | ei | [eː] | i | [i] |
ηι, ῃ | ēi | [ɛːi̯] | ||
οι, οι | oi | [oi̯] | ||
υι, υι | ui | [yː][a] | ||
ωι, ῳ | ōi | [ɔːi̯] | o | [o̞] |
αυ, αυ | au | [au̯] | av, af | [av] before vowel or voiced consonant; [af] otherwise |
Ᾱυ, ᾱυ | āu | [aːu̯] | ||
ευ, ευ | eu | [eu̯] | ev, ef | [ev] before vowel or voiced consonant; [ef] otherwise |
ηυ, ηυ | ēu | [ɛːu̯] | iv, if | [iv] before vowel or voiced consonant; [if] otherwise |
ου, ου | ou | [uː] earlier [oː] |
u | [u] |
ωυ, ωυ | ōü | [ɔːu̯][b] | oi | [oi] |
γγ, γγ | ŋg | [ŋɡ] | ng / nj, g / j, ngh / njh | [ŋɡ] and [ɲɟ] in formal registers, but often reduced to [ɡ] and [ɟ] in informal speech; also pronounced [ŋɣ] and [ɲʝ] in some words (e.g. εγγενής, έγγραφο, συγγραφέας)[c] |
γκ, γκ | ŋk | [ŋk] | g / y, ng / ny | [ɡ] word-initially and in some loanwords; [ŋɡ] otherwise, often reduced to [ɡ] in informal speech[c] |
γξ, γξ | ŋx | [ŋks] | nx | [ŋks] |
γχ, γχ | ŋkh | [ŋkʰ] | nkh / nç | [ŋx][c] and [ɲç] |
μπ, μπ | mp | [mp] | b, mb, mp | [b] word-initially and in some loanwords; [mb] otherwise, often reduced to [b] in informal speech |
ντ, ντ | nt | [nt] | d, nd | [ d ] word-initially and in some loanwords; [nd] otherwise,often reduced to [d] in informal speech |
ΤΖ, τζ | [absent] | tz | [d͡z] |
- ^ The diphthong υι [yi̯] was monophthongized to [yː] in Classical Attic Greek, but survives in some other contemporary dialects and in early Koine.
- Latin transcription ōy. Perhaps the clearest example of this is the Biblical Greek name Μωυσῆς [mɔːu̯.sɛ̂ːs] (Moses), which was atticized as Μωϋσῆς [mɔː.y.sɛ̂ːs], then adapted to early Christian Latin as Mōysēs, from where it became Spanish Moisés, French Moïse, etc. The modern Greek form is Μωυσής [mo̞i̯ˈsis], whereas the modern Latin Vulgateform is Mōsēs.
- ^ a b c The velars [ɡ], [k], [ɣ], and [x] are palatalized to [ɟ], [c], [ʝ] and [ç] respectively before the close and mid front vowels [i] and [e̞]. It is discussed among scholars whether the in its own right in Greek.
Hyphenation rules of Standard Modern Greek
Consonant splitting
According to KEME (1983),[1] the splitting of a Modern Greek word into syllables (syllabification) is governed by the following rules:
- C1: A single consonant between two vowels is hyphenated with the succeeding vowel.
- C2: A sequence of two consonants between two vowels is hyphenated with the succeeding vowel, if a Greek word exists that begins with such a consonant sequence. Otherwise the sequence is split into two syllables.
- C3: A sequence of three or more consonants between two vowels is hyphenated with the succeeding vowel, if a Greek word exists that begins with the sequence of the first two consonants. Otherwise it splits; the first consonant being hyphenated with the preceding vowel.[2]
Loanword hyphenation is governed by the same grammar rules as the rest of the
Vowel splitting
The prohibitive hyphenation rules regarding vowel splitting are as follows:
- V1. Double-vowel blends do not split.
- V2. The combinations αυ, ευ, ηυ, αύ, εύ and ηύ[3] do not split.
- V3. Diphthongs do not split.
- V4. Excessive diphthongs do not split.
All of the above rules are negative in that they indicate impermissible hyphen points within particular substrings of consecutive vowels.[2]
Diacritics
Polytonic
Monotonic orthography, adopted in 1982, replaces the ancient diacritics with just two: the acute accent (tónos, e.g. ί), used to mark the stressed syllable in polysyllabic words, and the diaeresis (dialytiká, e.g. ϊ), which indicates that the vowel is not part of a digraph.
Punctuation
In Ancient Greek
In printing
Following the
One of the few places where
The
In Greek numerals
There are special rules for how to write Greek numerals. In modern Greek, a number of changes have been made. Instead of extending an overline over an entire number (like χξϛ), a keraia (κεραία, lit. "hornlike projection") is placed to its upper right, a development of the short marks formerly used for single numbers and fractions. The modern keraia is a symbol (ʹ) similar to the acute accent (´), but has its own Unicode character, encoded as U+0374. Alexander the Great's father Philip II of Macedon is thus known as Φίλιππος Βʹ in modern Greek. A lower left keraia (Unicode: U+0375, "Greek Lower Numeral Sign") is now standard for identifying thousands: 2015 is represented as ͵ΒΙΕʹ (2000 + 10 + 5).
See also
- Ancient Greek phonology
- Greek braille
- Obelism
- Greek grammar
- Greek language question
- Greek ligatures
- Iota subscript
- Katharevousa
- Modern Greek phonology
- Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching
- Romanization of Greek
References
- ^ This book is the official grammar book of Modern Greek edited by a group of experts and it is a revised edition of Triantafillidis (1941, reprint with corrections 1978).
- ^ a b c Noussia, Theodora I. (1997). "A Rule-based Hyphenator for Modern Greek". Computational Linguistics. 23 (3): 361–376.
- ^ The ηυ combination is infrequently referred to in grammar books (KEME 1983), possibly because it appears in only a small number of words. However, this combination is also considered, because such words are regularly used e.g., εφηύρα [efívra] 'I invented'.
- ^ a b c Nicolas, Nick (2005). "Greek Unicode Issues: Punctuation". Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. University of California, Irvine. Archived from the original on 2014-10-10. Retrieved 2014-10-07.
- ^ a b "The Look of Greek". Retrieved 8 October 2014.
- ^ In informal writing, English-style quotation marks have also become quite common.[5]
External links
- Greek Unicode Issues by Nick Nicholas
- The Details of Modern Greek Phonetics and Phonology, by Harry Foundalis