2013 edition Wilfred E. Major wmajor@lsu.edu

Ancient Greek for Everyone:A New Digital Resource for Beginning GreekUnit 1 part 3: diacritical marks, typing, alphabetical order 2013 edition Wilfred E. Major wmajor@lsu.edu

Ancient Greek for Everyone • This class • You have learned all the Greek letters. • Today we learn all the other marks that appear in written Greek: • accent marks • breathing marks • punctuation • How to type ancient Greek • The Greek alphabet in alphabetical order • How to end a Greek word

Ancient Greek for Everyone Polytonic Greek When foreigners (ξένοι) started learning Greek in antiquity, Greek scholars developed additional symbols to help non-Greeks speak the language. From this practice, Polytonic Greek uses the following: • accent marks • breathing marks • punctuation

Ancient Greek for Everyone BREATHINGS Ancient Greek does not use a separate letter for the ‘h’ sound. Remember that Greek has the aspirated consonants φ, θ, and χto indicate this sound.

Ancient Greek for Everyone BREATHINGS If a word begins with aspiration, but not one with of these consonants, however, the aspirated consonants are no help, so Greek uses two symbols to indicate aspiration or lack of it.

Ancient Greek for Everyone BREATHINGS • ’ no aspiration: ὀ= “o” (“smooth” breathing) • ‘ aspiration: ὁ= “ho” (“rough” breathing)

Ancient Greek for Everyone BREATHINGS Helpful hint: Words beginning with ρorυalways have a rough breathing: • ῥο= rho • as in ῥυθμος= rhythmos (“rhythm”) • ὑ= hy- • as in ὑπερ= hyper “above” ( English “hyper”)

Ancient Greek for Everyone BREATHINGS Sometimes only a breathing marks the difference between words. For example: • αὐτον= “him”αὐτην= “her” • αὑτον= “himself”αὑτην= “herself” Notice that if the word begins with a diphthong, the breathing appears over the second letter.

Ancient Greek for Everyone ACCENTS • Most words in Ancient Greek have an accent. • Ancient Greeks knew how to accent words. • They wrote in the accents to help non-Greeks learn the language.

Ancient Greek for Everyone ACCENTS Ancient Greek scholars said the accent was a rising tone on a single short vowel sound, so they marked it with a line rising from left-to-right: / (acute accent). You may stress the vowel to sound the accent, but try not to make it long when you do!

Ancient Greek for Everyone ACCENTS If an accent on a word was not pronounced, the symbol is inverted, called a grave accent (\). For example, a final accented vowel before another word was typically not accented: τιμή but τιμὴδέ. If a vowel has a grave(\), simply do not pronounce the accent!

Ancient Greek for Everyone ACCENTS Accenting short vowel sounds • The vowels ᾰ, ε, ῐ, ο, and ῠ are short. • When accented, the acute accent appears above these vowels: ά, έ, ί, ό, and ύ.

Ancient Greek for Everyone ACCENTS Accenting long vowel sounds • The vowels ᾱ,η,ῑ,ω, and ῡ are long. • Long vowels are, as their name suggests, long, in fact double-length, vowel sounds: ᾱ = αα, η = εε, ῑ= ιι, ω= οο, and ῡ= υυ

Ancient Greek for Everyone ACCENTS Accenting long vowel sounds • If the first part of this sound bears the accent, then the whole vowel has a rising tone (/), then a falling tone (\), so it is marked ^ (circumflex) over the vowel. άὰ = ᾶ, έὲ = ῆ, ίὶ = ῖ, όὸ = ῶ, ύὺ = ῦ

Ancient Greek for Everyone ACCENTS Accenting long vowel sounds • If the second part of the sound bears the accent, then only the rising tone (/) is written. αά = ά, εέ = ή, ιί = ί, οό = ώ, υύ = ύ

Ancient Greek for Everyone ACCENTS Accenting long vowel sounds • When the second of two consecutive vowels is an ι or υ, the pair is a diphthong. The same rules for marking an acute (/) or circumflex (^) apply as for long vowels, and the accent is always written over the second vowel: • άὶ = αῖ έὶ = εῖ όὶ = οῖ ύὶ = υῖ • αί = αί εί = εί οί = οί υί = υί • άὺ = αῦ έὺ = εῦ όὺ = οῦ • αύ = αύ εύ = εύ ού = ού

Ancient Greek for Everyone ACCENTS Accenting long vowel sounds • Remember that the vowels α, εand οcontract when they meet. The same rules for marking an acute (/) or circumflex (^) apply as for long vowels and diphthongs: • ά + ὲ = ᾶ ά + ὸ = ῶ α + έ = ά α + ό = ώ • έ + ὰ = ῆ έ + ὸ = οῦ ε + ά = ή ε + ό = ού • ό + ὰ = ῶ ό + ὲ = οῦ ο + ά = ώ ο + έ = ού

Ancient Greek for Everyone Placing the accent: • On most Greek words, the “recessive” rule determines the placement of the accent. This means: • If the last syllable of the word contains a single short vowel, the accent “recedes” two syllables: • δίδοτε • It can recede only to the last short vowel sound of this syllable (never to the first part), so the accent appears as an acute (“/”): • ἄνθρωπος, δώσετε (= δοόσετε)

Ancient Greek for Everyone Placing the accent: • On most Greek words, the “recessive” rule determines the placement of the accent. This means: • If the word has only two syllables and the last syllable of the word contains a single short vowel, the accent “recedes” to the first syllable: • δότε • or the first part of a long vowel sound: • δῶρον (= δόορον)

Ancient Greek for Everyone Placing the accent: • On most Greek words, the “recessive” rule determines the placement of the accent. This means: • If the last syllable of the word contains a long vowel sound, the accent “recedes” only one syllable: • διδότω. • It can recede only to the second part of this syllable, so the accent always appears as an acute (“/”): • παραδώσω (= παραδοόσω = παραδοόσοο)

Ancient Greek for Everyone PUNCTUATION Greek uses four marks of punctuation: • full stop . (period) • half stop ·(colon; Greek for “limb”; ~ semi-colon) • pause , (comma; Greek for “stamp mark”) • question mark ;(top/bottom reverse of ? symbol) Quotation marks: strictly speaking, a capital letter marks the beginning of a direct quote, but often modern texts add quotation marks for clarity.

Ancient Greek for Everyone SPELL IT LIKE IT SOUNDS! • Remember that ancient Greek spells words the way they sound, rather than having a fixed spelling system. This explains why and how they write elisions: • When Greeks elided or contracted words as they spoke, they wrote them in contracted form. • In formal English, we write only uncontracted forms (“stop and go” instead of “stop ‘n’ go” etc), regardless of how we pronounce them. Formal Greek writing, however, shows the contractions.

Ancient Greek for Everyone An example of elision: μετὰ ἐμοῦ= with me Remember: saying two vowels together is bad, so most of the time, this phrase is elided to: μετ’ ἐμοῦ= wit’ me SPELL IT LIKE IT SOUNDS!

Ancient Greek for Everyone • This class (Thursday, August 29, 2013) • You have learned all the Greek letters. • Today we learn all the other marks that appear in written Greek: • accent marks • breathing marks • punctuation • How to type ancient Greek • The Greek alphabet in alphabetical order • How to end a Greek word

Ancient Greek for Everyone Typing Ancient Greek on digital devices: • The basic Greek keyboard (called Modern, Demotic, or Monotonic) has only a single accent. • Ancient Greek, in order to type the accents and breathing marks, requires the “polytonic” keyboard.

Ancient Greek for Everyone Typing Ancient Greek on digital devices: Recent Windows and Apple systems have built-in polytonic Greek keyboards. You need only activate them. In Moodle and at www.dramata.comare reference sheets for typing ancient (polytonic) Greek in a Windows or Mac environment. There is also an app called “Write Polytonic Greek” by Michael Chourdakis for typing ancient Greek in iOS on your iPhone etc.

Ancient Greek for Everyone Typing Ancient Greek on digital devices: There are more sophisticated programs available as well, but these reference sheets do not require the purchase or installation of any new software, just activating a keyboard already on your computer. Important: Read, copy and input Greek using Unicode characters. It is and will remain the standard. Other methods are fading and some are hard to convert.

Ancient Greek for Everyone Typing Ancient Greek on digital devices: • You can use any font you wish. So long as it is Unicode-compliant, it should display and print characters correctly and it will convert to other fonts consistently. • I use Palatino Linotype for the Greek in these Power Points, handouts, etc., since it is bundled with Windows and nicely legible.

Ancient Greek for Everyone • Greek has twenty-four letters. • upper-case: Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ζ Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ξ Ο Π Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ Ψ Ω • lower-case: α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ σ ς τ υ φ χ ψ ω

Sing the Greek alphabet to “Itsy Bitsy Spider”!

Sing the Greek alphabet to “Frère Jacques”!

Ancient Greek for Everyone The Greek alphabet in alphabetical order • Greek Alphabet Song – rock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKW9-7ZHv_4 • Greek Alphabet – techno http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUrZHF_WBeI • Greek Alphabet – hip-hop http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vapoNlGio8U • Greek Alphabet – sing-a-long http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK7oKv0Jes4

Ancient Greek for Everyone

Ancient Greek for Everyone The Greek alphabet in alphabetical order A YouTube video shows how to write the letters, at Learn the Greek Alphabet: 4A Penmanship Counts!: – Alpha-Mu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHDdBprw0XQ (part 1) Learn the Greek Alphabet: 4B. Penmanship Counts: Nu-Omega http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8gm2VFs_co (part 2) Visit www.dramata.com for: • A power point that diagrams the Greek letters by hand

Ancient Greek for Everyone How to end a Greek word • A Greek word can endonly in a vowel, -ν, -ρ or -ς. • If necessary, consonants will drop from the end until the word reaches an allowable final sound • For example, σῶματσῶμα. • A word ending in -σιcan add a final -ν(“nu-movable”) to make pronunciation easier: • For example, εἴκοσι εἶσι εἴκοσιν εἶσιν. • This added -νhas no meaning; it simply helps pronunciation.

Ancient Greek for Everyone • Next class • Practice! Practice! Practice!

2013 edition Wilfred E. Major wmajor@lsu.edu