MORE About Greek Accents and other “weird stuff”

1. MORE About Greek Accentsand other “weird stuff”

2. General Principles • An acute accent can remain on the antepenult ONLY if the ultima is short; otherwise it MUST move to the penult. • If the penult is naturally long and the ultima has a short vowel or ends in -ai or -oi, then the accent will be a circumflex. • Accents are RECESSIVE (go as far to the left in the word as possible) • Accents are PERSISTENT– they tend to remain in the same location for most words

3. Acute Behavior • An acute on the ultima of a word WILL CHANGE to a grave if followed by another word. • makr£ (by itself) • Makr¦ ¹ ÐdÒj (followed by a word)

4. Contraction • Attic Greek disliked two vowel sounds “rubbing” against each other in two syllables • CONTRACTION – removes one of the vowels by combining it with the other • tim£w  timî • The resulting vowel is a LONG vowel (because it has 2 vowels inside it)

5. Crasis • Crasis (“mingling”) results from cramming one word that ends in a vowel into the following word if it begins with a vowel • T¦ ¥lla  t¥lla • p, t, and k before an aspirated word turn into their aspirated forms f, q, and c

6. Elision • Elision is the dropping of a short vowel at the end of a word if the following word begins with a vowel • ¢ll¦ ¥ge  ¢ll’¥ge • Note that an apostrophe ’ marks the missing vowel