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Modifier Letter Reversed Comma
In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing ( grc, δασὺ πνεῦμα, dasỳ pneûma or ''daseîa''; la, spīritus asper) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, diphthong, or after rho. It remained in the polytonic orthography even after the Hellenistic period, when the sound disappeared from the Greek language. In the monotonic orthography of Modern Greek phonology, in use since 1982, it is not used at all. The absence of an sound is marked by the smooth breathing. The character, or those with similar shape such as , have also been used for a similar sound by Thomas Wade (and others) in the Wade–Giles system of romanization for Mandarin Chinese. Herbert Giles and others have used a left (opening) curved single quotation mark for the same purpose; the apostrophe, backtick, and visually similar characters are often seen as well. History The rough breathing comes from the left-hand half of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smooth Breathing
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, it marks the absence of the voiceless glottal fricative 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, 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 rhos. It did not occur on an initial upsilon, which always has rough breathing (thus the early name ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apostrophe
The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one or more letters, e.g. the contraction of "do not" to "don't". * The marking of possessive case of nouns (as in "the eagle's feathers", "in one month's time", "at your parents' ome). The word "apostrophe" comes ultimately from Greek (, 'he accent ofturning away or elision'), through Latin and French. For use in computer systems, Unicode has code points for three different forms of apostrophe. Usage in English Historical development The apostrophe was first used by Pietro Bembo in his edition of '' De Aetna'' (1496). It was introduced into English in the 16th century in imitation of French practice. French practice Introduced by Geoffroy Tory (1529), the apostrophe was used in place of a vowel letter to indicate elision ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 languages sometimes referred to as Standard Modern Greek. The end of the Medieval Greek period and the beginning of Modern Greek is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic features of the modern language arose centuries earlier, beginning around the fourth century AD. During most of the Modern Greek period, the language existed in a situation of diglossia, with regional spoken dialects existing side by side with learned, more archaic written forms, as with the vernacular and learned varieties ('' Dimotiki'' and ''Katharevousa'') that co-existed in Greece throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Varieties Varieties o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katharevousa
Katharevousa ( el, Καθαρεύουσα, , literally "purifying anguage) is a conservative form of the Modern Greek language conceived in the late 18th century as both a literary language and a compromise between Ancient Greek and the contemporary vernacular, Demotic Greek. Originally, it was widely used for both literary and official purposes, though sparingly in daily language. In the 20th century, it was increasingly adopted for official and formal purposes, until minister of education Georgios Rallis made Demotic Greek the official language of Greece in 1976, and in 1982 Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou abolished the polytonic system of writing for both Demotic and Katharevousa. Katharevousa was conceived by the intellectual and revolutionary leader Adamantios Korais (1748–1833). A graduate of the University of Montpellier, Korais spent most of his life as an expatriate in Paris. As a classical scholar credited with both laying the foundations of Modern Greek literature ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaism
In language, an archaism (from the grc, ἀρχαϊκός, ''archaïkós'', 'old-fashioned, antiquated', ultimately , ''archaîos'', 'from the beginning, ancient') is a word, a sense of a word, or a style of speech or writing that belongs to a historical epoch long beyond living memory, but that has survived in a few practical settings or affairs. Lexical archaisms are single archaic words or expressions used regularly in an affair (e.g. religion or law) or freely; literary archaism is the survival of archaic language in a traditional literary text such as a nursery rhyme or the deliberate use of a style characteristic of an earlier age—for example, in his 1960 novel '' The Sot-Weed Factor'', John Barth writes in an 18th-century style. Archaic words or expressions may have distinctive emotional connotations—some can be humorous (''forsooth''), some highly formal (''What say you?''), and some solemn (''With thee do I plight my troth''). A distinction between archaic and ob ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with their unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably most South Asian languages (including Indian) and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive. In dialects with aspiration, to feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say ''spin'' and then ''pin'' . One should either feel a puff of air or see a flicker of the candle flame with ''pin'' that one does not get with ''spin''. Transcription In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), aspirated consonants are written using the symbols for voiceless consonants followed by the aspiration modifier letter , a superscript form of the symbol for the voiceless glottal fricati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crasis
Crasis (; from the Greek , "mixing", "blending"); cf. , "I mix" ''wine with water''; '' kratēr'' "mixing-bowl" is related. is a type of contraction in which two vowels or diphthongs merge into one new vowel or diphthong, making one word out of two ( univerbation). Crasis occurs in many languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, and French; it was first described in Ancient Greek. In some cases, as in the French examples, crasis involves the grammaticalization of two individual lexical items into one. However, in other cases, like in the Greek examples, crasis is the orthographic representation of the encliticization and the vowel reduction of one grammatical form with another. The difference between them is that the Greek examples involve two grammatical words and a single phonological word, but the French examples involve a single phonological word and grammatical word. Greek In both Ancient and Modern Greek, crasis merges a small word and long word that are closely conne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diarrhea
Diarrhea, also spelled diarrhoea, is the condition of having at least three loose, liquid, or watery bowel movements each day. It often lasts for a few days and can result in dehydration due to fluid loss. Signs of dehydration often begin with loss of the normal stretchiness of the skin and irritable behaviour. This can progress to decreased urination, loss of skin color, a fast heart rate, and a decrease in responsiveness as it becomes more severe. Loose but non-watery stools in babies who are exclusively breastfed, however, are normal. The most common cause is an infection of the intestines due to either a virus, bacterium, or parasite—a condition also known as gastroenteritis. These infections are often acquired from food or water that has been contaminated by feces, or directly from another person who is infected. The three types of diarrhea are: short duration watery diarrhea, short duration bloody diarrhea, and persistent diarrhea (lasting more than two weeks ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 . Etymology The name of the letter was originally just "υ" (''y;'' also called ''hy'', hence " hyoid", meaning "shaped like the letter υ"), but the name changed to "υ ψιλόν" ''u psilon'' 'simple u' to distinguish it from οι, which had come to have the same pronunciation. Pronunciation In early Attic Greek (6th century BCE), it was pronounced (a close back rounded vowel like the English "long o͞o"). In Classical Greek, it was pronounced (a close front rounded vowel), at least until 1030. In Modern Greek, it is pronounced ; in the digraphs and , as or ; and in the digraph as . In ancient Greek, it occurred in both long and short versions, but Modern Greek does not have a length distinction. As an initial letter in Class ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 languages sometimes referred to as Standard Modern Greek. The end of the Medieval Greek period and the beginning of Modern Greek is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic features of the modern language arose centuries earlier, beginning around the fourth century AD. During most of the Modern Greek period, the language existed in a situation of diglossia, with regional spoken dialects existing side by side with learned, more archaic written forms, as with the vernacular and learned varieties ('' Dimotiki'' and ''Katharevousa'') that co-existed in Greece throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Varieties Varieties o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heta (letter)
Heta is a conventional name for the historical Greek alphabet letter Eta (Η) and several of its variants, when used in their original function of denoting the consonant . Overview The letter Η had been adopted by Greek from the Phoenician letter Heth () originally with this consonantal sound value, and ''Hēta'' was its original name. The Italic alphabets, and ultimately Latin, adopted the letter H from this Greek usage. However, Greek dialects progressively lost the sound from their phonological systems. In the Ionic dialects, where this loss of happened early, the name of the letter naturally changed to ''Ēta'', and the letter was subsequently turned from a consonant to a new use as a vowel, denoting the long half-open sound. In this function it later entered the classical orthography adopted across the whole of Greece. According to traditional accounts, the new vowel, ''Ēta'', was originally the innovation of the poet Simonides of Ceos (556-468 BC). In dialects that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaic Greek Alphabets
Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the archaic and early classical periods, until around 400 BC, when they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that is the standard today. All forms of the Greek alphabet were originally based on the shared inventory of the 22 symbols of the Phoenician alphabet, with the exception of the letter Samekh, whose Greek counterpart Xi () was used only in a sub-group of Greek alphabets, and with the common addition of Upsilon () for the vowel . The local, so-called ''epichoric'', alphabets differed in many ways: in the use of the consonant symbols , and ; in the use of the innovative long vowel letters ( and ), in the absence or presence of Η in its original consonant function (); in the use or non-use of certain archaic letters ( = , = , = ); and in many details of the individual shapes of each letter. The system now familiar as the standard 24-letter Greek alphabet was origina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
