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The
orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...
of the modern Greek language was standardised in 1976 and simplified the diacritics in 1982. There are relatively few differences between the orthography of
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
and
Modern Greek Modern Greek (, or , ), 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 language sometimes referred to ...
. Some time prior to that, one early form of Greek, Mycenaean, was written in
Linear B Linear B is a syllabary, syllabic script that was used for writing in Mycenaean Greek, the earliest Attested language, attested form of the Greek language. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries, the earliest known examp ...
, although there was a lapse of several centuries (the Greek Dark Ages) between the time Mycenaean stopped being written and the time when the Greek alphabet came into use. Early Greek writing in the Greek alphabet was phonemic, different in each
dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...
. Since the adoption of the Ionic variant for
Attic An attic (sometimes referred to as a '' loft'') is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building. It is also known as a ''sky parlor'' or a garret. Because they fill the space between the ceiling of a building's t ...
in 403 BC, however, Greek orthography has been largely conservative and historical. Given the phonetic development of Greek, especially in the
Hellenistic period In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...
, certain modern vowel phonemes have multiple orthographic realizations: * can be spelled η, ι, υ, ει, οι, or υι (see Iotacism); * can be spelled either ε or αι; * can be spelled either ο or ω. This affects not only lexical items but also inflectional affixes, so correct orthography requires mastery of
formal grammar A formal grammar is a set of Terminal and nonterminal symbols, symbols and the Production (computer science), production rules for rewriting some of them into every possible string of a formal language over an Alphabet (formal languages), alphabe ...
, ''e.g.'' 'the good one ( fem. sing.)' ''vs.'' 'the good ones ( masc. pl.)'; 'I call' ''vs.'' 'good ( neut. sing.)'. Similarly, the orthography preserves ancient doubled consonants, though these are now pronounced the same as single consonants, except in Cypriot Greek. ;Examples ;Notes


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
diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, 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 ...
s 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 The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived History of the Roman Empire, the events that caused the ...
, it became customary to write the silent iota in digraphs as an iota subscript.


Hyphenation rules of Standard Modern Greek


Consonant splitting

According to KEME (1983), 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. Loanword hyphenation is governed by the same grammar rules as the rest of the
Standard Modern Greek The linguistic varieties of Modern Greek can be classified along two principal dimensions. First, there is a long tradition of sociolectal variation between the natural, popular spoken language on the one hand and archaizing, learned written forms ...
language.


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 ηύThe 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'' fívra'I invented'. 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.


Diacritics

Polytonic
spelling Spelling is a set of conventions for written language regarding how graphemes should correspond to the sounds of spoken language. Spelling is one of the elements of orthography, and highly standardized spelling is a prescriptive element. Spelli ...
uses 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 ''diacrit ...
s to represent aspects of the pronunciation of
ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
. Polytonic, along with
lowercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing system ...
letters, became standard in
Byzantine Greek Medieval Greek (also known as Middle Greek, Byzantine Greek, or Romaic; Greek: ) is the stage of the Greek language between the end of classical antiquity in the 5th–6th centuries and the end of the Middle Ages, conventionally dated to the F ...
, although the ancient distinctions had disappeared, replaced by a simple stress accent. The orthographies of modern Greek, both ''
katharevousa Katharevousa (, , 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 ...
'' and ''dhimotiki'', used the polytonic system until 1982, when monotonic spelling was introduced. In some conservative contexts, such as the Church, polytonic spellings are still used. Monotonic orthography, adopted in 1982, replaces the ancient diacritics with just two: the
acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...
(''tónos'', e.g. ), used to mark the stressed syllable in polysyllabic words, and the diaeresis (''dialytiká'', e.g. ), which indicates that the vowel is not part of a digraph.


Punctuation


In Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
was written as without spacing or
interpunct An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot, centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in Classical Latin. ( Word-separating spaces did not appe ...
s. Over time, a variety of symbols appeared. A system of dots credited to
Aristophanes of Byzantium __NOTOC__ Aristophanes of Byzantium ( ; Byzantium – Alexandria BC) was a Hellenistic Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as ...
was developed in the 3rd century BC: a low dot marked an occasion for a short breath after a short phrase, a middot marked an occasion for a longer breath after a longer passage, and a high dot marked a full stop at the end of a completed thought. Other writers employed two dot punctuation to mark the ends of sentences or changing speakers. Less often, arrangements of three , four , and five dots appeared. Such interline punctuation could be noted or replaced by a variety of , long marks which trailed between lines of text; these might also mark changes of speakers. Blank lines or various marked the ends of sections. (A separate was used to mark contractions; its early forms looked like an apostrophe between the two elided words.) Over time, the main punctuation came to be a
full stop The full stop ( Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point is a punctuation mark used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation). A ...
marked by a single dot at varying heights, a partial stop marked by various forms of
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical; others give it the appearance of a miniature fille ...
s, and the and papyrological hyphen . These served to show whether an ambiguous series of letters should be read as (respectively) a pair of words or as a single word. Later Aristarchus of Samothrace modified this system (see:
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 ...
).


In printing

Following the advent of printing, most Greek punctuation was gradually standardized with French: the was fully unified with the comma, the
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical; others give it the appearance of a miniature fille ...
serves as the
decimal point FIle:Decimal separators.svg, alt=Four types of separating decimals: a) 1,234.56. b) 1.234,56. c) 1'234,56. d) ١٬٢٣٤٫٥٦., Both a comma and a full stop (or period) are generally accepted decimal separators for international use. The apost ...
(and in this use is called the ) and it also functions as a
silent letter In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation. In linguistics, a silent letter is often symbolised with a null sign , which resembles the ...
in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing (, "whatever") from (, "that"). The
full stop The full stop ( Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point is a punctuation mark used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation). A ...
serves as the
thousands separator alt=Four types of separating decimals: a) 1,234.56. b) 1.234,56. c) 1'234,56. d) ١٬٢٣٤٫٥٦., Both a full_stop.html" ;"title="comma and a full stop">comma and a full stop (or period) are generally accepted decimal separators for interna ...
, and guillemets ( ''isagoyika'') and em-length quotation dashes ( ''pavla'') typically serve to indicate direct speech. When quotations are nested, double apostrophes and turned commas are used for the embedded quotation or word: . Right-pointing double guillemets ( ''omiomatiká'') serve as a
ditto mark The ditto mark is a shorthand sign, used mostly in hand-written text, indicating that the words or figures above it are to be repeated. The mark is made using "a pair of apostrophes"; "a pair of marks used underneath a word"; the symbol (quot ...
. The principal difference is the Greek question mark , which developed a shape so similar to the
Latinate Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion o ...
semicolon The semicolon (or semi-colon) is a symbol commonly used as orthographic punctuation. In the English language, a semicolon is most commonly used to link (in a single sentence) two independent clauses that are closely related in thought, such as ...
that
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
decomposes its separate code point identically. The middot serves as the Greek semicolon, but is so uncommon that it has often been left off of Greek keyboards. One of the few places where exists is on the Microsoft Windows Polytonic Greek keyboard (having the driver name KBDHEPT.DLL). The
exclamation mark The exclamation mark (also known as exclamation point in American English) is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or to show wikt:emphasis, emphasis. The exclamation mark often marks ...
( ''thavmastikó'') is mostly used as in English. The
hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (en dash , em dash and others), which are wider, or with t ...
, the
brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...
, the colon, the
ellipsis The ellipsis (, plural ellipses; from , , ), rendered , alternatively described as suspension points/dots, points/periods of ellipsis, or ellipsis points, or colloquially, dot-dot-dot,. According to Toner it is difficult to establish when t ...
and the slash are also in use. The slash has the additional function of forming common abbreviations like for 'brothers'. The ligature kai (ϗ) is sometimes used for the same function as the English
ampersand The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram , representing the grammatical conjunction, conjunction "and". It originated as a typographic ligature, ligature of the letters of the word (Latin for "and"). Etymology Tradi ...
.


In Greek numerals

There are special rules for how to write
Greek numerals Greek numerals, also known as Ionic, Ionian, Milesian, or Alexandrian numerals, is a numeral system, system of writing numbers using the letters of the Greek alphabet. In modern Greece, they are still used for ordinal number (linguistics), ordi ...
. In
modern Greek Modern Greek (, or , ), 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 language sometimes referred to ...
, a number of changes have been made. Instead of extending an
overline An overline, overscore, or overbar, is a typographical feature of a horizontal and vertical, horizontal line drawn immediately above the text. In old mathematical notation, an overline was called a ''vinculum (symbol), vinculum'', a notation fo ...
over an entire number (like ), a (, lit. "hornlike projection") is placed to its upper right, a development of the short marks formerly used for single numbers and fractions. The modern is a symbol (ʹ) similar to the
acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...
(´), but has its own
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
character, encoded as U+0374.
Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon (; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip ...
's father
Philip II of Macedon Philip II of Macedon (; 382 BC – October 336 BC) was the king (''basileus'') of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedonia from 359 BC until his death in 336 BC. He was a member of the Argead dynasty, founders of the ...
is thus known as in modern Greek. A lower left (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 Ancient Greek phonology is the reconstructed phonology or pronunciation of Ancient Greek. This article mostly deals with the pronunciation of the standard Attic dialect of the fifth century BC, used by Plato and other Classical Greek writers ...
* Greek braille *
Obelism Obelism is the practice of annotating manuscripts with marks set in the margins. Modern obelisms are used by editors when proofreading a manuscript or typescript. Examples are "stet" (which is Latin for "Let it stand", used in this context to m ...
* Greek grammar * Greek language question * Greek ligatures * Iota subscript *
Katharevousa Katharevousa (, , 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 ...
* Modern Greek phonology * Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching *
Romanization of Greek Romanization of Greek is the transliteration ( letter-mapping) or transcription (sound-mapping) of text from the Greek alphabet into the Latin alphabet. History The conventions for writing and romanizing Ancient Greek and Modern Greek diffe ...


References


Sources

* * * *


External links


Greek Unicode Issues
by Nick Nicholas

by Harry Foundalis {{DEFAULTSORT:Greek Orthography
Orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...
Orthographies by language Greek alphabet Ancient Greek punctuation