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The orthography of the Greek language ultimately has its roots in the adoption of the Greek alphabet in the 9th century BC. Some time prior to that, one early form of Greek, Mycenaean, was written in Linear B, 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.
For example, the two letters wāw and yōdh stood for both the approximant consonants [w] and [j], and the long vowels [u] and [i] in Phoenician. By this point in time, Greek had lost its [j] sound, so Phoenician yōdh was used only for its vocalic value, becoming the Greek vowel letter iota [i].
Greek also introduced three new consonant letters for its aspirated plosive sounds and consonant clusters: Φ for /pʰ/, Χ for /kʰ/ and Ψ for /ps/. In western Greek variants, Χ was instead used for /ks/ and Ψ for /kʰ/. The origin of these letters is a matter of some debate.
Since in Modern Greek the pitch accent has been replaced by a dynamic accent (stress), and /h/ was lost, most polytonic diacritics have no phonetic significance, and merely reveal the underlying Ancient Greek etymology. Monotonic orthography (from Ancient Greek μόνος (mónos) 'single' and τόνος (tónos) 'accent') is the standard ...
Heterogeneous: Differing in kind; having unlike qualities; possessed of different characteristics; differing in origin [see gen] Homo: Same: Homogenous: Having a resemblance in structure, due to descent from a common progenitor with subsequent modification [see gen] Iso: Equal: Isography: Imitation of another's handwriting [see graph] Latry Worship
The stress of borrowings via Latin generally follows the traditional English pronunciation of Latin, which depends on the syllable weight rules in Latin and ignores Greek stress. For example, in Greek, both ὑπόθεσις (hypothesis) and ἐξήγησις (exegesis) are accented on the antepenult, and indeed the penult has a long vowel in ...
Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, [18] or possibly earlier. [19] The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, [20] making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language. [21]
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, and touches on other dialects spoken at the same time or earlier.