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Greek has a system of five vowels /i, u, e, o, a/. The first two are close to the cardinal vowels [i, u]; the mid vowels /e, o/ are true-mid [e̞, o̞]; and the open /a/ is near-open central . [15] There is no phonemic length distinction, but vowels in stressed syllables are pronounced somewhat longer [iˑ, uˑ, eˑ, oˑ, aˑ] than in ...
Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in French secondary schools is based on Erasmian pronunciation, but it is modified to match the phonetics and even, in the case of αυ and ευ, the orthography of French. Vowel length distinction, geminate consonants and pitch accent are discarded completely, which matches the current phonology of Standard French.
The use of both vowels and consonants makes Greek the first alphabet in the narrow sense, [6] as distinguished from the abjads used in Semitic languages, which have letters only for consonants. [37] Early Greek alphabet on pottery in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Greek initially took over all of the 22 letters of Phoenician.
In Ancient Greek, the diaeresis (Greek: διαίρεσις or διαλυτικά, dialytiká, 'distinguishing') – ϊ – appears on the letters ι and υ to show that a pair of vowel letters is pronounced separately, rather than as a diphthong or as a digraph for a simple vowel. In Modern Greek, the diaeresis usually indicates that two ...
Later in Attic Greek, they were always pronounced together. In Greek synaeresis, two vowels merge to form a long version of one of the two vowels (e.g. e + a → ā), a diphthong with a different main vowel (e.g. a + ei → āi), or a new vowel intermediate between the originals (e.g. a + o → ō).
Greek (Modern Greek: Ελληνικά, romanized: Elliniká, pronounced; Ancient Greek: Ἑλληνική, romanized: Hellēnikḗ) is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent branch of it, native to Greece, Cyprus, Italy (in Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, Caucasus, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean.
A mora is a unit of vowel length; in Ancient Greek, short vowels have one mora and long vowels and diphthongs have two morae. Thus, a one-mora vowel could have accent on its one mora, and a two-mora vowel could have accent on either of its two morae. The position of accent was free, with certain limitations.
The Greek language underwent pronunciation changes during the Koine Greek period, from about 300 BC to 400 AD. At the beginning of the period, the pronunciation was close to Classical Greek, while at the end it was almost identical to Modern Greek. Vowel length distinctions are important for classical poetry and drama, but become less important ...