Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
The Ancient Greek pronunciation shown here is a reconstruction of the Attic dialect in the 5th century BC. For other Ancient Greek dialects, such as Doric, Aeolic, or Koine Greek, please use |generic=yes. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see Template:IPA and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA ...
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. [2] [3] It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, [4] and is the earliest known alphabetic script to have developed distinct letters for consonants as well as vowels. [5]
Greek has palatals [c, ɟ, ç, ʝ] which are allophones of the velar consonants /k, ɡ, x, ɣ/ before the front vowels /e, i/. The velars also merge with a following nonsyllabic /i/ to the corresponding palatal before the vowels /a, o, u/ , e.g. χιόνι [ˈçoni] (= /ˈxi̯oni/ ) 'snow', thus producing a surface contrast between palatal and ...
The ι is not pronounced in long-element ι diphthongs, which reflects the pronunciation of Biblical and later Greek (see iota subscript). As for long-element υ diphthongs, common Greek methods or grammars in France appear to ignore them in their descriptions of the pronunciation of Ancient Greek. The values for consonants are generally correct.
The American Library Association and Library of Congress romanization scheme employs its "Ancient or Medieval Greek" system for all works and authors up to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, [3] although Byzantine Greek was pronounced distinctly and some have considered "Modern" Greek to have begun as early as the 12th century.
In some modern non-standard orthographies of Greek dialects, such as Cypriot Greek, Griko, and Tsakonian, a caron (ˇ) may be used on some consonants to show a palatalized pronunciation. [ 11 ] [ 12 ] They are not encoded as precombined characters in Unicode, so they are typed by adding the U+030C ̌ COMBINING CARON to the Greek letter.
Mycenaean Greek is the most ancient attested form of the Greek language, on the Greek mainland and Crete in Mycenaean Greece (16th to 12th centuries BC), before the hypothesised Dorian invasion, often cited as the terminus ad quem for the introduction of the Greek language to Greece.