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In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing (Ancient Greek: δασὺ πνεῦμα, romanized: dasỳ pneûma or δασεῖα daseîa; Latin: spiritus asper) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an /h/ sound before a vowel, diphthong, or after rho.
rough breathing (῾) indicates the presence of the /h/ sound before a letter; smooth breathing (᾿) indicates the absence of /h/. Since in Modern Greek the pitch accent has been replaced by a dynamic accent (stress), and /h/ was lost, most polytonic diacritics have no phonetic significance, and merely reveal the underlying Ancient Greek ...
Why, when all vowel letters start with a smooth breathing, and only "υ" has a rough breathing by nature, does "ἧτα" [heta] have the rough breathing? – Because formerly Η was the sign of the rough breathing.
At the beginning of a word, the letters υ and ρ always have the rough breathing. The smooth breathing ( ᾿ ; known as ψῑλὸν πνεῦμα (psilòn pneûma) or ψῑλή (psilē) in Greek, spīritus lēnis in Latin) marks the absence of the /h/ sound. It is used on any word which starts with a vowel, e.g. ἐγώ (egṓ) "I".
In addition to the accent marks, every word-initial vowel must carry either of two so-called "breathing marks": the rough breathing (ἁ), marking an /h/ sound at the beginning of a word, or the smooth breathing (ἀ), marking its absence. The letter rho (ρ), although not a vowel, also carries rough breathing in a word-initial position.
When combined with a rough or smooth breathing, the circumflex goes on top of the breathing, while the acute or grave is written to the right of the breathing, as in the above examples. When an accent is combined with a diaeresis mark, as in νηΐ nēḯ, the accent is written on top.
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Dasia also refers to dasia pneumata, plural of dasy pneuma or rough breathing, a diacritic mark used in the Polytonic Greek and Early Cyrillic alphabets Topics referred to by the same term This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Dasia .