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The Ancient Greek accent is believed to have been a melodic or pitch accent.. In Ancient Greek, one of the final three syllables of each word carries an accent. Each syllable contains a vowel with one or two vocalic morae, and one mora in a word is accented; the accented mora is pronounced at a higher pitch than other morae.
The accents (Ancient Greek: τόνοι, romanized: tónoi, singular: τόνος, tónos) are placed on an accented vowel or on the last of the two vowels of a diphthong (ά, but αί) and indicated pitch patterns in Ancient Greek. The precise nature of the patterns is not certain, but the general nature of each is known.
Ancient Greek had a pitch accent, unlike the stress accent of Modern Greek and English. One mora of a word was accented with high pitch. A mora is a unit of vowel length; in Ancient Greek, short vowels have one mora and long vowels and diphthongs have two morae.
For the purpose of determining accent in Ancient Greek, short vowels have one mora, and long vowels and diphthongs have two morae. Thus long ē (eta: η) can be understood as a sequence of two short vowels: ee. [5] Ancient Greek pitch accent is placed on only one mora in a word.
Written accents, marking the tonic syllables of Greek words, appear to have been invented in the 3rd century BC, but only became commonly used in the 2nd century AD. The acute accent ( ´ ; known as ὀξεῖα (oxeîa) in Greek) is used on long or short vowels on any of the last three syllables of a word. However, if the last vowel of the ...
Ancient Greek in Italy is always [citation needed] taught in the Erasmian pronunciation. However, Italian speakers find it hard to reproduce the pitch-based Ancient Greek accent accurately so the circumflex and acute accents are not distinguished. Poetry is read using metric conventions that stress the long syllables.
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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 characters. See Ancient Greek phonology and Modern Greek phonology for a more thorough look at their sounds.