Polytonic Greek script Details, Meaning Polytonic Greek script Article and Explanation Guide

Polytonic Greek script Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

Polytonic Greek script is the standard way of writing ancient Greek and Kathareuousa, and a deprecated way of writing Dhimotiki, the standard form of the modern Greek language.

Polytonic Greek utilizes a set of five diacritic marks:

The accents (tónoi, τόνοι):
- Okseía (οξεία), the acute accent, written over a stressed vowel of a word,
- Bareía (βαρεία), the grave accent, written over a stressed vowel of a word,
- Perispoméni (περισπωμένη), originally a circumflex, but now written as a tilde, macron, or inverted breve.
The spirits:
- Psilí (ψιλή), or smooth breathing (spiritus lenis), written over the first letter of some of the words starting with a vowel,
- Daseía (δασεία), or rough breathing (spiritus asper), written over the first letter of the words starting with a vowel that don't take a psilí, always if this letter is upsilon, and words starting with the consonant rho (ρ).

In modern Greek, the pronunciation of okseía, bareía and perispoméni is identical, whereas psilí and daseía are voiceless. This has led to the creation of simpler mode of writing which has eventually become the standard in modern Greek, Monotonic, which only uses the okseía.

Table of contents

1 History
2 Sample Greek text

2.1 Polytonic
2.2 Monotonic

3 External links