Download MORE About Greek Accents

MORE About Greek Accents
and other “weird stuff”
General Principles
An acute accent can remain on the
antepenult ONLY if the ultima is short;
otherwise it MUST move to the penult.
If the penult is naturally long and the ultima
has a short vowel or ends in -ai or -oi, then
the accent will be a circumflex.
Accents are RECESSIVE (go as far to the
left in the word as possible)
Accents are PERSISTENT– they tend to
remain in the same location for most words
Acute Behavior
An acute on the ultima of a word WILL
CHANGE to a grave if followed by another
word.
makr£ (by itself)
Makr¦ ¹ ÐdÒj (followed by a word)
Contraction
Attic Greek disliked two vowel sounds
“rubbing” against each other in two
syllables
CONTRACTION – removes one of the
vowels by combining it with the other
tim£w  timî
The resulting vowel is a LONG vowel
(because it has 2 vowels inside it)
Crasis
Crasis (“mingling”) results from cramming
one word that ends in a vowel into the
following word if it begins with a vowel
T¦ ¥lla  t¥lla
p, t, and k before an aspirated word turn into
their aspirated forms f, q, and c
Elision
Elision is the dropping of a short vowel at
the end of a word if the following word
begins with a vowel
¢ll¦ ¥ge  ¢ll’ ¥ge
Note that an apostrophe ’ marks the missing
vowel