What are the differences between the Ancient and Modern Greek alphabets? Why are separate fonts required for Ancient and Modern Greek? Are Ancient Greek texts only printed using capital letters? Is only Ancient Greek considered polytonic? What exactly does polytonic mean?
Sorry for all the questions,
Thanks in advance for your answer,
-Jonathan.
Modern Greek uses a single accent mark, and doesn’t bother with the breathing marks. This makes modern Greek easier to typeset, because in polytonic (‘many accent (marks)’) you might have a breathing, an accent and an iota subscript all hanging off the same letter. This is tricky to set.
Ancient Latin texts are usually typeset using modern fonts. Ancient Greek texts are also set with modern fonts. Originally both only used what we’d consider upper case lettering, without word spacing or much punctuation.
Between the alphabets there aren’t too many diferences. beta in ancient is vita in modern and pronounced like a ‘v’ rather than a ‘b’. Before an e or i a gamma sounds like a ‘y’ as in yes in modern but not in ancient, delta in ancient is ‘d’ whereas in modern it is ‘th’ as in ‘then’ ita in modern is like the ‘i’ in maria whereas in ancient it is like ‘ai’ as in ‘air’ iota in ancient is ‘i’ whereas in modern it is ‘y’ before a or o. upsilon in ancient is a ‘u’ whereas in modern it is another ‘i’ as in maria. Ao haveing said that there are actually quite a few differences. I’m sorry if that isn’t very clear, I can’t figure out how to do greek alphabet on the computer. However there is no difference in the way you write the letters between ancient and modern.
Ancient Greek texts use both lower case and capital letters. infact they only use capitals for names and places.
Mic
So the only difference really between printed Ancient and Modern Greek texts in terms of alphabet is the accents and extra breathing/stress marks?
The Greek officially dropped the grave and the circumflex quite recently (around 1978 I think.)
I wish they hadn’t…
And why is that?
A look at his name suggests that he knows it all already.
He should think of all those poor young Greek students who had to remember which accent goes where. No small feat when the pronunciation has changed but the accents (or breathing marks) haven’t.
Quite naturally, the ancient Greek alphabet was not standadized. Some versions included more letters, digamma and koppa being the most notable.
See here:
Non-Attic letters
Other non-Attic letters
The ancient Greek alphabet
Earlier Greek alphabet symbols
Well, I am “a poor Greek student”. In my childhood, I had to learn all polytonic accents and breathing marks in order to read and write my language properly – and I really ENJOYED IT. It was so beautiful. But one unhappy day I learned from our teacher that polytonic writing was replaced by monotonic. Believe it or not, but I cried 
By the way, many people (including me) still use the polytonic writing and even print polytonic books, journals, newspapers, and magazines.
Interesting, thanks for the information,
-Jonathan.
Well, I tend to be more revolutionary, and find all those marks nonesense and completely useless 
I often don’t use even the simple monotonic system, none signs are better 
Once I thought the same about spelling and that they should start simplifying all those “i” diphthongs, until I’ve been told that they serve a specific use. In the written language is quite useful to distinguish between -η and -οι (both pronounced as “i”), or even betwen -η- and -υ- in the middle of words. Also the diffferent spellings serve to get a sense of all those words that otherwise sound same, but are written differently.
when i first started teaching myself modern greek several years ago (which i have largely forgotten, unfortunately), i used an old book of my dad’s that used the polytonic accent marks and breath marks. i liked that. i like using them.
i wasn’t comfortable using other, perhaps better, books simply because those were gone. it didn’t feel right.
whenever i write (what little i remember), i still use them.
Well, I am “a poor Greek student”. In my childhood, I had to learn all polytonic accents and breathing marks in order to read and write my language properly – and I really ENJOYED IT. It was so beautiful. But one unhappy day I learned from our teacher that polytonic writing was replaced by monotonic. Believe it or not, but I cried
By the way, many people (including me) still use the polytonic writing and even print polytonic books, journals, newspapers, and magazines.[/quote]
Very interesting, I think I should learn modern greek, it reallly a beautiful language.
Since I am wrinting a thesis on Roman law, I need to write some Greek in the “polytonic way”. No a big problem, I use the LaTeX inviroment but I could use just the Spionic fonts for my wordprocessor OpenOffice. Whatever system you choose, typesetting polytonic is a bit complicated. Now the question: how could people type it with the old typewriters, before the the computer age? How many keys has a greek typewriter? Just curious.
An observation and a query: I’ve noticed that the founts used to print Greek in Italy are significantly different in shape to those used in England - at least in more traditional printing. Which founts are used in Greek printing in Greece itself? Or is everything being Microsoftized - which is to say Anglo-Saxonized- through Windows? I mean: are Arial and Times Roman ousting indigenous forms? And what do Greeks think of it? Do Times Roman Greek and Arial Greek strike Greek readers as aesthetically pleasing or ugly, comfortable or strange?
I’ve never been to Greece but I’ve seen Greek newspapers and I’ve seen snapshots of Greek signs, whether roadsigns, shops, or whatever.
The Greeks themselves already seem to happily avail themselves of every possible kind of font face style, just as we do with the Roman alphabet in the West. “Arial” (sans-serif) style faces are by far the most common in the signs I’ve seen pictures of, just as they are in countries that use the Roman alphabet.
I have noticed that classical Greek texts printed Western European countries do tend more towards very elaborate italic faces: the alternate, squiggly shape of theta for instance seems more popular, as is the fancy kappa shaped almost like an italic Roman x. And the tilde shape for the circumflex appears to be much more popular than the bow-shape. I think, however, that this is just style and tradition in those (Western European) countries, and I don’t think it has much of anything to do with how modern Greeks use their own alphabet.
Books printed in the US and UK tend overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) to the Porson style, either italic or “roman”: the Porson “look” is, however, not widely available in fonts for Windows: at least not in free fonts. So in fact, I think that the Microsoft “look” has little or nothing to do with the look of most US and UK Classical Greek printed texts.
(One other thing: I think there may even be differences in style between different Western European countries: the Greek faces I have seen used in Classical Greek texts printed in France, for instance, have been totally different from those I’ve seen in German texts, with a very bizarre-looking beta. I haven’t seen that many examples of either, though, so it’s too small of a sample to draw any real conclusions from.)
Well, that’s just what I mean. Shouldn’t we be following the modern Greek aesthetic rather than following a diverse number of fossilized local traditions? After all, the founts we use are based on demotic rather than classical traditions, and unless someone’s about to propose a sudden shift to an uncial fount - the Coptic fount might be regarded as the nearest we have to a classical fount - there seems no justification for not allowing the Greeks to lead in contemporary fount design, and for us classicists to follow. What do people think?
That’s not quite true. The fonts we use today in the West are not demotic, but Byzantine. It is probably not appropriate to speak of Demotic Greek before the 19th century.
Greek learning reappeared in the West at about the same time as the invention of printing. Early Greek text editions (Aldi’s, say) matched early Latin printing in following quite closely scribal practice of the day, especially in the use of ligatures and abbreviations, but also in alternate letter forms at different places in a word. Over time Western printing of Latin moved to full forms of words, restricted ligatures and many fewer abbreviations, and classical publishing followed.
and unless someone’s about to propose a sudden shift to an uncial fount - the Coptic fount might be regarded as the nearest we have to a classical fount - there seems no justification for not allowing the Greeks to lead in contemporary fount design, and for us classicists to follow. What do people think?
When I browse through the local University library in search of classical texts I regularly run across scholarship and editions in Modern Greek. I’ve never noticed any wild differences between the fonts in Athens and the fonts used in London. And for a while at Aoidoi.org I used the Kerkis font (example images here) which is intended for modern use. It is more archaizing - different theta and beta based on location in word - than the fonts used for classics printing in the West. So I’m not sure there’s really a serious disconnect between how the Cambridge green and yellows print Greek and what you’re likely to find in a Greek bookstore. Differences, sure, but not a vast gulf.
As for “us classicists” following contemporary practice, I’m not sure how likely that is given how few houses actually print Greek. The font contributes to each house’s “look and feel” and I don’t imagine, say, Oxford, going to switch just to keep up. People expect OCTs to look a particular way.
True. Though you’ve taken my point that they’re not Classical models.
Well, not quite right - the full Byzantine model was adopted just at the point when Latin printing had moved to clear models - you mention the Aldine press, and that’s the prime example. Full simplification didn’t occur place until the end of the eighteenth and start of the ninteenth centuries, just about the time that Greek national awareness was developing (not knowing the history of printing in Greece, I’ve no idea whether there was any Greek input into the simplification of type - does anyone know? But I think that there was publishing throughought the eighteenth century in Greek in Greece, despite the Ottoman ban on printing by Muslims).
That is truer in the Anglo-Saxon world than elsewhere in Europe where the classical tradition hasn’t been - as it has in Britian, at least - almost wiped out, at least in pre-Tertiary education. It certainly isn’t true in Italy, where you can buy Greek classics - admittedly with facing-page translations - in almost any bookshop.
No, I don’t imagine so either. Indeed, the houses seem to positively relish going their own way - I’m thinking of texts published with lunate sigma (or am I mistaken? Is it used for publishing Modern Greek too?). True, there may be no ‘serious disconnect’ right now, but I’m not sure it’ll stay that way. And to me it seems arrogant. But where harmonization seems to be taking place is in the workplace, and to me it seems sad that the founts most widely used - on a day-to-day basis because they’re on every computer - seem to be those designed in the West, designed to harmonize with Arial and Times Roman Latin faces rather than because they’re what Greeks actually want. A prime example of Microsoftization.
Ultimately, I’m arguing from ignorance here, though, to try and discover what others think on the issue. The answer seems to be that they don’t think on the issue! Many thanks for your illuminating reply.