Greek characters on a Mac

Greek Learning Greek
1

I’m just beginning the study of ancient Greek, using Mastronarde as a text and trying to master the alphabet, pronunciation and accentuation. As I did with Latin over the last few years, I take detailed notes.

My question concerns how to render the characters with their accent marks, etc. Do I need a specifically “Greek” font like SPIonic? Is it possible – especially at my novice stage – to use a font like Georgia or Times?

I’m sure I’ll figure this out eventually, but I’d be grateful is someone could point me in the right direction and save me some time and frustration.

Thanks.

2

Hi!

What operating system are you using? If you have 10.4, you should already have Polytonic Greek installed, and it’s really easy. If not, I think you have to download something.

This page was helpful for me:

http://www.reed.edu/~tuckers/greek/

Be aware that all of this is based on Unicode, which is great, except that Microsoft Office X for the Mac won’t support it.

Let me know if you need more help!

3

Thanks for your response. I have the latest version of OSX, and I’ll take a look at the web site you’ve mentioned.

4

You might also try SophoKeys. I find it a more intuitive input system.

5

Thanks. I found the site, but couldn’t get to the download page. Probably something wrong at my end.

6

Now does one produce a “mora” – the small u-shaped accent above short vowels?

7

That will depend completely on what keyboard layout you’re using.

I have my internationalization menu set up with the “Show Character Palette” option. If your layout doesn’t have the breve, the combining breve is under “European Scripts > Diacritics.” You can grab it there.

I believe Greek with duration marks and accents isn’t yet standardized in Unicode. You may not get good results.