8
votes
Accepted
What are popular fonts for polytonic Greek?
I've long relied on the free Gentium typeface, which has a simply gorgeous, highly readable polytonic Greek font, with diacriticals that I've always found quite easy to distinguish, both on the ...
- 19.3k
8
votes
Accepted
Are there any minimal pairs distinguished by breathing?
Here's a list I was able to generate from the Perseus lemma list. This only looks at headwords, so it might exclude a few words that have similarly declined forms. Some of the words are also a bit non-...
- 39.5k
8
votes
Are there any minimal pairs distinguished by breathing?
The verb ἵημι is notoriously fertile ground for such minimal pairs, when compared with εἰμί and εἶμι, e.g.:
εἷναι aor. act. inf. / εἶναι pres. act. inf. of εἶμι
ἱέναι pres. act. inf. / ἰέναι pres. ...
- 30.9k
7
votes
Was η called "eta" or "heta"?
Since some time has gone by without anyone else supplying documentary evidence concerning the matter, I'll provide an answer based on what I think must have happened, but without any ancient ...
- 4,678
5
votes
Accepted
Is rough vs smooth breathing predictable?
I'm not sure whether you meant for it to go without saying, but here are some basic facts about the distribution of the rough and smooth breathing marks in polytonic Greek orthography. The rough ...
- 27.3k
5
votes
Are there any minimal pairs distinguished by breathing?
A few more:
ὄσσα "rumor"
ὅσσα "as much as" (poetic form of ὅσος as neuter nominative/accusative)
ἐνί "in" (poetic form of ἐν)
ἑνί "in one" (dative masculine and neuter of εἷς)
ἤ "or"
ἥ "which" (...
- 1,332
4
votes
Accepted
Was η called "eta" or "heta"?
LSJ:
This tells us that in Hippocrates, Plato, and elsewhere, the name of the letter is spelled with smooth breathing. (Of course the breathings would have been added by Alexandrian editors, so we ...
- 30.9k
3
votes
Was η called "eta" or "heta"?
Some more interesting examples:
Callias II ("The Athenian"), frag. The Tragedy of Letters:
<τὸ ἄλφα>, βῆτα, γάμμα, δέλτα, θεοῦ γὰρ εἶ, ζῆτ᾿, ἦτα, θῆτ᾿, ἰῶτα, κάππα, λάβδα, μῆ, νῦ, ξεῖ, τὸ οὖ, ...
- 11.6k
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