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| ◌̔ | |
|---|---|
Rough breathing | |
| U+0314 ̔COMBINING REVERSED COMMA ABOVE | |
| See also | |
| Smooth breathing |
In thepolytonic orthography ofAncient Greek, therough breathing (Ancient Greek:δασὺ πνεῦμα,romanized: dasỳ pneûma orδασεῖαdaseîa;Latin:spiritus asper) character is adiacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an/h/ sound before avowel,diphthong, or afterrho. It remained in the polytonic orthography even after theHellenistic period, when the sound disappeared from the Greek language. In themonotonic orthography ofModern Greek phonology, in use since 1982, it is not used at all.
The absence of an/h/ sound is marked by thesmooth breathing.
The character, or those with similar shape such asU+02BB ʻMODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA, have also been used for a similar sound byThomas Wade (and others) in theWade–Giles system ofromanization forMandarin Chinese.Herbert Giles and others have used a left (opening) curved singlequotation mark for the same purpose; theapostrophe,backtick, and visually similar characters are often seen as well.
The rough breathing comes from the left-hand half of the letter H.[1] In somearchaic Greek alphabets, the letter was used for[h] (Heta), and this usage survives in the Latin letterH. In other dialects, it was used for the vowel[ɛː] (Eta), and this usage survives in the modern system of writingAncient Greek, and inModern Greek.
The rough breathing ( ̔) is placed over an initial vowel, or over the second vowel of an initial diphthong.
Anupsilon[2] orrho[3] at the beginning of a word always takes a rough breathing.
In some writing conventions, the rough breathing is written on the second of two rhos in the middle of a word.[3] This is transliterated asrrh in Latin.
Incrasis (contraction of two words), when the second word has a rough breathing, the contracted vowel does not take a rough breathing. Instead, the consonant before the contracted vowel changes to theaspirated equivalent (i.e., π → φ, τ → θ, κ → χ),[4] if possible, and the contracted vowel takes theapostrophe orcoronis (identical to thesmooth breathing).
Under thearchaizing influence ofKatharevousa, this change has been preserved inmodern Greekneologisms coined on the basis of ancient words, e.g. πρωθυπουργός ('prime minister'), fromπρῶτος ('first') andὑπουργός ('minister'), where the latter was originally aspirated.
In the ancient Laconian dialect, medial intervocalicσ would become a rough breathing:ἐνῑ́κᾱἑ for Atticἐνῑ́κησε.[5]
InUnicode, thecode point assigned to the rough breathing isU+0314 ̔ COMBINING REVERSED COMMA ABOVE. It is intended to be used in all alphabetic scripts (including Greek and Latin).
It was also used in the original Latin transcription of Armenian for example withU+0074 tLATIN SMALL LETTER T int̔.
The pair of space + combining rough breathing isU+02BD ◌ʽMODIFIER LETTER REVERSED COMMA. It may bind typographically with the letter encodedbefore it to its left, to create ligatures for example withU+0074 tLATIN SMALL LETTER T intʽ, and it is used for the modern Latin transcription ofArmenian (which no longer uses the combining version).
It is also encoded for compatibility asU+1FFE ◌῾GREEK DASIA mostly for usage in the Greek script, where it may be usedbefore Greek capital letters to its right and aligned differently, e.g. withU+0391 ῾ΑGREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA, where the generic space+combiningdasia should be usedafter the letter it modifies to its left (the space is inserted so that the dasia will be to the left instead of above that letter). Basically, U+1FFE was encoded for full roundtrip compatibility with legacy 8-bit encodings of the Greek script in documents where dasia was encoded before the Greek capital letter it modifies (it is then not appropriate for transliterating Armenian and Semitic scripts to the Latin script).
There is a polytonic Greek code range in Unicode, covering precomposite versions (i.e. breathing mark + vowel or rho, or vowel with pitch accent and/or iota subscript): Ἁ ἁ, Ἇ ἇ, ᾏ ᾇ, ᾉ ᾁ, Ἑ ἑ, Ἡ ἡ, Ἧ ἧ, ᾟ ᾗ, ᾙ ᾑ, Ἱ ἱ, Ἷ ἷ, Ὁ ὁ, Ῥ ῥ, Ὑ ὑ, Ὗ ὗ, Ὡ ὡ, Ὧ ὧ, ᾯ ᾧ, and ᾩ ᾡ.
The rough breathing was also used in theearly Cyrillic alphabet when writing theOld Church Slavonic language. In this context it is encoded as UnicodeU+0485 ҅COMBINING CYRILLIC DASIA PNEUMATA
In Latin transcription ofSemitic languages, especiallyArabic andHebrew, eitherU+02BD ʽMODIFIER LETTER REVERSED COMMA ora symbol similar to it,U+02BF ◌ʿMODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING, is used to represent the letterayin. This left half ring may also be used for the Latin transcription ofArmenian (though the Armenian aspiration is phonetically nearer to the Greekdasia than the Semiticayin).
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| InEarly Cyrillic |
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| Marks used as diacritics |
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| Non-diacritic uses | |
| InUnicode |
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