Polytonic Greek uses many different diacritics in several categories. At the time of Ancient Greek, each of these marked a significant distinction in pronunciation. Monotonic orthography for Modern Greek uses only two diacritics, the
tonos and
diaeresis (sometimes used in combination) that have significance in pronunciation, similar to vowels in
Spanish. Initial is no longer pronounced, and so the rough and smooth breathings are no longer necessary. The unique pitch patterns of the three accents have disappeared, and only a
stress accent remains. The iota subscript was a diacritic invented to mark an
etymological vowel that was no longer pronounced, so it was dispensed with as well. The transliteration of Greek names follows Latin transliteration of Ancient Greek; modern transliteration is different, and does not distinguish many letters and digraphs that have merged by
iotacism.
Accents The accents (, singular: ) are placed on an accented vowel or on the last of the two vowels of a diphthong (ά, but αί) and indicated
pitch patterns in Ancient Greek. The precise nature of the patterns is not certain, but the general nature of each is known. The
acute accent ( or "high") '' marked high pitch on a short vowel or rising pitch on a long vowel. The acute is also used on the first of two (or occasionally three) successive vowels in Modern Greek to indicate that they are pronounced together as a stressed diphthong. The
grave accent ( or "low", modern
varia) '' marked normal or low pitch. The grave was originally written on all unaccented syllables. By the Byzantine period it was only used to replace the acute at the end of a word if another accented word follows immediately without
punctuation. The
circumflex () '' marked high and falling pitch within one syllable. In distinction to the angled Latin circumflex, the Greek circumflex is printed in the form of either a
tilde (), a circumflex (
â) or an
inverted breve (). It was also known as "high-low" or "acute-grave", and its original form () was from a combining of the acute and grave diacritics. Because of its compound nature, it only appeared on long vowels or diphthongs.
Breathings The breathings were written over a vowel or ρ. The
rough breathing (;
Latin )—''—indicates a voiceless glottal fricative () before the vowel in Ancient Greek. In Greek grammar, this is known as aspiration. This is different from
aspiration in
phonetics, which applies to consonants, not vowels. •
Rho (Ρρ) at the beginning of a word always takes rough breathing, probably marking
unvoiced pronunciation. In Latin, this was
transcribed as
rh. •
Upsilon (Υυ) at the beginning of a word always takes rough breathing. Thus, words from Greek begin with
hy-, never with
y-. The
smooth breathing (; Latin )—''—marked the absence of . A double rho in the middle of a word was originally written with smooth breathing on the first rho and rough breathing on the second one (). In Latin, this was transcribed as
rrh (
diarrhoea or
diarrhea).
Coronis The
coronis () marks a vowel contracted by
crasis. It was formerly an apostrophe placed after the contracted vowel, but is now placed over the vowel and is identical to the smooth breathing. Unlike the smooth breathing, it often occurs inside a word.
Subscript The
iota subscript ()—'ι'—is placed under the long vowels
ᾱ,
η, and
ω to mark the ancient long diphthongs
ᾱι,
ηι, and
ωι, in which the ι is no longer pronounced.
Adscript Next to a capital, the iota subscript is usually written as a lower-case letter (
Αι), in which case it is called
iota adscript ().
Diaeresis In Ancient Greek, the
diaeresis ( or ) – '''''' – appears on the letters and to show that a pair of vowel letters is pronounced separately, rather than as a
diphthong or as a
digraph for a simple vowel. In Modern Greek, the diaeresis usually indicates that two successive vowels are pronounced separately (as in , "I trick, mock"), but occasionally, it marks vowels that are pronounced together as an unstressed diphthong rather than as a
digraph (as in , "I boycott"). The distinction between two separate vowels and an unstressed diphthong is not always clear, although two separate vowels are far more common. The diaeresis can be combined with the acute, grave and circumflex but never with breathings, since the letter with the diaeresis cannot be the first vowel of the word. In Modern Greek, the combination of the acute and diaeresis indicates a stressed vowel after a hiatus.
Vowel length In textbooks and dictionaries of Ancient Greek, the
macron—
—and breve——are often used over , , and to indicate that it is long or short, respectively.
Nonstandard diacritics Caron In some modern non-standard orthographies of Greek dialects, such as
Cypriot Greek,
Griko, and
Tsakonian, a
caron (ˇ) may be used on some consonants to show a palatalized pronunciation. They are not encoded as precombined characters in Unicode, so they are typed by adding the to the Greek letter. Latin diacritics on Greek letters may not be supported by many fonts, and as a fall-back a caron may be replaced by an iota ⟨ι⟩ following the consonant. An example of a Greek letter with a combining caron is
τ̌, pronounced as .
Dot above A dot diacritic was used above some consonants and vowels in
Karamanli Turkish, which was written with the Greek alphabet.
Macron below Used in the letter
Εε in
Arvanitika for representing the
schwa. ==Position in letters==