[Biblical-languages] Greek monotonic and polytonic characters

Peter Kirk peterkirk at qaya.org
Wed Nov 3 05:51:36 EST 2004


On 03/11/2004 02:09, Joseph Weaks wrote:

> On Nov 2, 2004, at 6:56 PM, Norbert Rennert wrote:
>
>> There seems to be some overlap in the Greek unicode characters. 16 
>> characters in the monotonic range (0370-03FF) are also represented in 
>> the polytonic range (1F00-1FFF). These characters are mainly 
>> characters with the acute accent. My question is which ones are the 
>> right ones to use when writing koine Greek? My gut feeling is to use 
>> only the polytonic range characters when they have accents. But my 
>> Greek Unicode keyboard for Tavultesoft Keyman puts in the monotonic 
>> characters instead of the polytonic ones.
>>  Any advice on this would be appreciated.
>
>
> Norbert,
> It is a good observation--one I have made myself. I'm not sure you can 
> get a "supposed to" from any source. But, I think what you describe as 
> your gut feeling is right on. The accented vowels in the first Greek 
> range are monotonic. Using the acute vowels in the polytonic range 
> seems more consistent to me. It is what I do, as do other conversion 
> systems I've noted.
>
Actually, there is an official "supposed to" hidden in the Unicode 
specifications, see the chart 
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F00.pdf. The Greek vowels with 
oxia/acute in the Greek Extended block (1F71, 1F73, 1F75, 1F77, 1F79, 
1F7B, 1F7D) all have canonical decompositions to the same vowels with 
tonos in the basic Greek block (03AC, 03AD, 03AE, 03AF, 03CC, 03CD, 
03CE), and the same with the capital versions. Similarly for example 
1FB4 GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA AND YPOGEGRAMMENI decomposes to 
03AC and an iota subscript, not 1F71 and an iota subscript. The clear 
implication of this is that the preferred forms are the ones in the 
basic Greek block, and the alternatives in the Extended Greek block 
should not be used. Indeed, if the latter are used they are likely to be 
transformed into the former by normalisation processes. So Norbert's 
keyboard is doing the right thing.

See also 
http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/unicode_gkbkgd.html#oxia, and 
this page from the top for more background.

-- 
Peter Kirk
peter at qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/




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