Diacritical mark (᾿) used in polytonic orthography
"᾿" redirects here. For the similar character "ʼ", see Ejective consonant.
◌̓
Smooth breathing
U+0313 ̓COMBINING COMMA ABOVE
See also
Rough breathing
The smooth breathing (Ancient Greek: ψιλὸν πνεῦμα, romanized: psilòn pneûma; Greek: ψιλήpsilí; Latin: spiritus lenis) is a diacritical mark used in polytonic orthography. In Ancient Greek, it marks the absence of the voiceless glottal fricative /h/ from the beginning of a word.
Some authorities have interpreted it as representing a glottal stop, but a final vowel at the end of a word is regularly elided (removed) when the following word starts with a vowel and elision would not happen if the second word began with a glottal stop (or any other form of stop consonant). In his Vox Graeca, W.S. Allen accordingly regards the glottal stop interpretation as "highly improbable".[1]
The smooth breathing mark ( ᾿ ) is written as on top of one initial vowel, on top of the second vowel of a diphthong or to the left of a capital and also, in certain editions, on the first of a pair of rhos. It did not occur on an initial upsilon, which always has rough breathing (thus the early name ὕhy, rather than ὔy) except in certain pre-Koine dialects which had lost aspiration much earlier.
The smooth breathing was kept in the traditional polytonic orthography even after the /h/ sound had disappeared from the language in Hellenistic times. It has been dropped in the modern monotonic orthography.
^Allen, W.S. (1968–1974). Vox Graeca: A guide to the pronunciation of classical Greek. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-20626-X.
The smoothbreathing (Ancient Greek: ψιλὸν πνεῦμα, romanized: psilòn pneûma; Greek: ψιλή psilí; Latin: spiritus lenis) is a diacritical mark used in polytonic...
of pitch accent. The rough breathing (῾) indicates the presence of the /h/ sound before a letter, while the smoothbreathing (᾿) indicates the absence...
it is not used at all. The absence of an /h/ sound is marked by the smoothbreathing. The character, or those with similar shape such as U+02BB ʻ MODIFIER...
comes from the Greek ψίλωσις psílōsis ("smoothing, thinning out") and is related to the name of the smoothbreathing (ψιλή psilḗ), the sign for the absence...
of two so-called "breathing marks": the rough breathing (ἁ), marking an /h/ sound at the beginning of a word, or the smoothbreathing (ἀ), marking its...
accordingly written with a rough breathing. The later standard spelling of the name eta, however, has the smoothbreathing. Under the Roman emperor Claudius...
In Byzantine and modern copies of Ancient Greek, the "rough" and "smoothbreathings" (ἁ, ἀ) appear above the letter. In Latvian, Romanian, and Livonian...
rough breathing, equivalent to h (ῥ rh), and a double rho within a word is written with a smoothbreathing over the first rho and a rough breathing over...
Greek eta, but since enthalpy comes from ἐνθάλπος, which begins in a smoothbreathing and epsilon, it is more likely a Latin H for 'heat'. In information...
of pitch accent on the stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks (rough and smoothbreathing), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial...
Breathing (spiration or ventilation) is the rhythmical process of moving air into and out of the lungs to facilitate gas exchange with the internal environment...
to smoothbreathing in Unicode. (For instance, τἀμά uses the character U+1F00 ἀ GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI; psili means smoothbreathing.) Unlike...
second in a pair of medial rhos were always considered to involve rough breathing whether marked or not. In the diphthongs αυ, ευ, ηυ, ου, υι, ωυ. ELOT...
Alkyóne originally is written with a smoothbreathing mark, but this false origin beginning with a rough breathing mark (transliterated as the letter H)...
beginning of a word, the letters υ and ρ always have the rough breathing. The smoothbreathing ( ᾿ ; known as ψῑλὸν πνεῦμα (psilòn pneûma) or ψῑλή (psilē)...
fast-thumping heart and heavy breathing, which travel from left to right thanks to Hugo Zuccarelli's Holophonics system. "Smooth Criminal" peaked at number...
some data sources, breathing is normally seen before a tonal accent, and one implementation defines a canonical order of breathing, accent, iota subscript...
to the transliteration of alef (glottal stop, hamza) by the Greek smoothbreathing mark ⟨᾽⟩, rendered as single closing quotation mark or as raised semi-circle...
be carefully distinguished from polytonic Greek's native rough and smoothbreathing marks, which usually appear as a form of rounded apostrophe. In Hebrew...
⊣ used by Aristophanes of Byzantium to represent the rough breathing and smoothbreathing of Greek around 200 BC. The half H is found in Latin inscriptions...
(ヰ) from katakana script with modern kana wa (ワ) and small i (ィ). A smoothbreathing mark before the Greek omega (Ω) was deleted and Russian Short I (Й)...
δασύ ('rough breathing'). Finally, a diacritic representing the absence of /h/ was created, and it was called πνεῦμα ψιλόν ('smoothbreathing'). The diacritics...
abdomen during normal breathing is sometimes referred to as "abdominal breathing", although it is, in fact, "diaphragmatic breathing", which is not visible...
and breathings are absent, except two breathings which are a smoothbreathing on fifth letter (ωβηδ ἐκ) in line 14 of the verso and a rough breathing on...
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