Wiktionary:Ancient Greek transliteration

These are the rules concerning transliteration in Ancient Greek entries.

This page is an extension of Wiktionary:About Ancient Greek. See also Category:Ancient Greek IPA templates. There is also a page Modern Greek romanization.

The prescribed Romanization is the scientific transliteration; note that digraphs only affect pronunciation, not Romanization.

The prescribed pronunciation systems here reflect the main prestige dialects during the three ancient Greek development periods.

• Classical Greek pronunciation reflects the conservative standard of the Attic-speaking regions of Attica, the northern Cyclades, Euboea and Chalcidice, and their colonies.
• Koine Greek pronunciation reflects the majority mixed dialect of Alexander's empire, especially that of Alexandria, the principal philosophical and literary center of the Hellenistic Greeks, and where Judeo-Christian scripture was translated into Greek.
• Byzantine Greek pronunciation reflects the habits of Constantinople and its close transitional dialects. Though it spanned almost all of Late Antiquity, it also spanned well into the Middle Ages until the 15th century (approximately 1200 years), as the Byzantine Roman world largely escaped the Dark Ages.
• Contemporary Greek pronunciation reflects how people in modern Greece and Cyprus pronounce classical words today. The standard is based on the polished speech register of Demotic Greek, including additional polished Cypriot articulations (in parentheses) where these do not exist in Athens.

Letters

Vowel digraphs

Consonant digraphs and exceptions

αυ/ευ/ηυ exceptions

This table uses ευ as an example, but the same principles apply to αυ and ηυ, with α and η instead of ε.

Consonant-ι exceptions

Even today, most words of learned Ancient Greek origin have ι pronounced as , always a full vowel in its own syllable. However, where ι is understood to have come from , a -derived pronunciation may reasonably apply. does not enter the spoken language until the Byzantine period, and some words (such as Ἰούλιος (Ioúlios)) do not today have retroactive pronunciations. But when does contextually apply, this is how.

Additional notes

• A rough breathing mark (dasy pneuma) is designated by an h at the front of the word (both in IPA and Romanization). A smooth breathing mark (psilon pneuma) requires no notation. In Koine IPA, the rough breathing mark is marked as because it's already a mostly dead phoneme. In Byzantine IPA onward, it is totally gone. When the rough breathing mark is on vowels or diphthongs, they should be preceded with h in romanization. Over ρ, the consonant is romanized rh. The mark is always on (or implied to be on) word-initial Ρ ρ Υ υ Υι υι, which are always romanized Rh rh Hu hu Hui hui. ρρ/ῤῥ is always romanized rrh.
• Iota subscripts are romanized, but not pronounced for Koine. In Classical pronunciation an iota subscript is designated by a /j/ following the vowel.
• A diaeresis should be noted in a Romanization with the umlaut set found in the Latin/Roman script set (at the bottom of the editing window).
• In Classical IPA, acute accent is noted by   ́   on vowel, circumflex with    ̂  . In Koine, both are represented with   ˈ   at the beginning of corresponding syllable.
• Macrons should be designated in IPA by the long vowel symbol ː. Long vowels (ᾱ, ῑ, ῡ) are denoted in the displayed forms of words, as well as romanizations, with a macron. The macron is omitted in combination with a circumflex accent, as a circumflex accent is already implicitly long.

• Romanization of Greek on Wikipedia.Wikipedia