Talk:Rough breathing

Proposed move: Spiritus asper → Rough breathing
According to Naming conventions (use English). FilipeS (talk) 21:22, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Rough breathing symbol + accent symbol looks like some other nonexistent third symbol
The diacritic(s) in the examples like αἵρεσις looks like a tilde, unless you enlarge your font size to billboard proportions. It might be better to have more examples like ῥυθμός where the accented syllable is separate and thus the rough breathing is clearly visible on its own. Fried Gold (talk) 05:43, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

DI‑GAMMA / VAU : Smooth‑breathing & SIGMA / SAN : Rough‑breathing
Hello, from the Ancient‑Greek studies at dis‑tance, that I have per‑formed in Belgium in 2012, the "Smooth‑breathing" and "Rough‑breathing" serves to in‑dicate & marking the ab‑olition of the archaic letter Di‑gamma Ϝ (Smooth) or Sigma/San Σ/Ϻ  (Rough) in the word, the Ϝ or Σ/Ϻ can be at beginning or middle, it de‑pend of the position of the breathing.

{Di‑gamma Ϝ {also called ϜΑΥ : vau/vaw} is V be‑cause W was Υ/ΟΥ from Phoenician 𐤅, Ϝ don't share shape and sound with Υ / 𐤅, after some‑time Υ be‑came later  and  in Modern‑Greek ; Pamphylian Digamma/Wau/Waw Ͷ is  and is re‑formated one‑line Υ  to write it faster in one‑movement, also Ϝ  be‑came Latin F , V & F are labio‑dental sound and can be con‑fused, when W & F have nothing in com‑mon, so Latin letter F sound  come from Ancient‑Greek letter Ϝ sound ...}.


 * Source that Ϝ = : http://www.webtopos.gr/eng/languages/greek/alphabet/earlyletters.htm
 * Source that Υ = http://www.webtopos.gr/eng/languages/greek/alphabet/upsilon.htm
 * Source that is Ϝ = & Ͷ =  : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digamma#Pamphylian_digamma

In the French pre‑cise book of Ancient‑Greek "Le Grand Bailly" or "Abrégé Bailly" breathing (spirit in French) are re‑pre‑sented in the words and in the de‑finition, in [RAC : racine/root] Section is ad‑ded the original word with Di‑gamma Ϝ or Sigma/San Σ/Ϻ. In older editions of "Le Grand Bailly" or "Abrégé Bailly", the "Table of roots" (which is no longer pre‑sent in the new editions) speci‑fies the list of roots using Di‑gamma Ϝ & Sigma/San Σ/Ϻ, yet in Wikipedia English or French, no one mention that the "Smooth breathing" and "Rough breathing" were used for Di‑gamma Ϝ & Sigma/San Σ/Ϻ re‑moving, why ??? They talk only about a‑spired H (no one can make a‑spired H be‑fore a RHO, it's im‑possible), so it's wrong... Also In Wiktionary page for Ancient‑Greek words using breathing, the W/V or S/SH is never mentioned in "Archaic pro‑nunciation", like for ex‑ample :
 * ὙΠΕΡ / HYPER that was originally writed ΣΥΠΕΡ / SHYPER (Latin : SVPERIOR), or
 * ἙΞ / HEX → ΣΕΞ / SHEX (Latin : Six) or
 * ἘΞ / EX → ϜΕΞ /  VEX  (Latin : Ex‑) or
 * ἘΡΓΟΝ → ϜΕΡΓΟΝ (English : Work, Dutch : Werk, French : Vergô ↔ Greve {strike (cessation of work)}) or
 * ἩΛΙΟΣ / HELIOS → ΣΗΛΙΟΣ / SHELIOS {Attic} (Latin : Sol, Solis, English : Sun) or
 * ἉΛΙΟΣ/ HALIOS → ΣΑΛΙΟΣ / SHALIOS {Dorian} (Latin : Sol, Solis, English : Sun) or
 * ΟἸΝΟΣ → ϜΟΙΝΟΣ (Latin : VINVM, English : Wine, French : Vin) or
 * ἈΡΗΣ / ARES → ͶΑΡΗΣ / WARES (God of War, War God, war it‑self personi‑fied) or
 * ῬΕΩ → ΣΡΕΩ (flow) & ῬΕΩ/ἘΡΩ → ϜΡΕΩ/ϜΕΡΩ  (Speak/Verbum/Verity/Love) or
 * ἈΝΑ → ϜΑΝΑ or ΑϜΝΑ.

{I don't use ac‑cent acute / grave in Ancient‑Greek words be‑cause at that time they didn't ex‑ist, also writing Ancient‑Greek word in minuscule is an error, be‑cause at that epoch only capital script with‑out ac‑cent ex‑isted, minuscule should be used only for Modern‑Greek in your Wiktionary or Wikipedia...}. Gmazdên (talk) 12:09, 28 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Hey,, you don't need to post this on multiple talk pages, and I will respond here, since you seem to be writing about the rough breathing in particular. Your comment is long and hard to understand. I'm not sure what you're saying. Could you write a short summary of the question that you are trying to ask? — Eru·tuon 03:32, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi, thank for taking time to re‑spond, it's simple why in Wikipedia & Wiktionary, no one is ex‑plaining, what I learn in Belgium, that breathing sign, in‑dicate re‑moving of Sigma/San (if Rough) or Di‑gamma (if smooth) in that word...
 * Dis‑cussion about this in Ancient-Greek Wiktionary talk‑page...
 * Gmazdên (talk) 10:45, 29 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, it doesn't. The rough breathing sign indicates not the removal of anything, but the presence of the sound /h/. It so happens that some of these occurrences of /h/ are etymologically related to a reconstructed sound */s/ in Proto-Greek, but that /s/ was replaced with /h/ long before Greek was written, i.e. long before either "sigma" or "san", as letters, existed. It is thus wrong to say that either sigma or san was "removed". As for Digamma, that too vanished before Greek was written (at least in most dialects), leaving no consonant behind. The smooth breating indicates simply the absence of any consonant. Thus, words that happened to have digamma (/w/) earlier will generally have a smooth breathing in classical Greek, but that doesn't mean it is the function of the smooth breathing to "indicate" its removal. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:03, 30 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Regarding the rough breathing on rho: W. Sidney Allen in Vox Graeca says it may have been pronounced as a voiceless alveolar trill (voiceless r), which is written as in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Thus, ῥέω would have been pronounced something like  in Classical Greek. I find Allen's explanation plausible. As  says, a rough breathing on a vowel would have been pronounced as a glottal fricative, written as  in IPA. Since a glottal fricative is voicelessness of the following sound, a voiceless r and an h sound are both the same thing phonetically. Hence, the Greeks wrote both sounds using the same symbol, the rough breathing. Let me know if this is an answer to the question you were asking, and if it makes sense. — Eru·tuon 18:09, 30 May 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't know why you say and think that Di‑Gamma Ϝ ϝ was a [w] be‑cause for me it was [v] (look at the source in beginning of this article). The Pamphylian Di‑Gamma Ͷ ͷ who is a re‑formed version of Y [u] can be a [w]... Gmazdên (talk) 13:16, 23 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I have one more thing to say after thinking a lot about this, you ex‑plain that the Rough‑breathing is a mark showing the a‑spiration and not the Sigma re‑moving  or, and the Ancient‑Greek words using it are written with H in Latin (ὑπέρ → hyper), but for the Smooth‑breathing there is no a‑spiration  & the words using it are not written with a H in Latin, so if the smooth sign is not an in‑dication of Di‑Gamma Ϝ ϝ  or Ͷ ͷ  re‑moving why using this sign, it is use‑less, in‑stead they could write normally the Ἀ Ἐ Ἠ Ἰ ὐ Ὠ ῤ → Α Ε Η Ι Ο Υ Ω Ρ, no need to a speci‑fic sign for that... This prove that this theories of  is false in a part. Mangêzd (talk) 07:34, 15 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Also the words ἅπ‧τ‧ω ("ap‧t‧us"), ἅπ‧μ‧α, ἁπ‧σ‧ίς ("ap‧s‧is") are not written with H in Latin, I don't know if there is others ex‑ample of Greek terms with Rough‑breathing with‑out H in their Latin versions. Mangêzd (talk) 22:00, 21 June 2015 (UTC)


 * In my Belgian Walloon Bruxelles French Federation curriculum (at di‑stance : col‑lege level) of Ancient‑Greek, they say that this is an in‑dication of re‑moving... And I be‑lieve them, I don't know where they got this in‑formation... It is written in "Page 1 of series 6 of lesson 21.17 G of the curriculum of Greek n°066" for Di‑gamma (Vau) re‑moving & Page 3 of series 4 of lesson 21.10 G of curriculum of Greek n°066 for Sigma re‑moving... The PDF file of the chapter of the curriculum...


 * Since you seem to have know‑ledge about Ancient‑Qrêgu, do you know a page where all words (Doric, Ionian, Eolian, Attic) using Qoppa Ϙ ϙ / Ϟ ϟ are listed, I really need it for my works... Gmazdên (talk) 19:22, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The digamma could have possibly been a glottal stop mark originally. 138.202.129.217 (talk) 00:11, 6 April 2023 (UTC)