0.6 Writing Greek by Hand and by Keyboard — Epoché
What you will be able to do Write the Greek alphabet by hand in shapes a Greek reader recognises, including the eight letters whose written form surprises an English speaker. Type Greek on a standard Greek keyboard, including the accent mark and the final sigma. Use σ and ς correctly, every time, without thinking about it. Read eight sentences and say, for each word that ends in an s-sound, why the letter looks different there. Prerequisites : 0.5 — the signs. Read 0.5 Script first if you have not. This is the last lesson of the first volume, and it is the one that turns reading into writing. Two things stand between you and written Greek, and neither is difficult once named: a handful of letters are drawn differently from the way they are printed, and the keyboard is laid out on a plan that is mostly obvious and occasionally not. Both take about an hour to absorb, and then the alphabet is finished and the course can get on with the language. How the letters work Eight letters to draw carefully. The rest you can write the way they are printed and no one will blink. Letter How to draw it θ a single loop with a crossbar, drawn without lifting the pen λ a tall stroke with a foot, not the roman lambda shape of a compass ξ three strokes stacked, with a tail below the line ζ like a written 3 with a flat top and a long tail ψ a bowl on a stem, the stem going well below the line β a tall stem with two bellies; the stem goes below the line ρ a roman p, and it means r — the commonest confusion of the first week ν a roman v, and it means n — the second commonest The last two on that list are worth dwelling on, because they are not about drawing at all. Greek ρ looks exactly like a roman p and is an r; Greek ν looks exactly like a roman v and is an n. Every English speaker reads them wrong for about a fortnight, and the cure is not willpower but volume: read enough Greek and the shapes stop carrying their roman values. Until then, expect to be tripped by them in exactly the words where it matters — the small common ones. One more letter belongs here. Sigma has two small forms, and the rule is mechanical: σ everywhere inside a word, ς at the end of one. There is no exception. If a word ends in the s-sound — and a great many Greek words do, because it is the ending of masculine nouns in the form you meet them in — the last letter is the final one. Write it Write the whole alphabet out by hand, twice, saying the names aloud as you write. Then copy the eight sentences below, and as you reach the end of each word ask yourself whether it needs the final sigma. That question, asked a few dozen times, is what makes the habit automatic. A note on the accent mark when you write by hand: put it on immediately, as part of writing the vowel, rather than going back over the word afterwards. The mark leans to the right — it is not a vertical tick and not a dot — and on a capital it goes to the left of the letter rather than above it. Why do the printed and the written shapes differ at all? Because the printed ones were cut in Venice and Paris in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, by printers copying the joined-up hand of Byzantine scribes, and a number of the shapes they chose were ligatures and flourishes rather than the plain letter. The hand that Greek schoolchildren are taught today went back to the plain shapes. So the difference you are looking at is five hundred years of typography, and the handwritten form is usually the simpler of the two. The keyboard The Greek layout is built on the roman one, and most keys give the Greek letter of the same sound. These twenty are the ones you can guess. Roman key Gives a α b β d δ e ε f φ g γ h η i ι k κ l λ m μ n ν o ο p π r ρ s σ t τ x χ y υ z ζ Seven are worth learning deliberately. Roman key Gives Why it is worth noting u θ the only vowel key that gives a consonant j ξ nothing in common with the roman letter c ψ nothing in common either v ω the big o sits where v is w ς the final sigma has a key of its own q ; the Greek question mark ; the accent mark a dead key: press it, then the vowel The accent is a dead key, exactly as on a French or Spanish layout: press it, then the vowel, and the two combine into one character. On a phone you do it differently — hold the vowel down and the accented form appears in a little menu — and on both, the mark you want is the one leaning right. The final sigma has its own key because a computer cannot work out which form you want: to the machine they are two different characters, and a Greek text search that does not know this will fail to find words at the end of a sentence. That is worth knowing when you start looking words up online. Read it aloud Eight sentences. Read each one aloud, then copy it by hand, and check your final sigmas. Greek English What to notice Έχεις αδερφές; [1] Do you have any sisters? two words, two final sigmas — one at the end of each Άργησες χτες. [2] You were late yesterday. the same: every word that ends in the s-sound takes the final form Έγραψαν βιβλίο. [3] They wrote a book. psi in the middle of a verb, where English would write ps Άνοιξε πυρ! [4] Open fire! xi in the middle: one letter, two sounds Έβρεχε χθες; [5] Was it raining yesterday? theta and chi side by side, the two letters written with a loop Έστριψα δεξιά. [6] I turned right. psi again, and a word whose handwritten form is worth copying Βεβαίως, ευχαρίστως. [7] Sure, gladly. both sigmas in one word: the ordinary one inside, the final one at the end Έχεις χαθεί; [8] Are you lost? chi twice, and a question mark that looks like a semicolon New words Six words from the sentences, all of them ordinary enough to meet on the first page of anything. Word (with article) Meaning Notes η αδερφή el i aderfí sister Part of speech / class noun, feminine How it differs from English the plural ends in the s-sound, so it takes the final sigma χτες el chtes yesterday Part of speech / class adverb How it differs from English also written with a theta in