TOPICS

Accent and Accent-Marking in Ancient Greek

Contonation and Mora

The Last 3 Syllables and the Accents
•acute
•circumflex
•grave
•ultima
•penult
•antepenult
•more examples

Proclitics

Enclitics

Multiple Clitics

Traditional Terminology

Persistent Accentuation
• a- and o-declension
• consonant declension

Recessive Accentuation

Accent and Accent-Marking in Ancient Greek (1 of 4)

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horizontal rule

Ancient Greek had a tonal or pitch accent, not a stress accent such as is found in Latin, English, and many European languages, including Modern Greek. The accent of a word or phrase consisted in a raising of the pitch of the voice at the accented syllable.

The classical Greeks used no accent marks: they needed none since the language was their native tongue, and the tradition of writing and reading books was relatively young and the format not very “user-friendly.”

Arrows point the printed accents in the sentence below:

illustration of accented words with arrows to accents