Rough breathing

Rough breathing is a special sign used in the ancient way of writing Ancient Greek. This sign shows that there is an “h” sound before a vowel, a mix of vowels, or after the letter rho. Even though the “h” sound is not spoken in Modern Greek phonology today, this sign was used in old writing for many years.

Now, in Modern Greek phonology, this sign is not used. Instead, we use a different sign to show that the “h” sound is not there.

Besides Ancient Greek, some people used a similar sign when writing Mandarin Chinese with a special system called Wade–Giles. They also used marks like quotation marks or apostrophes to show this sound.

History

The rough breathing symbol comes from the left side of the letter H. In some very old versions of the Greek alphabet, the letter H was used to show the [h] sound, just like we use it in the Latin alphabet today. In other versions, H was used for a vowel sound, and this is how we still write Ancient Greek and Modern Greek today.

Usage

The rough breathing mark ( ̔) goes above a vowel at the start of a word or above the second vowel in a pair of vowels at the start.

• αἵρεσις haíresis 'choice' (→ Latin haeresis → English heresy)
• ἥρως hḗrōs 'hero'

An upsilon or rho at the beginning of a word always uses a rough breathing.

• ὕμνος hýmnos 'hymn'
• ῥυθμός rhythmós 'rhythm'

Inside a word

Sometimes, the rough breathing is written on the second of two rhos inside a word. This is shown as rrh in Latin.

• διάῤῥοια diárrhoia 'diarrhoea'

When two words combine into one in crasis, and the second word has a rough breathing, the combined vowel does not use it. Instead, the consonant before the vowel changes to its aspirated form (π → φ, τ → θ, κ → χ), if possible, and the combined vowel uses the apostrophe or coronis (the same as the smooth breathing).

• τὸ ἕτερον → θοὔτερον (not *τοὕτερον) 'the other one'

  tò héteron → thoúteron

Because of the archaizing effect of Katharevousa, this rule stays in modern Greek neologisms made from ancient words, like πρωθυπουργός ('prime minister'), from πρῶτος ('first') and ὑπουργός ('minister'), where the last word was once aspirated.

In the old Laconian way of speaking, a σ between vowels would turn into a rough breathing: ἐνῑ́κᾱἑ for Attic ἐνῑ́κησε.

Typography

In Unicode, the rough breathing mark has a special symbol called U+0314 ◌̔ COMBINING REVERSED COMMA ABOVE. This symbol can be used with many alphabets, like Greek and Latin.

It was also used in old ways of writing Armenian, for example with the letter "t" shown as t̔.

There is another version, U+02BD ◌ʽ MODIFIER LETTER REVERSED COMMA, which connects with the letter before it, like in tʽ. This form is used in modern ways of writing Armenian.

For Greek writing, there is a special code U+1FFE ◌῾ GREEK DASIA. This version is placed before Greek capital letters, such as in ῾Α for the letter Alpha.

Unicode also includes special combinations of the rough breathing with Greek vowels and other marks.

The rough breathing was also used in the original Old Church Slavonic language, written in the early Cyrillic alphabet. It is encoded as U+0485 ҅ COMBINING CYRILLIC DASIA PNEUMATA in Unicode.

When writing Semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew using Latin letters, either U+02BD ʽ MODIFIER LETTER REVERSED COMMA or a similar symbol U+02BF ◌ʿ MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING is used to show the sound of the letter ayin. This symbol can also be used for writing Armenian.