21st Century Classical Greek -- breathing

You who already know Greek know all about breathing. You know the answer to a question some other readers may be asking: “why, when the first letter is a vowel, am I putting an ‘h’ in front of it” when I transliterate?

If you know anything about paleontology or horses, you know that the Greek word is usually spelled hippus in transcription. The Greek word is

ἵππος

Let me enlarge that for you so you can see what the Greek geeks already know.

ἵππος

The sort of “open quote” mark is the “rough breathing”. That’s where the “h” comes from in the transcription.

So words you’ve already seen that have it:

Section 1.

ὅτι – hoti, “that”

Ἑλληνικὸν – natch, hellinikon, “Hellenes” and Hellas in section 2

ὁρῶν – horon, “seeing, perceiving” (think horoscope)

ἑκατέρους – hekaterous, “on either side” and hekastoi in section 2

αὕτη – hauti, “them” but not auton later in the subsection

ὡς – hos, “which”, and hon later in the subsection, and hoson in section 2

εὑρεῖν – heurein, as in “heuristics”

Section 2.

ῥᾳδίως – trick question, rhadios. Rho always takes the rough breathing.

ὑπό – hupo, see the word tool and recognize this as the source of hypo-

ἅμα – hama, “at one and the same time”

ἡμέραν – himeran, “day”

ἡγούμενοι – higoumenoi, do you know the word “hegemony”?

So if you see the sign for the rough breathing, remember there’s a sort of huffing sound like if you are very careful to say “hwat”.