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The spiritus asper (Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 for "rough breathing"; das? pneűma or daseîa), is a diacritical mark
Diacritic

A diacritic is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. The term derives from the Greek language d?a???t???? ....
 used in the polytonic orthography. In ancient Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
, it indicates initial aspiration
Aspiration (phonetics)

In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of Earth's atmosphere that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents....
, or the presence of the voiceless glottal fricative
Voiceless glottal fricative

The voiceless glottal transition, commonly called a "Fricative consonant", is a type of sound used in some Speech communication languages which often behaves like a consonant, but sometimes behaves more like a vowel, or is indeterminate in its behavior....
  at the beginning of a word. It was maintained in the polytonic orthography even after the sound disappeared from the Greek language during the Hellenistic
Koine Greek phonology

Koine Greek is phonology a transition period: at the start of the period, the language was generally virtually identical to Classical Ancient Greek, whereas in the end the language had phonologically a lot more in common with Modern Greek than Ancient Greek....
 period, but has been dropped in the modern monotonic orthography.

The spiritus asper ( ? ) is placed over the initial vowel or, in the case of an initial diphthong
Diphthong

In phonetics, a diphthong, or , is a contour vowel?that is, a unitary vowel that changes vowel quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a glissando of the tongue from one articulation to another, as in the English words eye, boy, and cow. This contrasts with "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, where the tongue is held s...
, over the second vowel.






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The spiritus asper (Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 for "rough breathing"; das? pneűma or daseîa), is a diacritical mark
Diacritic

A diacritic is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. The term derives from the Greek language d?a???t???? ....
 used in the polytonic orthography. In ancient Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
, it indicates initial aspiration
Aspiration (phonetics)

In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of Earth's atmosphere that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents....
, or the presence of the voiceless glottal fricative
Voiceless glottal fricative

The voiceless glottal transition, commonly called a "Fricative consonant", is a type of sound used in some Speech communication languages which often behaves like a consonant, but sometimes behaves more like a vowel, or is indeterminate in its behavior....
  at the beginning of a word. It was maintained in the polytonic orthography even after the sound disappeared from the Greek language during the Hellenistic
Koine Greek phonology

Koine Greek is phonology a transition period: at the start of the period, the language was generally virtually identical to Classical Ancient Greek, whereas in the end the language had phonologically a lot more in common with Modern Greek than Ancient Greek....
 period, but has been dropped in the modern monotonic orthography.

The spiritus asper ( ? ) is placed over the initial vowel or, in the case of an initial diphthong
Diphthong

In phonetics, a diphthong, or , is a contour vowel?that is, a unitary vowel that changes vowel quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a glissando of the tongue from one articulation to another, as in the English words eye, boy, and cow. This contrasts with "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, where the tongue is held s...
, over the second vowel. In all other cases, the initial vowel or diphthong carries the spiritus lenis
Spiritus lenis

The spiritus lenis is a diacritic used in the polytonic orthography. In ancient Greek, it indicates the lack of initial aspiration , or the absence of the voiceless glottal fricative from the beginning of a word....
. In addition, it is always placed over an initial or doubled letter rho
Rho (letter)

Rho is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 100. It is derived from Proto-Canaanite alphabet R? "head" ....
 and an initial upsilon
Upsilon

Upsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 400. It is derived from the phoenecian alphabet Waw ....
 (to replace the lost qoppa
Qoppa

Qoppa or Koppa is a letter that was used in early forms of the Greek alphabet, which lacked such a sound; it was instead used for before back vowels ....
 of earlier Greek).

Examples: stands for hymnos, "hymn", and for rhetor, "orator".

Origin and shape

The origin of the sign is thought to be the left-hand half of the letter H, which was used in some Greek dialects as an [h] while in others it was used for the vowel eta
Eta (letter)

Eta is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 8. Letters that arose from Eta include the Latin H and the Cyrillic letter I ....
. In medieval and modern script, it is written as on top of or to the left of an initial vowel
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
 (the second vowel of a pair comprising a diphthong), and also on an initial rho or the second of a pair of rhos. It takes the form of an opening half moon (C):

  • ;
  • .


Use inside a word

In rare cases, it can be written inside a word (other than when the second vowel in a diphthong):
  • on a double rho in certain editions;
  • when two words contract ("crasis
    Crasis

    Crasis is the contraction of a vowel or diphthong at the end of a word with a vowel or diphthong at the start of the following word. It occurs, for example, in Portuguese language, Arabic language, and Greek language....
    "), the second word can in some cases keep its spiritus asper. This situation is called coronis.


Other remarks

In Unicode
Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
, the code point
Code point

In character encoding terminology a code point is any of the numerical values that make up the codespace. For example, ASCII comprises 128 code points in the range 0Hexadecimal to 7Fhex, Extended ASCII comprises 256 code points in the range 0Hexadecimal to FFhex, and Unicode comprises 1,114,112 code...
 assigned to the spiritus asper is U+0314 (  ) named “COMBINING REVERSED COMMA ABOVE”. The pair of space + spiritus asper is U+1FFE (  ) named “GREEK DASIA”.

The spiritus asper was also used in the early Cyrillic alphabet
Early Cyrillic alphabet

The old Cyrillic alphabet was a writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the tenth century to write the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language....
 when writing the Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic

Old Church Slavonic, also known as Old Bulgarian, or Old Macedonian, was the first literary Slavic language, based on the old Solun dialect of the Thessaloniki region by the 9th century Byzantine Greeks missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who used it for translation of the Bible and other Ancient Greek language ecclesiastica...
 language. In this context it is encoded as Unicode
Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
 U+0485 (  ) named “COMBINING CYRILLIC DASIA PNEUMATA”.

In Latin transcription of Semitic languages
Semitic languages

File:Amarna Akkadian letter.pngThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa....
, especially Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
 and Hebrew
Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
, a symbol similar to the spiritus asper (  ) U+02BF, named “MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING”, is used to represent the letter ayin
Ayin

' or ' is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Aramaic language, Hebrew language and Arabic alphabet ....
.

See also


  • Spiritus lenis
    Spiritus lenis

    The spiritus lenis is a diacritic used in the polytonic orthography. In ancient Greek, it indicates the lack of initial aspiration , or the absence of the voiceless glottal fricative from the beginning of a word....
  • Polytonic orthography
  • ?
    ?

    or is a letter derived from the Latin alphabet. Both glyphs of the majuscule and Lower case forms of this letter are based on the rotated form of a minuscule e; a similar letter with identical minuscule is used in the Pan-Nigerian Alphabet, but has the capital form majuscule , based on a horizontally flipped majuscule E....
  • Diacritics (Greek alphabet)