What are the unusual punctuation marks in your language?

By: | Post date: 2017-04-23 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Writing Systems

Survey question, and I’m looking forward to someone bringing up the Amharic sarcasm mark.

Greek punctuation functionally corresponds to English punctuation—mostly.

  • Upper dot <·> corresponds to semicolon.
  • In Ancient Greek typography, the upper dot is usually also used in the function of the English colon. Modern Greek typography uses the colon.
  • Ancient punctuation had a middle dot as well as an upper dot, for different length pauses. Modern typography does not differentiate a middle dot from the upper dot.
  • The Greek interrogative is identical to the Latin semicolon <;>.
  • Quotation marks in Modern Greek typography have traditionally been the French guillemets <« »>. Through English influence, you will now see more English double quotes.
  • Like French, Greek uses the quotation dash <―>.
  • There is a native counterpart to the ampersand, the kai ligature <ϗ>, but it is no longer in wide use.
  • Abbreviations are occasionally marked with double prime <″>, although that is quite old fashioned. The only instance anyone living is likely to have seen is Χ″ as an abbreviation of the surname prefix Χατζη- “Hatzi-”; e.g. Χ″μάρκου “Hatzimarkou”. Much more common now is the solidus </>; e.g. παν/μειο = πανεπιστήμειο “university”, Κων/πολη = Κωνσταντινούπολη “Constantinople”.

Leave a Reply

  • Subscribe to Blog via Email

  • November 2024
    M T W T F S S
     123
    45678910
    11121314151617
    18192021222324
    252627282930  
%d bloggers like this: