Greek

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TODO: Please add fonts that contain polytonic Greek to the last section! (See: To-Do List)


Introduction

Historically, the development of Greek language can be divided in:

  • Ancient and Medieval Greek (–1453): language identifier is grc.
  • Modern Greek (1453–): language identifiers are ell, ell or gre

This is different from the main two ways of writing Greek:

  • Monotonic (or single–accented): diacritical marks are only the acute accent (or simply the accent) and the diairesis.
  • Polytonic (or multiple–accented): diacritical marks are three accents (acute, grave and circumflex) and two breathings (rough and smooth).

Monotonic ortography became law in 1982.[1] Greek was polytonic before and ancient Greek is polytonic because it was before 1982.[2] This means that polytonic Greek is not only ancient Greek, since the main part of modern Greek was polytonic.

Unicode

Monotonic Greek needs the characters from the “Greek and Coptic” Unicode block (only the Greek part of it, not the Coptic part).

Polytonic Greek also needs the characters from the “Greek Extended” Unicode block.

All you need is to choose the proper font that contains the characters you require.

Just in case you wonder, there are much more fonts that contain glyphs for monotonic Greek that for polytonic Greek.

Ancient Greek

\agr or \ancientgreek are the values for ancient Greek hyphenation patterns.

A minimal sample would read:

\mainlanguage[agr]
\setupbodyfont[dejavu]
\startTEXpage[offset=3em]
\input aristotle-grc
\stopTEXpage

Monotonic Greek

Either as \mainlanguage or \language, right values are gr or greek.

A minimal sample would read:

\mainlanguage[gr]
\setupbodyfont[dejavu]
\startTEXpage[offset=3em]
Κάθε άνθρωπος δικαιούται να επικαλείται όλα τα δικαιώματα και όλες τις ελευθερίες που προκηρύσσει η παρούσα Διακήρυξη, χωρίς καμία απολύτως διάκριση, ειδικότερα ως προς τη φυλή, το χρώμα, το φύλο, τη γλώσσα, τις θρησκείες, τις πολιτικές ή οποιεσδήποτε άλλες πεποιθήσεις, την εθνική ή κοινωνική καταγωγή, την περιουσία, τη γέννηση ή οποιαδήποτε άλλη κατάσταση.

Δεν θα μπορεί ακόμα να γίνεται καμία διάκριση εξαιτίας του πολιτικού, νομικού ή διεθνούς καθεστώτος της χώρας από την οποία προέρχεται κανείς, είτε πρόκειται για χώρα ή εδαφική περιοχή ανεξάρτητη, υπό κηδεμονία ή υπεξουσία, ή που βρίσκεται υπό οποιονδήποτε άλλον περιορισμό κυριαρχίας.
\stopTEXpage

Modern Polytonic Greek?

Before 1982, Greek ortography was polytonic. It seems that hyphenation rules for polytonic Greek differ from both ancient or monotonic Greek.

TeX has hyphenation patterns for ancient Greek, monotonic Greek and modern polytonic Greek.

ConTeXt has patterns for ancient and monotonic Greek only.

Language–Dependent Commands

As of current latest (2023.01.15 14:04), language–dependent commands—such as \currentdate—don’t work. Nobody seemed to need them—especially for current Greek. If you need them, please send a message to the mailing list to extend this.

Fonts

Since fonts with polytonic Greek also contain monotonic glyphs and fonts with polytonich glyphs are much more scarce, here are some fonts that contain polytonic Greek:

Footnotes

  1. See Law 1228/1982 and Decree 297/1982. Both legatl texts were written with polytonic ortography, but they contain the provisions for the monotonic system.
  2. Just in case you may wonder, this is independent from the popular (δημοτική) v. purified (καθαρέυουσα) dispute for Greek language. See Law 309/1976. The legal text was written in the purified Greek, but it ordered the popular Greek to be the official language.