Ancient Languages
Crawford, M., March 2007. Taken in Athens, Greece.
Early languages did not rely on as much punctuation as modern languages. Modern punctuation began developing in the fifth century AD with the work of St. Jerome (McArthur, 1998), while spacing was introduced in the West around the seventh century (Saenger, 1997). Given this, ancient languages including Ancient Greek and Latin, were structured very differently. Ancient Greek made use of three dots placed in different positions on or above the line to indicate where pauses for breathing ought to be (Kominicki, 2009), but there were still not spaces between words (Robertson, 1785)(as is evident in the image above and to the right). In a few Greek texts we can see a small dot placed after each word (Robertson, 1785), though there is not enough consistency to suggest this was common practice. Comparing this to the modern approach to spacing, with room in between each word, it is easy to see how significant the difference is, though the impact this has upon reading and understanding is another question entirely.
Continue to Reading in Ancient Greek.
Site by Meggan Crawford
Created for ETEC 540, University of British Columbia
Continue to Reading in Ancient Greek.
Site by Meggan Crawford
Created for ETEC 540, University of British Columbia