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Conventions
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Transliteration of Devanagari
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Transliteration of Classical Greek
Considerations
Since the Greek alphabet is very similar to the Latin one, it is much
easier to transliterate Classical Greek (using the Western ISO 8859-1
character standard) than it is to transliterate Devanagari.
In fact, we only had to extend the Roman character set with two special
characters: an ê representing the letter ETA, and an ô representing
the letter OMEGA. Consistent with our transliteration method for Devanagari,
the circumflex above each character indicates that the sound should be long.
Transliteration Example
The famous sentence from John 1:1
will be rendered as:
en arkhêi ên ho logos
HOW WE TRANSLITERATE CLASSICAL GREEK
| Letter ALPHA |
a |
as in car |
| Letter BETA |
b |
as in boy |
| Letter GAMMA |
g |
as in god |
| Letter DELTA |
d |
as in mud |
| Letter EPSILON |
e |
as in edge |
| Letter ZETA |
z |
as in wisdom |
| Letter ETA |
ê |
as in fair |
| Letter THETA |
th |
as in author |
| Letter IOTA |
i |
as in pit |
| Letter KAPPA |
k |
as in cup |
| Letter LAMBDA |
l |
as in aisle |
| Letter MU |
m |
as in lamp |
| Letter NU |
n |
as in now |
| Letter XI |
x |
as in fox |
| Letter OMICRON |
o |
as in order |
| Letter PI |
p |
as in pet |
| Letter RHO |
r |
as in rain, with a trilled -r |
| Letter SIGMA |
s |
as in sick |
| Letter TAU |
t |
as in ten |
| Letter UPSILON |
u or y |
as in a French u |
| Letter PHI |
ph |
as in phone |
| Letter CHI |
kh |
as in backhand |
| Letter PSI |
ps |
as in tipsy |
| Letter OMEGA |
ô |
as in often |
Sign ROUGH BREATHING |
h |
as in home |
Table 1. Eyes of Scripture's Roman transliteration method
of Classical Greek.
| 1. |
"In the beginning was the word."
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| 2. |
Letters ALPHA, IOTA, and UPSILON can be either short or long. The table
above only gives directions of how to produce the shorter sound. To produce
the longer sound, just make it approximately twice as long as the short.
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| 3. |
If letter UPSILON comes right after a vowel, we will transliterate it as u;
otherwise, we will transliterate it as y.
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| 4. |
This sign is not mentioned in Unicode's tables.
See http://www.unicode.org for more details.
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Groton, Anne H. (1995) From Alpha to Omega:
A Beginning Course in Classical Greek.
Newburyport, Mass.: Focus Information Group.
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Bhâva-sindhu dâsa
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(about the author)
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