Diple

Diple, dvojnice, or dvojanke (pluralia tantum; pronounced [dîple̞], [dʋǒ̞ːjnit͡se] and [dʋǒ̞jaːŋke̞]) are a traditional woodwind musical instrument in Serbian, Croatian and Montenegrin music.

The flute

The diple, or dvojnice, may be found as a fipple flute or as a reedpipe, but in either case is distinctive in that it incorporates two bores within one body, and thus creates two notes simultaneously. Generally, the left hand fingers a group of holes on the left side of the body, and the right on its side.

Serbian droneless bagpipes

All bagpipe diple have a double reeded chanter, and have different names throughout Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia. The bag of the bagpipes is called a meh, which consists of a tanned goat skin, the blowpipe is a dulac or gajdenica, through which the air is blown, which is in fact a double chanter used to play the melody and harmony simultaneously. The chanter incorporates two single reeds, one in each bore.

Unlike the majority of European bagpipes, the meh has no drone (trubanj, prdalo, prdaljka), instead playing both a melody and harmony part on the chanter. Though their general form is similar, the meh in different parts of Bosnia varies in chanter tunings, ornamentation, and other small factors. The meh is an untempered instrument, and its specific intonation varies by region.

Diple (textual symbol)

Diple (Ancient Greek: διπλῆ, meaning double, referring to the two lines in the mark >) was used in margins to draw attention to something in text. It is sometimes also called antilambda because the sign resembles a Greek capital letter lambda (Λ) turned upon its side. In some ways its usage was similar to modern day quotation marks; guillemets (« »), used for quotations in French, are derived from it.

Isidore remarks in his Etymologiae (I.XXI.13) that the diple was used to mark quotations from the Bible. He also talks about diple peri strichon (or sticon) which was used to draw attention to separate concepts and diple periestigmene used (like obelos) to mark dubious passages. Diple obolismene was used according to Isidore to separate sentences in comedies and tragedies, so its usage was similar to that of paragraphos.

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