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Writing Greek With The Greek Option of The Babel Package

This document describes how to write Greek text using LaTeX by transliterating Latin letters into their Greek equivalents. It provides the transliteration table and explains how to type accents, breathing marks, and punctuation. Examples are given of Greek text produced using these conventions.

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37 views4 pages

Writing Greek With The Greek Option of The Babel Package

This document describes how to write Greek text using LaTeX by transliterating Latin letters into their Greek equivalents. It provides the transliteration table and explains how to type accents, breathing marks, and punctuation. Examples are given of Greek text produced using these conventions.

Uploaded by

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Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Writing Greek with the greek option of the babel

package
Apostolos Syropoulos
366, 28th October Str.
GR-671 00 Xanthi, GREECE
e-mail: [email protected]

October 15, 1997

Abstract
This document describes the use of the Latin transliteration for Greek
that is defined by the LGR font encoding. Today, all modern La-
TeX distributions support literal input of Greek, which is the preferred
method for new documents. [G. Milde 2013/12/02]

1 Overview
The greek option of the babel package is an attempt to make it pos-
sible for someone to write Greek text with LATEX. The current version
of the greek option supports the μονοτονικό and πολυτονικό accentual
systems of the Greek language. Moreover, there is now support for
Greek numerals. One can produce easily valid Greek numerals both
in uppercase and lowercase forms, e.g, ͵αϡϙζʹ and ͵ΑϠϘΖʹ. The labels
in second and fourth level enumerations are lowercase and uppercase
Greek numerals correspondingly.

2 Typing Greek Text


By default, TEX understands only 7-bit ASCII characters, so it is not
possible to enter directly Greek letters.1 Instead, someone enters Latin
letters which are mapped to their Greek “counterparts” by TEX. The
following table shows the transliteration employed:
1
Literal input of Greek characters is possible with XeTeX, LuaTeX, or the greek-
inputenc LaTeX package. G. Milde, 2013/07/19

1
α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν
a b g d e z h j i k l m n
ξ ο π ρ σv τ υ φ χ ψ ω ς
x o p r s t u f q y w c
Please, note that in order to produce the letter σv in isolation on has to
type sv. This feature is due to the strong ligature that TEX employs.
In the “modern” μονοτονικό accentual system only one accent is used—
οξεία (acute). In the traditional πολυτονικό accentual system we need
more accents and breathing signs. We can produce an accented letter
by prefixing the letter with he symbol that denotes the accent, e.g.,
>a’erac produces the word ἀέρας.2 Here are the symbols that are
recognized:
Accent Symbol Example Output
acute ’ g’ata γάτα
grave ‘ dad‘i δαδὶ
circumflex ~ ful~hc φυλῆς
rough breathing < <’otan ὅταν
smooth breathing > >’aneu ἄνευ
subscript | >anate’ilh| ἀνατείλῃ
dieresis " qa"ide’uh|c χαϊδεύῃς
Note that the subscript symbol is placed after the letter. The last
thing someone must know in order to be able to write normal Greek
text is the punctuation marks used in the language:
Punctuation Sign Symbol Output
period . .
semicolon ; ·
exclamation mark ! !
comma , ,
colon : :
question mark ? ;
left apostrophe ‘‘ ‘
right apostrophe ’’ ’
left quotation mark (( »
right quotation mark )) »
Using these conventions it is a straightforward exercise to write Greek
πολυτονικο text. For example the following excerpt from Δύσκολος of
Μένανδρος
Τί φήις; ῾Ιδὼν ἐνθέδε παῖδ’ ἐλευθέραν
τὰς πλησίον Νύμφας στεφανοῦσαν, Σώστρατε,
ἐρῶν άπῆλθες εὐθύς;
2
For the technically inclined reader, we must say that TEX uses the ligature table of the
font in order to determine the character that corresponds to the input character sequence.

2
can be produced by the following LATEX code:
T’i f’hic? <Id‘wn >enj’ede pa~id’’ >eleuj’eran
t‘ac plhs’ion N’umfac stefano~usan, S’wstrate,
>er~wn ’ap~hljec e>uj’uc?

3 Producing Greek Text


Once the Greek language is selected with the command
\selectlanguage{greek}
whatever we type will be typeset with the Greek fonts. The command
\textlatin can be used for short passages in some language that uses
the Latin alphabet, while the the command \latintext changes the
base fonts to the ones used by languages that use the Latin alphabet.
However, all words will be hyphenated by following the Greek hyphen-
ation rules! Similar commands are available once someone has selected
some other language. The commands \textgreek and \greektext
behave exactly like their “latin” counterparts. For example, the word
Μίμης has been produced with the command \textgreek{M’imhc}.
Please note that certain symbols cannot have their expected result for
Greek text, unless someone has selected the Greek language, e.g., ~ is
such a symbol.
As we have mentioned above this version of the greek option of the
babel package supports the use of Greek numerals. The commands
\greeknumeral and \Greeknumeral produce the lowercase and the
uppercase Greek numeral, e.g.,
Command Output
\Greeknumeral{9999} ͵ΘϠϘΘʹ
\greeknumeral{9999} ͵θϡϙθʹ
In order to correctly typeset the greek numerals the greek option file
provides the following commands:
Command Output
\qoppa ϙ
\sampi ϡ
\stigma ϛ
In traditional Greek typography the first paragraph after a header
is always indented, contrary to the habit of, say, American typography.
This effect can be achieved by using the package indentfirst.
Additional greek symbols are available:

3
Command Output
\Digamma Ϝ
\ddigamma ϝ
\euro €
\permill ‰
The package athnum provides the command \athnum, with which
one can produce the so called Athenian numerals:
Command Output
\athnum{1997} Χ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔΠΙΙ
The package grmath renames the basic log-like functions with their
greek counterparts:
Command Output
$\sin^{2}x+\cos^{2}x=1$ ημ2 x + συν2 x = 1

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