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Greek Words for language features and writing

Posted: August 6th, 2011, 7:59 am
by Louis L Sorenson
I have a number of questions about which words a teacher should be using for various language features. Both Buth and Rico in their perspective books use Greek terms for features such as neuter, feminine, etc. So this thread would be a good place to talk about those terms.

My first question: Uppercase letters versus Lowercase letters.

Rico, in Πόλις (p. 24-25) uses
τὰ μείζονα γράμματα
τὰ μικρότερα γράμματα

Modern Greek uses κεφαλαίον (If I'm not mistaken). But I've been using Κεφαλαῖον for 'Chapter', along with Στίχος for 'verse'. So I'd want to stick to those meanings.

I've thought of μέγα ~ μικρός would be a good place to teach this contrastive pair.
τὰ μεγάλα γράμματα
τὰ μικρὰ γράμματα

Does anyone know what words the ancients used?

Re: Greek Words for language features and writing

Posted: August 7th, 2011, 8:20 am
by Stephen Carlson
The writing system back then did not make a distinction between lowercase and uppercase. Your suggestion is fine as a conjecture as to what they would have called it, had they known of them.

Stephen