Talk:πνιγεύς

Length of iota

@Orgyn: According to the LSJ, the iota in πνῑ́γω (pnī́gō) is long, but the one in πνῐγεύς (pnigeús) is short. — Eru·tuon 20:57, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I must have missed it. It's the "[ῑ]" next to the term, correct? — Orgyn (talk) 21:25, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

@Orgyn: Yep, that's how they indicate length when the vowel already has a diacritic. — Eru·tuon 21:45, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

@Erutuon: Thanks! I don't know much about Ancient Greek, so I have one question: why do they indicate the length separetly, and not for example directly on the definition term? — Orgyn (talk) 08:22, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

@Orgyn: I don't know for sure, but I would guess that they weren't able to print those combinations of diacritics in whatever font they were using, or chose not to because it was illegible, or something like that. — Eru·tuon 08:26, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Even nowadays, I've only seen one font that correctly handles three-diacritic combinations like macron–smooth breathing–acute: ᾱ̓́. Macron–acute or macron–smooth breathing look okay in more fonts: ᾱ́, ᾱ̓. I gather that the font developers have to be aware that these combinations are used, and have to center a single diacritic over the macron, or put the smooth breathing to the left of the acute above the macron. Not that I have ever made a font. But three-diacritic combinations are only rarely used (in grammars or on Wiktionary), so they are usually not handled well. — Eru·tuon 08:35, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

@Erutuon: Indeed, not all font support multiple diacritics correctly. I know Wiktionary recently changed to using a font called New Athena Unicode but IMO the letters render very weirdly, and only Ancient Greek is rendered with this font, not Modern Greek, which make it even weirder. The font Palatino Linotype is not bad, but now I use "Times". I've added it to my common.css. Anyway, thanks for the details, and sorry for my bad edit... — Orgyn (talk) 14:30, 16 December 2017 (UTC)