Monotonic orthography is the simplified way for spelling modern Greek introduced in 1982. It replaced the traditional Greek accents – acute accent ( ´ ) and circumflex ( ˆ or ˜ ) – with only one, the acute accent, (the grave accent ( ` ) had been abandoned at a previous stage) and abandoned the use of the rough breathing or spiritus asper ( ʽ ) and smooth breathing or spiritus lenis ( ʼ ). 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The acute accent ( Â´ ) is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin and Greek scripts. ... The circumflex ( ˆ ) (often called a caret, a hat or an uppen) is a diacritic mark used in written Greek, French, Dutch, Esperanto, Norwegian, Romanian, Slovak, Vietnamese, Japanese romaji, Welsh, Portuguese, Italian, Afrikaans and other languages, and formerly in Turkish [citation needed]. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus (bent... The acute accent ( Â´ ) is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin and Greek scripts. ... The grave accent ( ` ) is a diacritic mark used in written Greek until 1982 (polytonic orthography), French, Catalan, Welsh, Italian, Vietnamese, Scottish Gaelic, Norwegian, Portuguese and other languages. ... The spiritus asper (rough breathing) or dasy pneuma (Greek: dasu, δασύ) is a diacritical mark used in Greek. ... The spiritus lenis (soft breathing) or psilon pneuma (Greek: psilón, ψιλόν) is a diacritical mark used in Ancient Greek. ...

The simplification was justified by the fact that the polytonic orthography was complex and difficult to learn, and the diacritics had no significance in modern speech, merely giving some etymological information about the words and their ancient pronunciation. The simplification is frowned upon by some people who believe that the polytonic orthography provides a cultural link to the past[1]. The Greek Orthodox church, for example, continues to use polytonic orthography, and some books and newspapers (notably ΕΣΤΙΑ) are still published in polytonic. Although the fact that classical Greeks did not, in fact, use polytonic diacritics, as they were a posterior addition to the written language, has been used to cast doubt on the defense of such arguments, the use of polytonic diacritics is well attested during the byzantine or medieval phase of the development of the Greek language at a time when the foundations of demotic Greek were being laid. Polytonic orthography for Greek uses a variety of diacritics (πολύ = many + τόνος = accent) to represent aspects of Ancient Greek pronunciation. ... The Church of Greece is one of the fifteenth autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches which make up the Eastern Orthodox Communion. ... The Estia (Greek polytonic Ἑστία, monotonic Εστία) is an Athenian daily newspaper. ...

See also

• Greek alphabet
• Diacritic
• Greek orthography
• Diacritics (Greek alphabet)