Accents


 * Accents were not present in the earliest manuscripts and were added later. Mainly as an aid to pronunciation.
 * They are not exegetically significant--they don't change the meaning of a word.
 * They are, however, useful for differentiating between two words spelled with the same letters.
 * Therefore, no need to stress out about accents, unless your teacher wants it (and te teacher is always right!)

Accent rules

 * There are 3 accents, acute, grave and circumflex. They go over the vowel in a syllable to be stressed.
 * Only the last three syllables of a word can be accented.
 * The acute can go over any of the last 3 syllables.
 * The circumflex can go over any of the last 2 syllables only.
 * The circumflex only goes over a long syllable.
 * Short syllable-long syllable. If the last syllable is long, the second last syllable can only be acute. So "δοῦλος" but the circumflex changes to acute for "δούλου". Think of the last long syllable as counting for two syllables.
 * Long syllable-short syllable. If the second last syllable is long, and it is to be stressed (it may not be), then it willbe a circumflex.
 * The grave can go over the last syllable only and is a special case. It happens when a word on its own has an acute on the last syllable but now is followed by another word in the sentence (technical term: it is "in composition"). Then the acute changes to grave. If the word is the last word in a sentence and is followed by a punctuation, the accent remains acute.


 * Nouns
 * the accent tries to stay at its position in the lexical form (nominative singular form) subject to other rules
 * For 2nd declension nouns, genitive or dative case, if the ultima is accented, it will be a circumflex.


 * Verbs
 * the accent tries to move as far back towards the front of the word as it can as it is conjugated.