Iota subscript

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Iota subscript (Greek ὑπογεγραμμένη) in Greek polytonic orthography is a way of writing the letter iota as a small vertical stroke beneath a vowel. It was used in the so-called "long diphthongs" in Ancient Greek, that is, diphthongs of which the first part is a long vowel: ᾳ, ῃ and ῳ.

Before the reforms of Eucleides and the adoption of the letters Ω and Η (403-402 BC), there was no way of distinguishing between long and short vowels in Attic Greek. The classical Greek diphthongs ΑΙ, ΕΙ and ΟΙ were composed of a vowel and the letter iota whether or not the vowel was long.

From the mid-fifth to the mid-fourth centuries most of the Greek diphthongs began to lose their final elements. The pronunciation of ηι began to merge with that of ει in Attic Greek and with that of ι in Koine. The long αι came to be pronounced in the same way as the long α and ωι in the same way as ω. The loss of the diphthongs from the Greek language and the merging of the long diphthong phonemes with other Greek vowel phonemes led to the omission of the final ι from digraphs that had formerly represented long diphthongs. The iota subscript was created when the iota was reintroduced in the Byzantine period, to correct the loss of ι from copies of earlier manuscripts, but was placed below rather than beside the vowel to reflect the fact that it was not, by then, pronounced.

In recent years it has become common for Greek to be quoted and translated with an iota placed beside rather than beneath its vowel: this is known as the iota adscript or (Greek προσγεγραμμένη)