difference between E and Έ

[drummist]

Several capital greek letters have a variant with what looks like an apostrophe in front of the symbol.  i can't find any information on this variant.  what function does this have and when (if ever) is it used?

as an example, i've seen this: Έν and this: Ev

[user10]

Hi,
the "apostrophe" is an accent, i.e. Ένα παιδί ("ένα" in lower case).

[banned8]

It depends on whether you are referring to modern or classical Greek. In modern Greek the only such diacritic is the accent: there in only one accent, which looks like the acute accent of classical Greek, and is used to show where the stress falls on a word, therefore we don't use it on words of one syllable. Thus, in modern Greek we have Εν (a classical word for 'in' we still use in old cliches), but Ένα for 'one' (neuter).

In classical Greek there were three accents plus the so called breathings: the spiritus lenis and the spiritus asper. Thus, we used to have:
Ἐν    ἐν for 'in' (with the spiritus lenis) and
Ἓν   ἓν for 'one' (neuter) (with the spiritus asper and a grave accent)

You'll find some more information here.

[drummist]

thanks for responding.  i was referring to classical greek and the word i was trying to use was "one".  so to take the socrates quote: Εν οίδα ότι ουδέν οίδα would the capital E have two diacritics?

[banned8]

Correct. The whole thing would be:

Ἓν (or ἓν) οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα

[drummist]

thanks!