Hoplites or Oplites

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Icchan
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Hoplites or Oplites

Postby Icchan » Wed Jan 02, 2019 12:29 pm

Is there a reason hoplites in Darklands are written as Oplites?
Ancient greeks wrote it as oplites, but there's a diacritic on the first O meaning it's pronounced with a heavy breathing sound, like the sound of the letter h, which is why it's often translated to hoplite and oplite. But what's the reasoning in Darklands?
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Rob Lane
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Re: Hoplites or Oplites

Postby Rob Lane » Wed Jan 02, 2019 9:58 pm

Icchan wrote:Is there a reason hoplites in Darklands are written as Oplites?
Ancient greeks wrote it as oplites, but there's a diacritic on the first O meaning it's pronounced with a heavy breathing sound, like the sound of the letter h, which is why it's often translated to hoplite and oplite. But what's the reasoning in Darklands?


It's basically because it should be pronounced "OP-li-teez" not "hop-lights" which is how most wargamers say it. I omit the H so that it is not pronounced with an H, and the Ὁ is not there because I will only go so far with diacritics for a few reasons, mainly because fonts don't often have characters for them all.

Cheers
Rob
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Icchan
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Re: Hoplites or Oplites

Postby Icchan » Thu Jan 03, 2019 2:45 am

As a non-English speaker it never occured to me that it could be pronounced "-lights". Thanks for the info though.
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Rob Lane
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Re: Hoplites or Oplites

Postby Rob Lane » Thu Jan 03, 2019 8:58 am

Icchan wrote:As a non-English speaker it never occured to me that it could be pronounced "-lights". Thanks for the info though.


No worries, I do welcome questions about language and pronunciations!

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Rob

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