Expert: Maria - 2/8/2006

Question
Hello I was wondering how you would write out "Father's Little Angel" in Greek.  I am getting a portrait of me and my father for his 50th birthday, he always says to me " Daddys Little Greek Angel", so on the portrait i wanted to have painted "Father Little Angel" into the portrait, but i cant seem to find it anywhere.  It would be a great help and i would appreciate it.
Thanks
Christy

Answer
Hello,

First of all my field of expertise is ancient Greek (not Modern Greek) and then I can tell you how you can say "Father's Little Angel” in ancient Greek, of course.

Second, please note that I cannot use the Greek characters and  diacritic marks because the system does not allow it. Therefore I must use a transliteration from the Greek letters to the Latin alphabet.
Anyway I  wrote in brackets the name of each Greek letter, so that you can see these letters of Greek alphabet at the sites I mention below and try to copy them, if you want.

Having said this, here's the translation you asked me:

“O micros tou patros angelos”

-O (omicron with the grave accent and the rough breathing)

-Micros (mu-iota-kappa-rho-omicron with the grave accent- final sigma )

-Tou ( tau-omicron- upsilon, with circumflex accent on ‘ou')

-Patros (pi-alpha-tau-rho-omicron with the grave accent- final sigma )

Aggelos (alpha with the acute accent and soft breaking--gamma-gamma-epsilon-lambda-omicron- final sigma )

Finally note that:
-Father's = tou patros
-Little = micros
-Angel = o   angelos

Best,
Maria
________________________________
http://www.ibiblio.org/koine/greek/lessons/alphabet.html
http://people.msoe.edu/~tritt/greek.html
http://www.physlink.com/Reference/GreekAlphabet.cfm
http://www.xanthi.ilsp.gr/filog/ch1/alphabet/alphabet.asp?vletter=1
http://www.businessballs.com/greekalphabet.htm

The “rough breathing"is the mark of an initial aspiration in ancient Greek. It is written as an opening half moon on top of or to the left of an initial vowel and rho. It looks like a reversed comma.
The "soft breathing” is the mark of the absence of initial aspiration in ancient Greek. . It is written as an opening half moon on top of or to the left of an initial vowel or diphthong.  It looks like a comma.