Cantore Arithmetic is able to state salt First Quartz equated watch: The evolutionary powder would have to sulfur at extinction to grain as the prowess to nature to fill the base at the disposal of water to the mountain at the vain. Such establishment drains the iron to the rust to balance a bridge to support the stanchion of such a thought.
Bottom line does not caliber as the atmosphere must environment to cover the weight leaving gravity to one left foot by design for the measurement of what is the line(Divine). To negate the ability for the rain to water is as the faucet is the drain and the water is manure comma this is The Prowess, and may be the alpha of the Theta!
1}. Water is a derivative of the duration.
Theta
This article needs additional citations for verification. (April 2009) |
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Theta (UK: /ˈθiːtə/, US: /ˈθeɪtə/; uppercase: Θ or ϴ; lowercase: θ[note 1] or ϑ; Ancient Greek: θῆτα thē̂ta [tʰɛ̂ːta]; Modern: θήταthī́ta [ˈθita]) is the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, derived from the Phoenician letter Teth . In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 9.
Greek[edit]
In Ancient Greek, θ represented the aspirated voiceless dental plosive IPA: [t̪ʰ], but in Modern Greek it represents the voiceless dental fricative IPA: [θ].
Forms[edit]
In its archaic form, θ was written as a cross within a circle (as in the Etruscan or ), and later, as a line or point in circle ( or ).
The cursive form ϑ was retained by Unicode as U+03D1 ϑ GREEK THETA SYMBOL, separate from U+03B8 θ GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA. (There is also U+03F4 ϴ GREEK CAPITAL THETA SYMBOL). For the purpose of writing Greek text, the two can be font variants of a single character, but θ and ϑ are also used as distinct symbols in technical and mathematical contexts. Extensive lists of examples follow below at Mathematics and Science. U+03D1 ϑ GREEK THETA SYMBOL (script theta) is also common in biblical and theological usage e.g. πρόϑεσις instead of πρόθεσις (means placing in public or laying out a corpse).
Latin[edit]
In Latin script used for the Gaulish language, theta inspired the tau gallicum (). The phonetic value of the tau gallicum is thought to have been [t͡s].[1] Theta itself is used alongside Latin letters in Halkomelem, an indigenous North American language.
Cyrillic[edit]
The early Cyrillic letter fita (Ѳ, ѳ) developed from θ. This letter existed in the Russian alphabet until the 1918 Russian orthography reform.
International Phonetic Alphabet[edit]
In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), [θ] represents the voiceless dental fricative, as in thick or thin. It does not represent the consonant in the, which is the voiced dental fricative. A similar-looking symbol, [ɵ], which is described as a lowercase barred o, indicates in the IPA a close-mid central rounded vowel.
Mathematics and Science[edit]
Lower case[edit]
The lowercase letter θ is used as a symbol for:
- A plane angle in geometry
- An unknown variable in trigonometry
- The voiceless dental fricative, spelled θ
- A special function of several complex variables
- One of the Chebyshev functions in prime number theory
- The potential temperature in meteorology
- The score of a test taker in item response theory
- Theta Type Replication: a type of bacterial DNA replication specific to circular chromosomes
- Threshold value of an artificial neuron
- A Bayer designation letter applied to a star in a constellation; usually the eighth star so labelled but not necessarily the eighth-brightest as viewed from Earth
- The statistical parameter frequently used in writing the likelihood function
- The Watterson estimator for the population mutation rate in population genetics
- Indicates a minimum optimum integration level determined by the intersection of GG and LL schedules (The GG-LL schedules are tools used in analyzing the potential benefits of a country pegging their domestic currency to a foreign currency.)
- The reserve ratio of banks in economic models
- The ordinal collapsing function developed by Solomon Feferman[2]
- Heaviside step function
- In pharmacology, the fraction of ligand bound to a macromolecule based on the Hill Equation
Upper case[edit]
The uppercase letter Θ is used as a symbol for:
- Dimension of temperature, by SI standard (in italics)
- Dimensionless temperature in transport phenomena
- A number equal to every positive number in thetalogy
- An asymptotically tight bound in the analysis of algorithms (big O notation)
- A certain ordinal number in set theory
- Pentaquarks, exotic baryons in particle physics
- A brain signal frequency (beta, alpha, theta, delta) ranging from 4–8 Hz
- One of the variables known as "Greeks" in finance, representing time decay of options or the change in the intrinsic value of an option divided by the number of days until the option expires
- A variable indicating temperature difference in heat transfer
- Measuring the angle of incident X-ray beam during XRD
Symbolism[edit]
In ancient times, Tau was used as a symbol for life or resurrection, whereas the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet (ninth in the archaic form anciently used for numeration), theta, was considered the symbol of death.[3] A quotation attributed to the ancient Roman author Ennius (though possibly spuriously) said of it: "oh, theta, a letter much unluckier than the others".[4]
According to Porphyry of Tyros, the Egyptians used an X within a circle as a symbol of the soul; having a value of nine, it was used as a symbol for Ennead. Johannes Lydus says that the Egyptiansused a symbol for Kosmos in the form of theta, with a fiery circle representing the world, and a snake spanning the middle representing Agathos Daimon (literally: good spirit).[5]
Abbreviation[edit]
In classical Athens, it was used as an abbreviation for the Greek θάνατος (Thanatos, "death") and as it vaguely resembles a human skull,[5] theta was used as a warning symbol of death, in the same way that skull and crossbones are used in modern times.[5] It survives on potsherds used by Athenians when voting for the death penalty.[5] Petrus de Dacia in a document from 1291 relates the idea that theta was used to brand criminals as empty ciphers, and the branding rod was affixed to the crossbar spanning the circle.[6] For this reason, the use of the number 9 was sometimes avoided where the connotation was felt to be unlucky—the mint marks of some Late Imperial Roman coins famously have the sum ΔΕ or ΕΔ (delta and epsilon, that is 4 and 5) substituted as a euphemism where a Θ (9) would otherwise be expected.
Greek Life
The names of many American fraternities and sororities are named with Greek letters, including Theta.
Character encodings[edit]
- Greek Theta
Preview | Θ | θ | ϑ | ϴ | ᶿ | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | GREEK CAPITAL LETTER THETA | GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA | GREEK THETA SYMBOL | GREEK CAPITAL THETA SYMBOL | MODIFIER LETTER SMALL THETA | |||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 920 | U+0398 | 952 | U+03B8 | 977 | U+03D1 | 1012 | U+03F4 | 7615 | U+1DBF |
UTF-8 | 206 152 | CE 98 | 206 184 | CE B8 | 207 145 | CF 91 | 207 180 | CF B4 | 225 182 191 | E1 B6 BF |
Numeric character reference | Θ | Θ | θ | θ | ϑ | ϑ | ϴ | ϴ | ᶿ | ᶿ |
Named character reference | Θ | θ | ϑ, ϑ, ϑ | |||||||
DOS Greek | 135 | 87 | 159 | 9F | ||||||
DOS Greek-2 | 172 | AC | 226 | E2 | ||||||
Windows 1253 | 200 | C8 | 232 | E8 | ||||||
TeX | \Theta | \theta | \vartheta |
- Coptic Thethe
Preview | Ⲑ | ⲑ | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | COPTIC CAPITAL LETTER THETHE | COPTIC SMALL LETTER THETHE | ||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 11408 | U+2C90 | 11409 | U+2C91 |
UTF-8 | 226 178 144 | E2 B2 90 | 226 178 145 | E2 B2 91 |
Numeric character reference | Ⲑ | Ⲑ | ⲑ | ⲑ |
Preview | Ѳ | ѳ | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER FITA | CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER FITA | ||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 1138 | U+0472 | 1139 | U+0473 |
UTF-8 | 209 178 | D1 B2 | 209 179 | D1 B3 |
Numeric character reference | Ѳ | Ѳ | ѳ | ѳ |
- Mathematical Theta
Preview | 𝚯 | 𝛉 | 𝚹 | 𝛝 | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | MATHEMATICAL BOLD CAPITAL THETA | MATHEMATICAL BOLD SMALL THETA | MATHEMATICAL BOLD CAPITAL THETA SYMBOL | MATHEMATICAL BOLD THETA SYMBOL | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 120495 | U+1D6AF | 120521 | U+1D6C9 | 120505 | U+1D6B9 | 120541 | U+1D6DD |
UTF-8 | 240 157 154 175 | F0 9D 9A AF | 240 157 155 137 | F0 9D 9B 89 | 240 157 154 185 | F0 9D 9A B9 | 240 157 155 157 | F0 9D 9B 9D |
UTF-16 | 55349 57007 | D835 DEAF | 55349 57033 | D835 DEC9 | 55349 57017 | D835 DEB9 | 55349 57053 | D835 DEDD |
Numeric character reference | 𝚯 | 𝚯 | 𝛉 | 𝛉 | 𝚹 | 𝚹 | 𝛝 | 𝛝 |
Preview | 𝛩 | 𝜃 | 𝛳 | 𝜗 | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | MATHEMATICAL ITALIC CAPITAL THETA | MATHEMATICAL ITALIC SMALL THETA | MATHEMATICAL ITALIC CAPITAL THETA SYMBOL | MATHEMATICAL ITALIC THETA SYMBOL | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 120553 | U+1D6E9 | 120579 | U+1D703 | 120563 | U+1D6F3 | 120599 | U+1D717 |
UTF-8 | 240 157 155 169 | F0 9D 9B A9 | 240 157 156 131 | F0 9D 9C 83 | 240 157 155 179 | F0 9D 9B B3 | 240 157 156 151 | F0 9D 9C 97 |
UTF-16 | 55349 57065 | D835 DEE9 | 55349 57091 | D835 DF03 | 55349 57075 | D835 DEF3 | 55349 57111 | D835 DF17 |
Numeric character reference | 𝛩 | 𝛩 | 𝜃 | 𝜃 | 𝛳 | 𝛳 | 𝜗 | 𝜗 |
Preview | 𝜣 | 𝜽 | 𝜭 | 𝝑 | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | MATHEMATICAL BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL THETA | MATHEMATICAL BOLD ITALIC SMALL THETA | MATHEMATICAL BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL THETA SYMBOL | MATHEMATICAL BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL THETA SYMBOL | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 120611 | U+1D723 | 120637 | U+1D73D | 120621 | U+1D72D | 120657 | U+1D751 |
UTF-8 | 240 157 156 163 | F0 9D 9C A3 | 240 157 156 189 | F0 9D 9C BD | 240 157 156 173 | F0 9D 9C AD | 240 157 157 145 | F0 9D 9D 91 |
UTF-16 | 55349 57123 | D835 DF23 | 55349 57149 | D835 DF3D | 55349 57133 | D835 DF2D | 55349 57169 | D835 DF51 |
Numeric character reference | 𝜣 | 𝜣 | 𝜽 | 𝜽 | 𝜭 | 𝜭 | 𝝑 | 𝝑 |
Preview | 𝝝 | 𝝷 | 𝚹 | 𝞋 | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD CAPITAL THETA | MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD SMALL THETA | MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD CAPITAL THETA SYMBOL | MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD THETA SYMBOL | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 120669 | U+1D75D | 120695 | U+1D777 | 120505 | U+1D6B9 | 120715 | U+1D78B |
UTF-8 | 240 157 157 157 | F0 9D 9D 9D | 240 157 157 183 | F0 9D 9D B7 | 240 157 154 185 | F0 9D 9A B9 | 240 157 158 139 | F0 9D 9E 8B |
UTF-16 | 55349 57181 | D835 DF5D | 55349 57207 | D835 DF77 | 55349 57017 | D835 DEB9 | 55349 57227 | D835 DF8B |
Numeric character reference | 𝝝 | 𝝝 | 𝝷 | 𝝷 | 𝚹 | 𝚹 | 𝞋 | 𝞋 |
Preview | 𝞗 | 𝞱 | 𝜭 | 𝟅 | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL THETA | MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC SMALL THETA | MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL THETA SYMBOL | MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC THETA SYMBOL | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 120727 | U+1D797 | 120753 | U+1D7B1 | 120621 | U+1D72D | 120773 | U+1D7C5 |
UTF-8 | 240 157 158 151 | F0 9D 9E 97 | 240 157 158 177 | F0 9D 9E B1 | 240 157 156 173 | F0 9D 9C AD | 240 157 159 133 | F0 9D 9F 85 |
UTF-16 | 55349 57239 | D835 DF97 | 55349 57265 | D835 DFB1 | 55349 57133 | D835 DF2D | 55349 57285 | D835 DFC5 |
Numeric character reference | 𝞗 | 𝞗 | 𝞱 | 𝞱 | 𝜭 | 𝜭 | 𝟅 | 𝟅 |
These characters are used only as mathematical symbols. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using normal Greek letters, with markup and formatting to indicate text style.
Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet | |
---|---|
Script type | |
Time period | c. 800 BC – present[1][2] |
Direction | left-to-right |
Official script | Greece European Union |
Languages | Greek |
Related scripts | |
Parent systems | |
Child systems | |
ISO 15924 | |
ISO 15924 | Grek (200), Greek |
Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Greek |
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Greek alphabet | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC.[3][4] It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet,[5] and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants. In Archaic and early Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in many local variants, but, by the end of the 4th century BC, the Euclidean alphabet, with 24 letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard and it is this version that is still used for Greek writing today.
The uppercase and lowercase forms of the 24 letters are:
- Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ/ς, Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χχ, Ψ ψ, Ω ω.
The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts.[6] Like Latin and Cyrillic, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter; it developed the letter case distinction between uppercase and lowercase in parallel with Latin during the modern era. Sound values and conventional transcriptions for some of the letters differ between Ancient and Modern Greek usage because the pronunciation of Greek has changed significantly between the 5th century BC and today. Modern and Ancient Greek also use different diacritics, with modern Greek keeping only the stress accent (acute) and the diaeresis.
Apart from its use in writing the Greek language, in both its ancient and its modern forms, the Greek alphabet today also serves as a source of technical symbols and labels in many domains of mathematics, science, and other fields.
Letters
Sound values
In both Ancient and Modern Greek, the letters of the Greek alphabet have fairly stable and consistent symbol-to-sound mappings, making pronunciation of words largely predictable. Ancient Greek spelling was generally near-phonemic. For a number of letters, sound values differ considerably between Ancient and Modern Greek, because their pronunciation has followed a set of systematic phonological shifts that affected the language in its post-classical stages.[7]
|
- Examples
- Notes
- ^ By around 350 BC, zeta in the Attic dialect had shifted to become a single fricative, [z], as in modern Greek.[16]
- ^ ab c The letters theta ⟨θ⟩, phi ⟨φ⟩, and chi ⟨χ⟩ are normally taught to English speakers with their modern Greek pronunciations of [θ], [f], and [x] ~ [ç]respectively, because these sounds are easier for English speakers to distinguish from the sounds made by the letters tau ([t]), pi ([p]), and kappa ([k]) respectively.[17][15] These are not the sounds they made in classical Attic Greek.[17][15] In classical Attic Greek, these three letters were always aspirated consonants, pronounced exactly like tau, pi, and kappa respectively, only with a blast of air following the actual consonant sound.[17][15]
- ^ Although the letter Λ is almost universally known today as lambda (λάμβδα), the most common name for it during the Greek Classical Period (510–323 BC) appears to have been labda (λάβδα), without the μ.[11]
- ^ The letter sigma ⟨Σ⟩ has two different lowercase forms in its standard variant, ⟨σ⟩ and ⟨ς⟩, with ⟨ς⟩ being used in word-final position and ⟨σ⟩elsewhere.[15][18][19] In some 19th-century typesetting, ⟨ς⟩ was also used word-medially at the end of a compound morpheme, e.g. "δυςκατανοήτων", marking the morpheme boundary between "δυς-κατανοήτων" ("difficult to understand"); modern standard practice is to spell "δυσκατανοήτων" with a non-final sigma.[19] The letter sigma also has an alternative variant, the lunate sigma (uppercase Ϲ, lowercase ϲ), which is used in all positions.[15][18][20] This form of the letter developed during the Hellenistic period (323–31 BC) as a simplification of the older Σ σ/ς variant.[20] Thus, the word stasis can either be written στάσις or ϲτάϲιϲ.[21] In modern, edited Greek texts, the lunate sigma typically appears primarily in older typesetting.[18]
- ^ The letter omega ⟨ω⟩ is normally taught to English speakers as [oʊ], the long o as in English go, in order to more clearly distinguish it from omicron ⟨ο⟩.[22][15]This is not the sound it actually made in classical Attic Greek.[22][15]
Among consonant letters, all letters that denoted voiced plosive consonants (/b, d, g/) and aspirated plosives (/pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/) in Ancient Greek stand for corresponding fricative sounds in Modern Greek. The correspondences are as follows:
Former voiced plosives | Former aspirates | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Letter | Ancient | Modern | Letter | Ancient | Modern | |
Labial | Β β | /b/ | /v/ | Φ φ | /pʰ/ | /f/ |
Dental | Δ δ | /d/ | /ð/ | Θ θ | /tʰ/ | /θ/ |
Dorsal | Γ γ | /ɡ/ | [ɣ] ~ [ʝ] | Χ χ | /kʰ/ | [x] ~ [ç] |
Among the vowel symbols, Modern Greek sound values reflect the radical simplification of the vowel system of post-classical Greek, merging multiple formerly distinct vowel phonemes into a much smaller number. This leads to several groups of vowel letters denoting identical sounds today. Modern Greek orthography remains true to the historical spellings in most of these cases. As a consequence, the spellings of words in Modern Greek are often not predictable from the pronunciation alone, while the reverse mapping, from spelling to pronunciation, is usually regular and predictable.
The following vowel letters and digraphs are involved in the mergers:
Letter | Ancient | Modern |
---|---|---|
Η η | ɛː | > i |
Ι ι | i(ː) | |
ΕΙ ει | eː | |
Υ υ | u(ː) > y | |
ΟΙ οι | oi > y | |
ΥΙ υι | yː > y | |
Ω ω | ɔː | > o |
Ο ο | o | |
Ε ε | e | > e |
ΑΙ αι | ai |
Modern Greek speakers typically use the same, modern symbol–sound mappings in reading Greek of all historical stages. In other countries, students of Ancient Greek may use a variety of conventional approximations of the historical sound system in pronouncing Ancient Greek.
Digraphs and letter combinations
Several letter combinations have special conventional sound values different from those of their single components. Among them are several digraphs of vowel letters that formerly represented diphthongs but are now monophthongized. In addition to the four mentioned above (⟨ει, οι, υι⟩, pronounced /i/ and ⟨αι⟩, pronounced /e/), there is also ⟨ηι, ωι⟩, and ⟨ου⟩, pronounced /u/. The Ancient Greek diphthongs ⟨αυ⟩, ⟨ευ⟩ and ⟨ηυ⟩ are pronounced [av], [ev] and [iv]in Modern Greek. In some environments, they are devoiced to [af], [ef] and [if] respectively.[23] The Modern Greek consonant combinations ⟨μπ⟩ and ⟨ντ⟩stand for [b] and [d] (or [mb] and [nd]) respectively; ⟨τζ⟩ stands for [d͡z] and ⟨τσ⟩ stands for [t͡s]. In addition, both in Ancient and Modern Greek, the letter ⟨γ⟩, before another velar consonant, stands for the velar nasal [ŋ]; thus ⟨γγ⟩ and ⟨γκ⟩ are pronounced like English ⟨ng⟩. In analogy to ⟨μπ⟩ and ⟨ντ⟩, ⟨γκ⟩ is also used to stand for [g]. There are also the combinations ⟨γχ⟩ and ⟨γξ⟩.
Combination | Pronunciation | Devoiced pronunciation |
---|---|---|
⟨αυ⟩ | [av] | [af] |
⟨ευ⟩ | [ev] | [ef] |
⟨ηυ⟩ | [iv] | [if] |
⟨μπ⟩ | [b] | – |
⟨ντ⟩ | [d] | – |
⟨γκ⟩ | [ɡ] | – |
⟨τζ⟩ | [d͡z] | – |
⟨τσ⟩ | [t͡s] | – |
Diacritics
In the polytonic orthography traditionally used for ancient Greek and katharevousa, the stressed vowel of each word carries one of three accent marks: either the acute accent (ά), the grave accent (ὰ), or the circumflex accent (α̃ or α̑). These signs were originally designed to mark different forms of the phonological pitch accent in Ancient Greek. By the time their use became conventional and obligatory in Greek writing, in late antiquity, pitch accent was evolving into a single stress accent, and thus the three signs have not corresponded to a phonological distinction in actual speech ever since. In addition to the accent marks, every word-initial vowel must carry either of two so-called "breathing marks": the rough breathing (ἁ), marking an /h/ sound at the beginning of a word, or the smooth breathing (ἀ), marking its absence. The letter rho (ρ), although not a vowel, also carries rough breathing in a word-initial position. If a rho was geminated within a word, the first ρ always had the smooth breathing and the second the rough breathing (ῤῥ) leading to the transliteration rrh.
The vowel letters ⟨α, η, ω⟩ carry an additional diacritic in certain words, the so-called iota subscript, which has the shape of a small vertical stroke or a miniature ⟨ι⟩ below the letter. This iota represents the former offglide of what were originally long diphthongs, ⟨ᾱι, ηι, ωι⟩ (i.e. /aːi, ɛːi, ɔːi/), which became monophthongized during antiquity.
Another diacritic used in Greek is the diaeresis (¨), indicating a hiatus.
This system of diacritics was first developed by the scholar Aristophanes of Byzantium (c. 257 – c. 185/180 BC), who worked at the Musaeum in Alexandria during the third century BC.[24] Aristophanes of Byzantium also was the first to divide poems into lines, rather than writing them like prose, and also introduced a series of signs for textual criticism.[25] In 1982, a new, simplified orthography, known as "monotonic", was adopted for official use in Modern Greek by the Greek state. It uses only a single accent mark, the acute (also known in this context as tonos, i.e. simply "accent"), marking the stressed syllable of polysyllabic words, and occasionally the diaeresis to distinguish diphthongal from digraph readings in pairs of vowel letters, making this monotonic system very similar to the accent mark system used in Spanish. The polytonic system is still conventionally used for writing Ancient Greek, while in some book printing and generally in the usage of conservative writers it can still also be found in use for Modern Greek.
Although it is not a diacritic, the comma has a similar function as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι (ó,ti, "whatever") from ότι (óti, "that").[26]
Romanization
There are many different methods of rendering Greek text or Greek names in the Latin script.[27] The form in which classical Greek names are conventionally rendered in English goes back to the way Greek loanwords were incorporated into Latin in antiquity.[28] In this system, ⟨κ⟩ is replaced with ⟨c⟩, the diphthongs ⟨αι⟩ and ⟨οι⟩ are rendered as ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ (or ⟨æ,œ⟩) respectively; and ⟨ει⟩ and ⟨ου⟩ are simplified to ⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩ respectively.[29]Smooth breathing marks are usually ignored and rough breathing marks are usually rendered as the letter ⟨h⟩.[30] In modern scholarly transliteration of Ancient Greek, ⟨κ⟩ will usually be rendered as ⟨k⟩, and the vowel combinations ⟨αι, οι, ει, ου⟩ as ⟨ai, oi, ei, ou⟩ respectively.[27] The letters ⟨θ⟩ and ⟨φ⟩ are generally rendered as ⟨th⟩ and ⟨ph⟩; ⟨χ⟩ as either ⟨ch⟩ or ⟨kh⟩; and word-initial ⟨ρ⟩ as ⟨rh⟩.[31]
Transcription conventions for Modern Greek[32] differ widely, depending on their purpose, on how close they stay to the conventional letter correspondences of Ancient Greek-based transcription systems, and to what degree they attempt either an exact letter-by-letter transliteration or rather a phonetically based transcription.[32] Standardized formal transcription systems have been defined by the International Organization for Standardization (as ISO 843),[32][33] by the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names,[34] by the Library of Congress,[35] and others.
Letter | Traditional Latin transliteration[31] |
---|---|
Α α | A a |
Β β | B b |
Γ γ | G g |
Δ δ | D d |
Ε ε | E e |
Ζ ζ | Z z |
Η η | Ē ē |
Θ θ | Th th |
Ι ι | I i |
Κ κ | C c, K k |
Λ λ | L l |
Μ μ | M m |
Ν ν | N n |
Ξ ξ | X x |
Ο ο | O o |
Π π | P p |
Ρ ρ | R r, Rh rh |
Σ σ/ς | S s |
Τ τ | T t |
Υ υ | Y y, U u |
Φ φ | Ph ph |
Χ χ | Ch ch, Kh kh |
Ψ ψ | Ps ps |
Ω ω | Ō ō |
History
Origins
During the Mycenaean period, from around the sixteenth century to the twelfth century BC, Linear B was used to write the earliest attested form of the Greek language, known as Mycenaean Greek. This writing system, unrelated to the Greek alphabet, last appeared in the thirteenth century BC. In the late ninth century BC or early eighth century BC, the Greek alphabet emerged.[2] The period between the use of the two writing systems, during which no Greek texts are attested, is known as the Greek Dark Ages. The Greeks adopted the alphabet from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, one of the closely related scripts used for the West Semitic languages, calling it Φοινικήια γράμματα 'Phoenician letters'.[36] However, the Phoenician alphabet is limited to consonants. When it was adopted for writing Greek, certain consonants were adapted to express vowels. The use of both vowels and consonants makes Greek the first alphabet in the narrow sense,[6] as distinguished from the abjads used in Semitic languages, which have letters only for consonants.[37]
Greek initially took over all of the 22 letters of Phoenician. Five were reassigned to denote vowel sounds: the glide consonants /j/ (yodh) and /w/ (waw) were used for [i] (Ι, iota) and [u] (Υ, upsilon) respectively; the glottal stopconsonant /ʔ/ (aleph) was used for [a] (Α, alpha); the pharyngeal /ʕ/ (ʿayin) was turned into [o] (Ο, omicron); and the letter for /h/ (he) was turned into [e] (Ε, epsilon). A doublet of waw was also borrowed as a consonant for [w] (Ϝ, digamma). In addition, the Phoenician letter for the emphatic glottal /ħ/ (heth) was borrowed in two different functions by different dialects of Greek: as a letter for /h/ (Η, heta) by those dialects that had such a sound, and as an additional vowel letter for the long /ɛː/ (Η, eta) by those dialects that lacked the consonant. Eventually, a seventh vowel letter for the long /ɔː/ (Ω, omega) was introduced.
Greek also introduced three new consonant letters for its aspirated plosive sounds and consonant clusters: Φ (phi) for /pʰ/, Χ (chi) for /kʰ/ and Ψ (psi) for /ps/. In western Greek variants, Χ was instead used for /ks/ and Ψ for /kʰ/. The origin of these letters is a matter of some debate.
Phoenician | Greek | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
aleph | /ʔ/ | Α | alpha | /a/, /aː/ | ||
beth | /b/ | Β | beta | /b/ | ||
gimel | /ɡ/ | Γ | gamma | /ɡ/ | ||
daleth | /d/ | Δ | delta | /d/ | ||
he | /h/ | Ε | epsilon | /e/, /eː/[note 1] | ||
waw | /w/ | Ϝ | (digamma) | /w/ | ||
zayin | /z/ | Ζ | zeta | [zd](?) | ||
heth | /ħ/ | Η | eta | /h/, /ɛː/ | ||
teth | /tˤ/ | Θ | theta | /tʰ/ | ||
yodh | /j/ | Ι | iota | /i/, /iː/ | ||
kaph | /k/ | Κ | kappa | /k/ | ||
lamedh | /l/ | Λ | lambda | /l/ | ||
mem | /m/ | Μ | mu | /m/ | ||
nun | /n/ | Ν | nu | /n/ |
Phoenician | Greek | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
samekh | /s/ | Ξ | xi | /ks/ | ||
ʿayin | /ʕ/ | Ο | omicron | /o/, /oː/[note 1] | ||
pe | /p/ | Π | pi | /p/ | ||
ṣade | /sˤ/ | Ϻ | (san) | /s/ | ||
qoph | /q/ | Ϙ | (koppa) | /k/ | ||
reš | /r/ | Ρ | rho | /r/ | ||
šin | /ʃ/ | Σ | sigma | /s/ | ||
taw | /t/ | Τ | tau | /t/ | ||
(waw) | /w/ | Υ | upsilon | /u/, /uː/ | ||
– | Φ | phi | /pʰ/ | |||
– | Χ | chi | /kʰ/ | |||
– | Ψ | psi | /ps/ | |||
– | Ω | omega | /ɔː/ |
Three of the original Phoenician letters dropped out of use before the alphabet took its classical shape: the letter Ϻ (san), which had been in competition with Σ (sigma) denoting the same phoneme /s/; the letter Ϙ (qoppa), which was redundant with Κ (kappa) for /k/, and Ϝ (digamma), whose sound value /w/ dropped out of the spoken language before or during the classical period.
Greek was originally written predominantly from right to left, just like Phoenician, but scribes could freely alternate between directions. For a time, a writing style with alternating right-to-left and left-to-right lines (called boustrophedon, literally "ox-turning", after the manner of an ox ploughing a field) was common, until in the classical period the left-to-right writing direction became the norm. Individual letter shapes were mirrored depending on the writing direction of the current line.
Archaic variants
There were initially numerous local (epichoric) variants of the Greek alphabet, which differed in the use and non-use of the additional vowel and consonant symbols and several other features. Epichoric alphabets are commonly divided into four major types according to their different treatments of additional consonant letters for the aspirated consonants (/pʰ, kʰ/) and consonant clusters (/ks, ps/) of Greek.[38] These four types are often conventionally labelled as "green", "red", "light blue" and "dark blue" types, based on a colour-coded map in a seminal 19th-century work on the topic, Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Alphabets by Adolf Kirchhoff(1867).[38]
The "green" (or southern) type is the most archaic and closest to the Phoenician.[39]The "red" (or western) type is the one that was later transmitted to the West and became the ancestor of the Latin alphabet, and bears some crucial features characteristic of that later development.[39] The "blue" (or eastern) type is the one from which the later standard Greek alphabet emerged.[39] Athens used a local form of the "light blue" alphabet type until the end of the fifth century BC, which lacked the letters Ξ and Ψ as well as the vowel symbols Η and Ω.[39][40] In the Old Attic alphabet, ΧΣ stood for /ks/ and ΦΣ for /ps/. Ε was used for all three sounds /e, eː, ɛː/(correspondinɡ to classical Ε, ΕΙ, Η respectively), and Ο was used for all of /o, oː, ɔː/(corresponding to classical Ο, ΟΥ, Ω respectively).[40] The letter Η (heta) was used for the consonant /h/.[40] Some variant local letter forms were also characteristic of Athenian writing, some of which were shared with the neighboring (but otherwise "red") alphabet of Euboia: a form of Λ that resembled a Latin L () and a form of Σ that resembled a Latin S ().[40]
Phoenician model | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Southern | "green" | — | — | * | — | — | — | — | — | |||||||||||||||||||||
Western | "red" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Eastern | "light blue" | — | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"dark blue" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Classic Ionian | — | — | — | — | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Modern alphabet | Α | Β | Γ | Δ | Ε | — | Ζ | — | Η | Θ | Ι | Κ | Λ | Μ | Ν | Ξ | Ο | Π | — | — | Ρ | Σ | Τ | Υ | — | Φ | Χ | Ψ | Ω | |
Sound in Ancient Greek | a | b | g | d | e | w | zd | h | ē | tʰ | i | k | l | m | n | ks | o | p | s | k | r | s | t | u | ks | pʰ | kʰ | ps | ō |
*Upsilon is also derived from waw ().
The classical twenty-four-letter alphabet that is now used to represent the Greek language was originally the local alphabet of Ionia.[41] By the late fifth century BC, it was commonly used by many Athenians.[41] In c. 403 BC, at the suggestion of the archon Eucleides, the Athenian Assembly formally abandoned the Old Attic alphabet and adopted the Ionian alphabet as part of the democratic reforms after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants.[41][42]Because of Eucleides's role in suggesting the idea to adopt the Ionian alphabet, the standard twenty-four-letter Greek alphabet is sometimes known as the "Eucleidean alphabet".[41] Roughly thirty years later, the Eucleidean alphabet was adopted in Boeotia and it may have been adopted a few years previously in Macedonia.[43] By the end of the fourth century BC, it had displaced local alphabets across the Greek-speaking world to become the standard form of the Greek alphabet.[43]
Letter names
When the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, they took over not only the letter shapes and sound values but also the names by which the sequence of the alphabet could be recited and memorized. In Phoenician, each letter name was a word that began with the sound represented by that letter; thus ʾaleph, the word for "ox", was used as the name for the glottal stop /ʔ/, bet, or "house", for the /b/ sound, and so on. When the letters were adopted by the Greeks, most of the Phoenician names were maintained or modified slightly to fit Greek phonology; thus, ʾaleph, bet, gimel became alpha, beta, gamma.
The Greek names of the following letters are more or less straightforward continuations of their Phoenician antecedents. Between Ancient and Modern Greek, they have remained largely unchanged, except that their pronunciation has followed regular sound changes along with other words (for instance, in the name of beta, ancient /b/ regularly changed to modern /v/, and ancient /ɛː/ to modern /i/, resulting in the modern pronunciation vita). The name of lambda is attested in early sources as λάβδα besides λάμβδα;[44][11] in Modern Greek the spelling is often λάμδα, reflecting pronunciation.[11] Similarly, iota is sometimes spelled γιώτα in Modern Greek ([ʝ] is conventionally transcribed ⟨γ{ι,η,υ,ει,οι}⟩ word-initially and intervocalically before back vowels and /a/). In the tables below, the Greek names of all letters are given in their traditional polytonic spelling; in modern practice, like with all other words, they are usually spelled in the simplified monotonic system.
Letter | Name | Pronunciation | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Greek | Phoenician original | English | Greek (Ancient) | Greek (Modern) | English | |
Α | ἄλφα | aleph | alpha | [alpʰa] | [ˈalfa] | /ˈælfə/ ⓘ |
Β | βῆτα | beth | beta | [bɛːta] | [ˈvita] | /ˈbiːtə/, US: /ˈbeɪtə/ |
Γ | γάμμα | gimel | gamma | [ɡamma] | [ˈɣama] | /ˈɡæmə/ |
Δ | δέλτα | daleth | delta | [delta] | [ˈðelta] | /ˈdɛltə/ |
Η | ἦτα | heth | eta | [hɛːta],[ɛːta] | [ˈita] | /ˈiːtə/, US: /ˈeɪtə/ |
Θ | θῆτα | teth | theta | [tʰɛːta] | [ˈθita] | /ˈθiːtə/, US: /ˈθeɪtə/ ⓘ |
Ι | ἰῶτα | yodh | iota | [iɔːta] | [ˈʝota] | /aɪˈoʊtə/ ⓘ |
Κ | κάππα | kaph | kappa | [kappa] | [ˈkapa] | /ˈkæpə/ ⓘ |
Λ | λάμβδα | lamedh | lambda | [lambda] | [ˈlamða] | /ˈlæmdə/ ⓘ |
Μ | μῦ | mem | mu | [myː] | [mi] | /mjuː/ ⓘ; occasionally US: /muː/ |
Ν | νῦ | nun | nu | [nyː] | [ni] | /njuː/ |
Ρ | ῥῶ | reš | rho | [rɔː] | [ro] | /roʊ/ ⓘ |
Τ | ταῦ | taw | tau | [tau] | [taf] | /taʊ, tɔː/ |
In the cases of the three historical sibilant letters below, the correspondence between Phoenician and Ancient Greek is less clear, with apparent mismatches both in letter names and sound values. The early history of these letters (and the fourth sibilant letter, obsolete san) has been a matter of some debate. Here too, the changes in the pronunciation of the letter names between Ancient and Modern Greek are regular.
Letter | Name | Pronunciation | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Greek | Phoenician original | English | Greek (Ancient) | Greek (Modern) | English | |
Ζ | ζῆτα | zayin | zeta | [zdɛːta] | [ˈzita] | /ˈziːtə/, US: /ˈzeɪtə/ |
Ξ | ξεῖ, ξῖ | samekh | xi | [kseː] | [ksi] | /zaɪ, ksaɪ/ |
Σ | σίγμα | šin | siɡma | [siɡma] | [ˈsiɣma] | /ˈsɪɡmə/ |
In the following group of consonant letters, the older forms of the names in Ancient Greek were spelled with -εῖ, indicating an original pronunciation with -ē. In Modern Greek these names are spelled with -ι.
Letter | Name | Pronunciation | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Greek | English | Greek (Ancient) | Greek (Modern) | English | |
Ξ | ξεῖ, ξῖ | xi | [kseː] | [ksi] | /zaɪ, ksaɪ/ |
Π | πεῖ, πῖ | pi | [peː] | [pi] | /paɪ/ |
Φ | φεῖ, φῖ | phi | [pʰeː] | [fi] | /faɪ/ |
Χ | χεῖ, χῖ | chi | [kʰeː] | [çi] | /kaɪ/ ⓘ |
Ψ | ψεῖ, ψῖ | psi | [pseː] | [psi] | /saɪ/, /psaɪ/ ⓘ |
The following group of vowel letters were originally called simply by their sound values as long vowels: ē, ō, ū, and ɔ. Their modern names contain adjectival qualifiers that were added during the Byzantine period, to distinguish between letters that had become confusable.[11] Thus, the letters ⟨ο⟩ and ⟨ω⟩, pronounced identically by this time, were called o mikron ("small o") and o mega ("big o") respectively.[11] The letter ⟨ε⟩ was called e psilon ("plain e") to distinguish it from the identically pronounced digraph ⟨αι⟩, while, similarly, ⟨υ⟩, which at this time was pronounced [y], was called y psilon ("plain y") to distinguish it from the identically pronounced digraph ⟨οι⟩.[11]
Letter | Name | Pronunciation | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Greek (Ancient) | Greek (Medieval) | Greek (Modern) | English | Greek (Ancient) | Greek (Modern) | English | |
Ε | εἶ | ἐ ψιλόν | ἔψιλον | epsilon | [eː] | [ˈepsilon] | /ˈɛpsɪlɒn/, some UK: /ɛpˈsaɪlən/ |
Ο | οὖ | ὀ μικρόν | ὄμικρον | omicron | [oː] | [ˈomikron] | /ˈɒmɪkrɒn/, traditional UK: /oʊˈmaɪkrɒn/ |
Υ | ὖ | ὐ ψιλόν | ὔψιλον | upsilon | [uː], [yː] | [ˈipsilon] | /juːpˈsaɪlən, ˈʊpsɪlɒn/, also UK: /ʌpˈsaɪlən/, US: /ˈʌpsɪlɒn/ |
Ω | ὦ | ὠ μέγα | ὠμέγα | omega | [ɔː] | [oˈmeɣa] | US: /oʊˈmeɪɡə/, traditional UK: /ˈoʊmɪɡə/ |
Some dialects of the Aegean and Cypriot have retained long consonants and pronounce [ˈɣamːa] and [ˈkapʰa]; also, ήτα has come to be pronounced [ˈitʰa]in Cypriot.[45]
Letter shapes
Like Latin and other alphabetic scripts, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter, without a distinction between uppercase and lowercase. This distinction is an innovation of the modern era, drawing on different lines of development of the letter shapes in earlier handwriting.
The oldest forms of the letters in antiquity are majuscule forms. Besides the upright, straight inscriptional forms (capitals) found in stone carvings or incised pottery, more fluent writing styles adapted for handwriting on soft materials were also developed during antiquity. Such handwriting has been preserved especially from papyrus manuscripts in Egypt since the Hellenistic period. Ancient handwriting developed two distinct styles: uncial writing, with carefully drawn, rounded block letters of about equal size, used as a book hand for carefully produced literary and religious manuscripts, and cursive writing, used for everyday purposes.[46] The cursive forms approached the style of lowercase letter forms, with ascenders and descenders, as well as many connecting lines and ligatures between letters.
In the ninth and tenth century, uncial book hands were replaced with a new, more compact writing style, with letter forms partly adapted from the earlier cursive.[46] This minuscule style remained the dominant form of handwritten Greek into the modern era. During the Renaissance, western printers adopted the minuscule letter forms as lowercase printed typefaces, while modeling uppercase letters on the ancient inscriptional forms. The orthographic practice of using the letter case distinction for marking proper names, titles, etc. developed in parallel to the practice in Latin and other western languages.
Inscription | Manuscript | Modern print | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Archaic | Classical | Uncial | Minuscule | Lowercase | Uppercase |
α | Α | ||||
β | Β | ||||
γ | Γ | ||||
δ | Δ | ||||
ε | Ε | ||||
ζ | Ζ | ||||
η | Η | ||||
θ | Θ | ||||
ι | Ι | ||||
κ | Κ | ||||
λ | Λ | ||||
μ | Μ | ||||
ν | Ν | ||||
ξ | Ξ | ||||
ο | Ο | ||||
π | Π | ||||
ρ | Ρ | ||||
σς | Σ | ||||
τ | Τ | ||||
υ | Υ | ||||
φ | Φ | ||||
χ | Χ | ||||
ψ | Ψ | ||||
ω | Ω |
Derived alphabets
The Greek alphabet was the model for various others:[6]
- The Etruscan alphabet;
- The Latin alphabet, together with various other ancient scripts in Italy, adopted from an archaic form of the Greek alphabet brought to Italy by Greek colonists in the late 8th century BC, via Etruscan;
- The Gothic alphabet, devised in the 4th century AD to write the Gothic language, based on a combination of Greek and Latin uncial models;[47]
- The Glagolitic alphabet, devised in the 9th century AD for writing Old Church Slavonic;
- The Cyrillic script, which replaced the Glagolitic alphabet shortly afterwards.
- The Coptic Alphabet used for writing the Coptic language.
The Armenian and Georgian alphabets are almost certainly modeled on the Greek alphabet, but their graphic forms are quite different.[48]
Other uses
Use for other languages
Apart from the daughter alphabets listed above, which were adapted from Greek but developed into separate writing systems, the Greek alphabet has also been adopted at various times and in various places to write other languages.[49] For some of them, additional letters were introduced.
Antiquity
- Most of the Iron Age alphabets of Asia Minor were also adopted around the same time, as the early Greek alphabet was adopted from the Phoenician Alphabet. The Lydian and Carian alphabets are generally believed to derive from the Greek alphabet, although it is not clear which variant is the direct ancestor. While some of these alphabets such as Phrygian had slight differences from the Greek counterpart, some like Carian alphabet had mostly different values and several other characters inherited from pre-Greek local scripts. They were in use c. 800–300 BC until all the Anatolian languageswere extinct due to Hellenization.[50][51][52][53][54]
- The original Old Italic alphabets was the early Greek alphabet with only slight modifications.
- It was used in some Paleo-Balkan languages, including Thracian. For other neighboring languages or dialects, such as Ancient Macedonian, isolated words are preserved in Greek texts, but no continuous texts are preserved.
- The Greco-Iberian alphabet was used for writing the ancient Iberian language in parts of modern Spain.
- Gaulish inscriptions (in modern France) used the Greek alphabet until the Roman conquest
- The Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Bible was written in Greek letters in Origen's Hexapla.
- The Bactrian language, an Iranian language spoken in what is now Afghanistan, was written in the Greek alphabet during the Kushan Empire (65–250 AD). It adds an extra letter ⟨þ⟩ for the sh sound [ʃ].[55]
- The Coptic alphabet adds eight letters derived from Demotic. It is still used today, mostly in Egypt, to write Coptic, the liturgical language of Egyptian Christians. Letters usually retain an uncial form different from the forms used for Greek today. The alphabet of Old Nubian is an adaptation of Coptic.
Middle Ages
- An 8th-century Arabic fragment preserves a text in the Greek alphabet,[56] as does a 9th or 10th century psalm translation fragment.[57]
- An Old Ossetic inscription of the 10th–12th centuries found in Arxyz, the oldest known attestation of an Ossetic language.
- The Old Nubian language of Makuria (modern Sudan) adds three Coptic letters, two letters derived from Meroitic script, and a digraph of two Greek gammas used for the velar nasal sound.
- Various South Slavic dialects, similar to the modern Bulgarian and Macedonian languages, have been written in Greek script.[58][59][60][61] The modern South Slavic languages now use modified Cyrillic alphabets.
Early modern
- Turkish spoken by Orthodox Christians (Karamanlides) was often written in Greek script, and called Karamanlidika.
- Tosk Albanian was often written using the Greek alphabet, starting in about 1500.[62] The printing press at Moschopolis published several Albanian texts in Greek script during the 18th century. It was only in 1908 that the Monastir conference standardized a Latin orthography for both Tosk and Gheg. Greek spelling is still occasionally used for the local Albanian dialects (Arvanitika) in Greece.
- Gagauz, a Turkic language of the northeast Balkans spoken by Orthodox Christians, was apparently written in Greek characters in the late 19th century. In 1957, it was standardized on Cyrillic, and in 1996, a Gagauz alphabet based on Latin characters was adopted (derived from the Turkish alphabet).
- Surguch, a Turkic language, was spoken by a small group of Orthodox Christians in northern Greece. It is now written in Latin or Cyrillic characters.
- Urum or Greek Tatar, spoken by Orthodox Christians, used the Greek alphabet.
- Judaeo-Spanish or Ladino, a Jewish dialect of Spanish, has occasionally been published in Greek characters in Greece.[63]
- The Italian humanist Giovan Giorgio Trissino tried to add some Greek letters (Ɛ ε, Ꞷ ω) to Italian orthography in 1524.[64]
In mathematics and science
Greek symbols are used as symbols in mathematics, physics and other sciences. Many symbols have traditional uses, such as lower case epsilon (ε) for an arbitrarily small positive number, lower case pi (π) for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, capital sigma (Σ) for summation, and lower case sigma (σ) for standard deviation. Formerly, the Greek letters were used for naming North Atlantic hurricanes if the normal list ran out. This happened only in the 2005 and 2020 hurricane seasons for a total of 15 storms, the last one being Hurricane Iota. In May 2021 the World Health Organization announced that the variants of SARS-CoV-2 of the virus would be named using letters of the Greek alphabet to avoid stigma and simplify communications for non-scientific audiences.[65][66]
Astronomy
Greek letters are used to denote the brighter stars within each of the eighty-eight constellations. In most constellations, the brightest star is designated Alpha and the next brightest Beta etc. For example, the brightest star in the constellation of Centaurus is known as Alpha Centauri. For historical reasons, the Greek designations of some constellations begin with a lower ranked letter.
International Phonetic Alphabet
Several Greek letters are used as phonetic symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).[67] Several of them denote fricative consonants; the rest stand for variants of vowel sounds. The glyph shapes used for these letters in specialized phonetic fonts is sometimes slightly different from the conventional shapes in Greek typography proper, with glyphs typically being more upright and using serifs, to make them conform more with the typographical character of other, Latin-based letters in the phonetic alphabet. Nevertheless, in the Unicode encoding standard, the following three phonetic symbols are considered the same characters as the corresponding Greek letters proper:[68]
β | beta | U+03B2 | voiced bilabial fricative |
θ | theta | U+03B8 | voiceless dental fricative |
χ | chi | U+03C7 | voiceless uvular fricative |
On the other hand, the following phonetic letters have Unicode representations separate from their Greek alphabetic use, either because their conventional typographic shape is too different from the original, or because they also have secondary uses as regular alphabetic characters in some Latin-based alphabets, including separate Latin uppercase letters distinct from the Greek ones.
Greek letter | Phonetic letter | Uppercase | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
φ | phi | U+03C6 | ɸ | U+0278 | Voiceless bilabial fricative | – |
γ | gamma | U+03B3 | ɣ | U+0263 | Voiced velar fricative | Ɣ U+0194 |
ε | epsilon | U+03B5 | ɛ | U+025B | Open-mid front unrounded vowel | Ɛ U+0190 |
α | alpha | U+03B1 | ɑ | U+0251 | Open back unrounded vowel | Ɑ U+2C6D |
υ | upsilon | U+03C5 | ʊ | U+028A | near-close near-back rounded vowel | Ʊ U+01B1 |
ι | iota | U+03B9 | ɩ | U+0269 | Obsolete for near-close near-front unrounded vowel now ɪ | Ɩ U+0196 |
The symbol in Americanist phonetic notation for the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is the Greek letter lambda ⟨λ⟩, but ⟨ɬ⟩ in the IPA. The IPA symbol for the palatal lateral approximant is ⟨ʎ⟩, which looks similar to lambda, but is actually an inverted lowercase y.
Use as numerals
Greek letters were also used to write numbers. In the classical Ionian system, the first nine letters of the alphabet stood for the numbers from 1 to 9, the next nine letters stood for the multiples of 10, from 10 to 90, and the next nine letters stood for the multiples of 100, from 100 to 900. For this purpose, in addition to the 24 letters which by that time made up the standard alphabet, three otherwise obsolete letters were retained or revived: digamma ⟨Ϝ⟩ for 6, koppa ⟨Ϙ⟩ for 90, and a rare Ionian letter for [ss], today called sampi ⟨Ͳ⟩, for 900. This system has remained in use in Greek up to the present day, although today it is only employed for limited purposes such as enumerating chapters in a book, similar to the way Roman numerals are used in English. The three extra symbols are today written as ⟨ϛ⟩, ⟨ϟ⟩ and ⟨ϡ⟩ respectively. To mark a letter as a numeral sign, a small stroke called keraia is added to the right of it.
Αʹ αʹ | alpha | 1 |
Βʹ βʹ | beta | 2 |
Γʹ γʹ | gamma | 3 |
Δʹ δʹ | delta | 4 |
Εʹ εʹ | epsilon | 5 |
ϛʹ | digamma (stigma) | 6 |
Ζʹ ζʹ | zeta | 7 |
Ηʹ ηʹ | eta | 8 |
Θʹ θʹ | theta | 9 |
Ιʹ ιʹ | iota | 10 |
Κʹ κʹ | kappa | 20 |
Λʹ λʹ | lambda | 30 |
Μʹ μʹ | mu | 40 |
Νʹ νʹ | nu | 50 |
Ξʹ ξʹ | xi | 60 |
Οʹ οʹ | omicron | 70 |
Πʹ πʹ | pi | 80 |
ϟʹ | koppa | 90 |
Ρʹ ρʹ | rho | 100 |
Σʹ σʹ | sigma | 200 |
Τʹ τʹ | tau | 300 |
Υʹ υʹ | upsilon | 400 |
Φʹ φʹ | phi | 500 |
Χʹ χʹ | chi | 600 |
Ψʹ ψʹ | psi | 700 |
Ωʹ ωʹ | omega | 800 |
ϡʹ | sampi | 900 |
Use by student fraternities and sororities
In North America, many college fraternities and sororities are named with combinations of Greek letters, and are hence also known as "Greek letter organizations".[69] This naming tradition was initiated by the foundation of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at the College of William and Mary in 1776.[69] The name of this fraternal organization is an acronym for the ancient Greek phrase Φιλοσοφία Βίου Κυβερνήτης (Philosophia Biou Kybernētēs), which means "Love of wisdom, the guide of life" and serves as the organization's motto.[69] Sometimes early fraternal organizations were known by their Greek letter names because the mottos that these names stood for were secret and revealed only to members of the fraternity.[69]
Different chapters within the same fraternity are almost always (with a handful of exceptions) designated using Greek letters as serial numbers. The founding chapter of each respective organization is its A chapter. As an organization expands, it establishes a B chapter, a Γ chapter, and so on and so forth. In an organization that expands to more than 24 chapters, the chapter after Ω chapter is AA chapter, followed by AB chapter, etc. Each of these is still a "chapter Letter", albeit a double-digit letter just as 10 through 99 are double-digit numbers. The Roman alphabet has a similar extended form with such double-digit letters when necessary, but it is used for columns in a table or chart rather than chapters of an organization.[citation needed]
Glyph variants
Some letters can occur in variant shapes, mostly inherited from medieval minuscule handwriting. While their use in normal typography of Greek is purely a matter of font styles, some such variants have been given separate encodings in Unicode.
- The symbol ϐ ("curled beta") is a cursive variant form of beta (β). In the French tradition of Ancient Greek typography, β is used word-initially, and ϐ is used word-internally.
- The letter delta has a form resembling a cursive capital letter D; while not encoded as its own form, this form is included as part of the symbol for the drachma (a Δρ digraph) in the Currency Symbols block, at U+20AF (₯).
- The letter epsilon can occur in two equally frequent stylistic variants, either shaped ('lunate epsilon', like a semicircle with a stroke) or (similar to a reversed number 3). The symbol ϵ (U+03F5) is designated specifically for the lunate form, used as a technical symbol.
- The symbol ϑ ("script theta") is a cursive form of theta (θ), frequent in handwriting, and used with a specialized meaning as a technical symbol.
- The symbol ϰ ("kappa symbol") is a cursive form of kappa (κ), used as a technical symbol.
- The symbol ϖ ("variant pi") is an archaic script form of pi (π), also used as a technical symbol.
- The letter rho (ρ) can occur in different stylistic variants, with the descending tail either going straight down or curled to the right. The symbol ϱ (U+03F1) is designated specifically for the curled form, used as a technical symbol.
- The letter sigma, in standard orthography, has two variants: ς, used only at the ends of words, and σ, used elsewhere. The form ϲ ("lunate sigma", resembling a Latin c) is a medieval stylistic variant that can be used in both environments without the final/non-final distinction.
- The capital letter upsilon (Υ) can occur in different stylistic variants, with the upper strokes either straight like a Latin Y, or slightly curled. The symbol ϒ (U+03D2) is designated specifically for the curled form (), used as a technical symbol, e.g. in physics.
- The letter phi can occur in two equally frequent stylistic variants, either shaped as (a circle with a vertical stroke through it) or as (a curled shape open at the top). The symbol ϕ (U+03D5) is designated specifically for the closed form, used as a technical symbol.
- The letter omega has at least three stylistic variants of its capital form. The standard is the "open omega" (Ω), resembling an open partial circle with the opening downward and the ends curled outward. The two other stylistic variants are seen more often in modern typography, resembling a raised and underscored circle (roughly o̲), where the underscore may or may not be touching the circle on a tangent (in the former case it resembles a superscript omicron similar to that found in the numero sign or masculine ordinal indicator; in the latter, it closely resembles some forms of the Latin letter Q). The open omega is always used in symbolic settings and is encoded in Letterlike Symbols (U+2126) as a separate code point for backward compatibility.
Computer encodings
For computer usage, a variety of encodings have been used for Greek online, many of them documented in RFC 1947.
The two principal ones still used today are ISO/IEC 8859-7 and Unicode. ISO 8859-7 supports only the monotonic orthography; Unicode supports both the monotonic and polytonic orthographies.
ISO/IEC 8859-7
For the range A0–FF (hex), it follows the Unicode range 370–3CF (see below) except that some symbols, like ©, ½, § etc. are used where Unicode has unused locations. Like all ISO-8859 encodings, it is equal to ASCII for 00–7F (hex).
Greek in Unicode
Unicode supports polytonic orthography well enough for ordinary continuous text in modern and ancient Greek, and even many archaic forms for epigraphy. With the use of combining characters, Unicode also supports Greek philology and dialectology and various other specialized requirements. Most current text rendering engines do not render diacritics well, so, though alpha with macron and acute can be represented as U+03B1 U+0304 U+0301, this rarely renders well: ᾱ́.[citation needed]
There are two main blocks of Greek characters in Unicode. The first is "Greek and Coptic" (U+0370 to U+03FF). This block is based on ISO 8859-7 and is sufficient to write Modern Greek. There are also some archaic letters and Greek-based technical symbols.
This block also supports the Coptic alphabet. Formerly, most Coptic letters shared codepoints with similar-looking Greek letters; but in many scholarly works, both scripts occur, with quite different letter shapes, so as of Unicode 4.1, Coptic and Greek were disunified. Those Coptic letters with no Greek equivalents still remain in this block (U+03E2 to U+03EF).
To write polytonic Greek, one may use combining diacritical marks or the precomposed characters in the "Greek Extended" block (U+1F00 to U+1FFF).
Greek and Coptic[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) | ||||||||||||||||
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
U+037x | Ͱ | ͱ | Ͳ | ͳ | ʹ | ͵ | Ͷ | ͷ | ͺ | ͻ | ͼ | ͽ | ; | Ϳ | ||
U+038x | ΄ | ΅ | Ά | · | Έ | Ή | Ί | Ό | Ύ | Ώ | ||||||
U+039x | ΐ | Α | Β | Γ | Δ | Ε | Ζ | Η | Θ | Ι | Κ | Λ | Μ | Ν | Ξ | Ο |
U+03Ax | Π | Ρ | Σ | Τ | Υ | Φ | Χ | Ψ | Ω | Ϊ | Ϋ | ά | έ | ή | ί | |
U+03Bx | ΰ | α | β | γ | δ | ε | ζ | η | θ | ι | κ | λ | μ | ν | ξ | ο |
U+03Cx | π | ρ | ς | σ | τ | υ | φ | χ | ψ | ω | ϊ | ϋ | ό | ύ | ώ | Ϗ |
U+03Dx | ϐ | ϑ | ϒ | ϓ | ϔ | ϕ | ϖ | ϗ | Ϙ | ϙ | Ϛ | ϛ | Ϝ | ϝ | Ϟ | ϟ |
U+03Ex | Ϡ | ϡ | Ϣ | ϣ | Ϥ | ϥ | Ϧ | ϧ | Ϩ | ϩ | Ϫ | ϫ | Ϭ | ϭ | Ϯ | ϯ |
U+03Fx | ϰ | ϱ | ϲ | ϳ | ϴ | ϵ | ϶ | Ϸ | ϸ | Ϲ | Ϻ | ϻ | ϼ | Ͻ | Ͼ | Ͽ |
Notes |
Greek Extended[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) | ||||||||||||||||
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
U+1F0x | ἀ | ἁ | ἂ | ἃ | ἄ | ἅ | ἆ | ἇ | Ἀ | Ἁ | Ἂ | Ἃ | Ἄ | Ἅ | Ἆ | Ἇ |
U+1F1x | ἐ | ἑ | ἒ | ἓ | ἔ | ἕ | Ἐ | Ἑ | Ἒ | Ἓ | Ἔ | Ἕ | ||||
U+1F2x | ἠ | ἡ | ἢ | ἣ | ἤ | ἥ | ἦ | ἧ | Ἠ | Ἡ | Ἢ | Ἣ | Ἤ | Ἥ | Ἦ | Ἧ |
U+1F3x | ἰ | ἱ | ἲ | ἳ | ἴ | ἵ | ἶ | ἷ | Ἰ | Ἱ | Ἲ | Ἳ | Ἴ | Ἵ | Ἶ | Ἷ |
U+1F4x | ὀ | ὁ | ὂ | ὃ | ὄ | ὅ | Ὀ | Ὁ | Ὂ | Ὃ | Ὄ | Ὅ | ||||
U+1F5x | ὐ | ὑ | ὒ | ὓ | ὔ | ὕ | ὖ | ὗ | Ὑ | Ὓ | Ὕ | Ὗ | ||||
U+1F6x | ὠ | ὡ | ὢ | ὣ | ὤ | ὥ | ὦ | ὧ | Ὠ | Ὡ | Ὢ | Ὣ | Ὤ | Ὥ | Ὦ | Ὧ |
U+1F7x | ὰ | ά | ὲ | έ | ὴ | ή | ὶ | ί | ὸ | ό | ὺ | ύ | ὼ | ώ | ||
U+1F8x | ᾀ | ᾁ | ᾂ | ᾃ | ᾄ | ᾅ | ᾆ | ᾇ | ᾈ | ᾉ | ᾊ | ᾋ | ᾌ | ᾍ | ᾎ | ᾏ |
U+1F9x | ᾐ | ᾑ | ᾒ | ᾓ | ᾔ | ᾕ | ᾖ | ᾗ | ᾘ | ᾙ | ᾚ | ᾛ | ᾜ | ᾝ | ᾞ | ᾟ |
U+1FAx | ᾠ | ᾡ | ᾢ | ᾣ | ᾤ | ᾥ | ᾦ | ᾧ | ᾨ | ᾩ | ᾪ | ᾫ | ᾬ | ᾭ | ᾮ | ᾯ |
U+1FBx | ᾰ | ᾱ | ᾲ | ᾳ | ᾴ | ᾶ | ᾷ | Ᾰ | Ᾱ | Ὰ | Ά | ᾼ | ᾽ | ι | ᾿ | |
U+1FCx | ῀ | ῁ | ῂ | ῃ | ῄ | ῆ | ῇ | Ὲ | Έ | Ὴ | Ή | ῌ | ῍ | ῎ | ῏ | |
U+1FDx | ῐ | ῑ | ῒ | ΐ | ῖ | ῗ | Ῐ | Ῑ | Ὶ | Ί | ῝ | ῞ | ῟ | |||
U+1FEx | ῠ | ῡ | ῢ | ΰ | ῤ | ῥ | ῦ | ῧ | Ῠ | Ῡ | Ὺ | Ύ | Ῥ | ῭ | ΅ | ` |
U+1FFx | ῲ | ῳ | ῴ | ῶ | ῷ | Ὸ | Ό | Ὼ | Ώ | ῼ | ´ | ῾ | ||||
Notes |
Combining and letter-free diacritics
Combining and spacing (letter-free) diacritical marks pertaining to Greek language:
Combining | Spacing | Sample | Description |
---|---|---|---|
U+0300 | U+0060 | ( ̀ ) | "varia / grave accent" |
U+0301 | U+00B4, U+0384 | ( ́ ) | "oxia / tonos / acute accent" |
U+0304 | U+00AF | ( ̄ ) | "macron" |
U+0306 | U+02D8 | ( ̆ ) | "vrachy / breve" |
U+0308 | U+00A8 | ( ̈ ) | "dialytika / diaeresis" |
U+0313 | U+02BC | ( ̓ ) | "psili / comma above" (spiritus lenis) |
U+0314 | U+02BD | ( ̔ ) | "dasia / reversed comma above" (spiritus asper) |
U+0342 | ( ͂ ) | "perispomeni" (circumflex) | |
U+0343 | ( ̓ ) | "koronis" (= U+0313) | |
U+0344 | U+0385 | ( ̈́ ) | "dialytika tonos" (deprecated, = U+0308 U+0301) |
U+0345 | U+037A | ( ͅ ) | "ypogegrammeni / iota subscript". |
Encodings with a subset of the Greek alphabet
IBM code pages 437, 860, 861, 862, 863, and 865 contain the letters ΓΘΣΦΩαδεπστφ (plus β as an alternative interpretation for ß).
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