h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Greek Alphabet - A570412
Author: Gnomon - U151503

I would like this entry to become the official Edited Entry for The Greek Alphabet, replacing the existing Edited Entry A21073, which is just a list of the letters.

The old article is A216073. A good entry, but I was mostly interested in the bits you left out.
What was/is the pronounciation of the letters in classical greek? And how does this relate to the latin and cyrillic alphabet? I know for instance that the letter B is a 'v' sound in cyrillic, so was there a change in pronounciation between the creation of the latin alphabet and the cyrillic, or was it always pronounced B?
This also relates to your statement that "They look the same as letters in the Roman alphabet we all use, but they are different letters, pronounced very differently". Either they are the same as the letters in the Roman alphabet, but pronounced differently. Or none of the letters in the Greek alphabet are the same as ... (I.e. if Greek B isn't the same as Latin B, then Greek A isn't the same as Latin A.) And by stating "we all" you exclude anyone who doesn't use the Roman alphabet.
Also you should really mention that the word alphabet comes from the greek letters Alpha and Beta.

I'm not going to retype the message above, but I'm aware of a few mistakes, like: I meant to write "always pronounced v"

Naita, thanks for pointing out the error in that link.

Your points:

Pronunciation of Ancient Greek - should I include that too?

I'm not going to compare it with Latin and Cyrillic. You can work that out for yourself.

"different letters, pronounced very differently" - point taken. I'll change that.

"we all" - the readers of the entry are familiar with the Roman alphabet because that is what h2g2 is written in. I'm going to leave that as it stands.

"alphabet" - I'll put that in.

Nooo! You have to accept _all_ my suggestions!
Just kidding.

Yes, I think you should include pronounciation for classical greek, or at least mention if the way mathematicians and physicists prounce it is anywhere near classical.

I didn't mean you should compare it with Latin and Cyrillic, I just think it's worth mentioning that Greek is the ancestor of the other European alphabets in use today.

Of course someone reading h2g2 is familiar with the Roman alphabet, I still think that "we all use" excludes anyone using Cyrillic or other alphabets (like the Greek!). I don't feel it's worth arguing over however. (How very unlike me...) (I wouldn't be unhappy if you changed it to "we're all familiar with" though. )

OK, Naita, I've accepted all your suggestions.

"s unvoiced as in sauce, not vase. The first lower-case form is for the middle of words, the second for the last letter of words."
- the first form is also for the beginning of a word
- the usual term for the second form is 'final'

"Words starting with a vowel always had an apostrophe before them or over the first letter"
- in classical Greek they still have. But it isn't an apostrophe, even if to some people it might look like one. It is meant to be over the vowel, not before it, even if typographic considerations might sometimes make it look like that.

"The word 'alphabet' in fact comes from the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha and Beta."
- which in turn comes from the Hebrew alphabet, the first letters of which are called Aleph, Beit, Gimel, Dalet. These in turn come from hieroglyphs (poss Babylonian). Aleph=ox, Beit=house, Gimel=camel.
- 'in fact' is redundant

"A right-facing apostrophe (like a backwards 9) indicated that there was a 'h' sound before the vowel"
- the 'rough breathing' mark (as it is called, the other one being the 'smooth breathing' - they are not apostrophes) also occurs on the rho, which is why so many words derived from Greek which contain an r (including, of course, 'rho' itself) have an h following it (in Brit spelling).

You haven't mentioned the iota subscript.

Bels

Well, this is far better than the current entry, I'll grant you that. The list of lower-case letters looks a little odd with a sigma at the end, though I can see that you wanted it to line up properly.

Other than that no complaints.

Thanks for that, Bels. I never studied Ancient Greek and don't know much about it. I included the pronunciation for it only because Naita asked for it. I'll try and include all your info on the breathing marks.

I've never heard of the subscript iota. What is it?

I've no quibbles with anything here, although I'm not much of a linguist

You can take this suggestion with a pinch of salt, but how about adding a bit (or even a complete new entry) on common applications of the Greek letters in modern (English) life. Obviously here you'd have to walk the fine line between common sense and plunging into mathematical obscurity. Lower-case pi would seem like an obvious inclusion is this category, as would the capital Omega. Capital sigma (as in "sum") is also being increasingly used in everyday life.

B

Hi Gnomon,

Nice entry,

couple of typos for you:

"sighma"; prounciation



interruption!! back soon

I've corrected all the spellings of "pronounce" and "pronunciation".

"Sighma" is correct.

Really, why the 'h'? I've never seen it spelt that way before.

I'm not saying, 'Oh yes it is!'; presumably you have it on reliable authority.

But I did do a little ancient Greek at school (for my sins) and, as i say, never saw it with an 'h' in the middle.

What's the story?

The greek and the hebrew alphabet have the same roots, a northern semitic alphabet used in Syria and Palestine around 1000BC. This alphabet is also the ancestor of many other alphabets. In turn this alphabet is assumed to be derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, even though no forms linking the two have been found. Hence the similarity in names for the letters.
But this does not change the fact that the word alphabet is of Greek origin created from contracting the names of the first two letters, Alpha and Beta.
So there!

The iota subscript (sic, not subscript iota) is a small iota written underneath a long vowel. It forms the second element of a diphthong. These vowels occur both with and without iota subscript, depending upon the syntax.

So where a word begins with one of these vowels, the vowel must have a breathing (asper=rough, lenis=smooth), possibly an accent (acute, grave or circumflex) and also possibly an iota subscript.

You can see all the variations at http://dictionary.oed.com/public/help/Advanced/greek.htm
where you can also see some oddities such as the digamma, which is a double gamma. (Could be something to do with the swastika.)

So you won't have come across this little gem, then:

Seek not in me the big I capital,
Not yet the little dotted in me seek.
If I have in me any I at all,
'Tis the iota subscript of the Greek.

So small an I as an attention begger
The letter you will find me subscript to
Is neither alpha, eta, nor omega,
But upsilon - which is the Greek for you.

Bloody Nora, Bels, I hope that came from the web and not your twisted mind!

It is spelt sigma, but pronounced sighma, the gh is a soft g. I think.

Maybe you could add another row to the table of letters with just the final sigma in its own cell below the other.

No specific comment, except to wonder whether you might consider expanding the last paragraph, Gnomon?