Talk:Greek alphabet

Stigma

If stigma is merely a stylistic ligature, then I agree that it should be removed from the Obsolete Letters table. In that case, it was never a letter. FilipeS (talk) 18:51, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

If theta, phi, chi, psi, sho, sampi bears consonant clusters such as th, ph, ch, ps, sh, ss, and can be letters, then stigma that bears st consonant cluster too can be letter. 216.40.255.90 (talk) 19:14, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

But stigma was never an independent letter. It was always possible and correct to replace it with sigma-tau. Psi cannot be replaced with pi-sigma. Stigma seems to have been always an optional ligature. As such, it should not be regarded as a letter; it is merely a glyph. FilipeS (talk) 19:17, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Stigma is not even a ligature in sense of Æ and Œ, because it doesn't look as contracted ΣΤ, but somewhat different, thus it can be only letter. 216.40.255.90 (talk) 19:21, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

That's a matter of opinion. I think it does look like a sigma merged with a tau, and historically its origin is clearly in a ligature. See here. FilipeS (talk) 19:24, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Thus I can agree, that current stigma is a simplified ΣΤ ligature, but without middle vertical line | included in Τ and without bottom horizontal line _ included in Σ. But because it can be technically utilized as separate letter, better keep it in article. Stigma even bears numerical value 6 like separate letter, but not sum of sigma 200 and tau 300 numerals, which will be 500. 216.40.255.90 (talk) 19:35, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

There are two functions of the symbol stigma ϛ: one as a ligature for the sequence sigma-tau; the other as a Greek numeral, where it is really a glyph for digamma. Neither of these constitutes a "letter" in any conventional sense. Nor is the "letter" stigma ever mentioned in the alphabetical sequence of the Greek letters. Its graphic form is very similar to the final sigma ς (which is of course also not a letter in itself) and sometimes they are mistakenly exchanged.

As a ligature, it is found in many manuscripts and in a few printed texts which use ligatures. Though in modern Greek typography there are essentially no ligatures, some old fonts contain dozens (see the punches for Claude Garamond's grecs du roi), none of which count as 'letters'.

It is silly to write the name of stigma as ϛῖγμα -- unless of course someone can find a WP:Reliable Source for this usage. --Macrakis (talk) 18:58, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Each Greek letter has old spelling with usage of initial old letter and new spelling without usage of initial old letter. Thus in case of Stigma is presented normal practice, as with other obsolete letters, thus nothing is silly. 91.94.11.205 (talk) 21:16, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

That is assuming that stigma is an 'obsolete letter'. But it is a ligature. Can you find any examples in reliable sources where stigma is used in this way? --Macrakis (talk) 21:26, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

If Þorgal Ærgisson can be written in Scandinavian languages with ligature Æ, then stigma name can be too written analogously as ϛῖγμα with ligature ϛ in medieval Greek language. This is obvious. 79.162.61.204 (talk) 14:52, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

But it isn't written like that in modern scholarship, even where modern scholarship discusses the historical name "stigma". Read Use–mention distinction. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

As the Æ article says, "Originally a ligature representing a Latin diphthong, [Æ] has been promoted to the full status of a letter in the alphabets of many languages." Where is the evidence that this has happened for stigma? --Macrakis (talk) 15:24, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

This evidence is in existence of stigma itself. Ligatures are always used as letter-cluster replacements. They are never used for nothing. Additionally, I place for your convenience all new Greek Unicode 5.1 codepoints:

• Ͱͱ heta
• Ͳͳ alphabetic, non numeric sampi
• Ͷͷ pamphylian digamma

• Ϗ big kai 79.162.61.204 (talk) 15:34, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

That's ridiculous. Many Latin typefaces include ligatures "ff", "fi", etc. and they even have Unicode codepoints (U+FB00, U+FB01). That doesn't make them letters. Again, please find WP:Reliable sources that a) treats stigma as a letter and/or b) uses it to write the word "stigma". --Macrakis (talk) 19:07, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I always thought that stigma is a letter or alphabetic ligature in sense of Æ and Œ, but you say that stigma is a ligature in sense of ff and fi, but even these f-related ligatures are used in words, for example stuff and figure. Even Google accepts such input. 79.162.61.204 (talk) 19:48, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

CB, can you please log in with your username when you join in the discussion here? It makes things easier to follow and to connect. Thanks. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:00, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

What would make you think that it is a letter like Scandinavian Æ? Of course ligatures like ff are used to typeset words; that doesn't make them "letters". And back to the original question: do you have any Reliable Source that shows the rendition ϛῖγμα? Sure, it was used in manuscripts, but many other ligatures were also used in manuscripts. Anon/CB, you are the only one as far as I can tell arguing for stigma as a letter. Until you or someone else finds evidence, I think we can safely remove stigma as a letter of the Greek alphabet, and remove the spelling ϛῖγμα. --Macrakis (talk) 20:17, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I am not any Civil Band (Radio Team), CBMIBM, IBMCBM, MBM, Atari, Amiga, Amstrad or other registered Wikipedian. I'm anonymous. I don't have any reliable sources. I only thought, that stigma is a letter, but I now give up. Let's stigma will be missed as you wish, if you don't consider it a letter. 79.162.61.204 (talk) 20:40, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Of course I meant User:CBMIBM. Can you please clarify, are you saying you are not CBMIBM? Just curious. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:47, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I am former User:Wikinger, but lost my complicated hex-dump like password. 79.162.58.228 (talk) 09:54, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

From what has been said in this discussion, I conclude that stigma should be considered a glyph variant of the grapheme "ςτ", and not a proper letter. With respect to Latin Æ and Œ, they started out as glyph variants as well, and in some languages (English, French...) they are still no more than variants of "AE" and "OE". In other languages, however (Danish, Norwegian...), they are used to represent individual sounds, with a different sound value from "AE" and "OE". So they are proper, independent letters in some alphabets. FilipeS (talk) 21:17, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Because T-shaped alphabetic Sampi was introduced recently to Wikipedia, I think that it is in T-shape not corrupted, but fully fledged letter. For proof look into Sampi article to compare alphabetic T-Sampi and numeric C-Sampi. As you see, T-Sampi is more like russian П and too Greek PI, with addition of |, while C-Sampi is more like russian Э and too Greek LUNATE EPSILON, with addition of -. In this way T-Sampi should be primary, and C-Sampi secondary. 91.94.153.30 (talk) 16:55, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

"Probably" [w]?

Anybody know why the "obsolete letters" table gives the historical pronunciation of waw as "probably" [w], and not just as [w]? Is there any serious alternative? Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:56, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The digamma article offers /v/ but only as the sole surviving modern example of the phoneme, namely Tsakonian βάννε for SMG αρνί. ·ΚέκρωΨ· (talk) 16:07, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for the pointer. Interesting case. Given that both [w] > [v], and [w] > zero, are pretty natural sound changes, while [v] > zero would be odd, and on the other side digamma < idg. /ŭ/ seems etymologically certain, I'll go out on an OR limb and declare [w] as established. As long as nobody comes across an actual alternative proposal for Ancient Greek. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:14, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds [v] and [w] can simply be alternate spellings of the same /ŭ/.79.162.54.8 (talk) 21:52, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

When we write something between brackets [ ], we mean the sound. See International Phonetic Alphabet. ;-) FilipeS (talk) 21:56, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree. 91.94.48.166 (talk) 09:24, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Paleography/typography info?

We should have a section on the development of the lettershapes: ancient cursive forms, the shift to uncial style in Byzantine times, the adaptation to typesetting, the innovation of uppercase/lowercase usage... Anybody has some good material at hand? Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:48, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Sho

User Mackaris has just removed the letter sho from the Obsolete letters table. However, judging from the previous discussion, there is no consensus in favour of this change. FilipeS (talk) 18:28, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I would support removal of the letter from the table. There is no way that this was ever part of what anyone would normally think of as the Greek alphabet. Moreover it would seem that even the name of the letter is prbably a modern invention. --rossb (talk) 18:45, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Anyway, I did not delete it, I moved the mention of the Bactrian letter Sho from the table to the discussion of Bactrian. Please compare the treatment of the Greek alphabet to the treatment of the Roman alphabet. The very many letters which are added to the Roman alphabet for other languages (e.g. Ŵ, ß, ɸ) are not treated in the main Roman alphabet article. Neither are the Coptic letters treated in the Greek alphabet article.

Everson and Sims-Williams (paper cited in Sho (letter)) argue that it should be grouped with Greek letters in Unicode; this does not make it a "Greek letter". --Macrakis (talk) 18:53, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, you have a point about the Roman/Latin alphabet article. It is true that sho can be considered an "uncommon" letter of the Greek alphabet. But the thing is that there are many, many rare extra letters in the Latin alphabet, whereas that does not seem to be the case with the Greek alphabet, which has historically not been used by as many languages. And I'm not sure that the Coptic letters should be considered letters of the Greek alphabet, rather than part of an independent (though Greek-based) alphabet, like the Cyrillic alphabet is. FilipeS (talk) 19:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

How is the Coptic case different from the Bactrian? As for Greek, actually there are a bunch of things which could be called "letters" which have been used with it, e.g. for writing Arvanitika or for clarifying when sigma is voiced (in dialectology), etc. --Macrakis (talk) 19:35, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Coptic is different from Bactrian in the same way that the Latin alphabet or the Cyrillic alphabet are different from Bactrian. Nobody regards the former as variants of the Greek alphabet nowadays. FilipeS (talk) 19:54, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Names of letters ε, ο and υ

According to the Greek Grammar text book taught in Greek elementary schools, the letters ε, ο and υ are pronounced έψιλο, όμικρο and ύψιλο respectively (without the finite ν). pinikas (talk) 19:06, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

What you are talking about is the name of the letters, not their pronunciation.

I notice that Mackaris has reverted Pinikas' edit. How about writing the nu between parentheses? FilipeS (talk) 19:14, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Pinika, please give a reference. The Babiniotis and Andriotis dictionaries (1998 eds.) include the ν; the Greek Wikipedia includes the ν; and Web usage is 100:1 in favor of the version with ν. At best, even if the non-ν form is being taught in elementary schools, the ν could be put in parentheses. --Macrakis (talk) 19:17, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I am not an expert on the field, but I think that if we are talking about Modern Greek and not Katharevousa, the correct form would be without the ν at the end. Anyway, the book i was reffering to was "Νεοελληνική Γραμματική : της ε' και στ' δημοτικού / Τσολάκης Χρίστος / Αθήνα / Οργανισμός Εκδόσεως Διδακτικών Βιβλίων / ISBN 960-06-0171-2 pinikas (talk) 19:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Babiniotis and Andriotis are not Katharevousa, neither is the Greek Wikipedia, or most Greek written on the Web. Perhaps the Ministry of Education is now using the forms without final ν; was there a decree to this effect? do more recent editions of the dictionaries use the form without ν? If so, putting the ν in parentheses would be appropriate -- apparently common usage has not caught up even if this is the new official form. --Macrakis (talk) 19:32, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

The common usage in Greece is the one with the ν. Everyone in Greece would say εψιλον instead of έψιλο. Ofcourse that doesn't mean it's also the official form. Take the letter ε for example. έψιλον -> ε ψιλόν (simple e). Now the word ψιλόν is Katharevousa. It Modern Greek someone would say ψιλό. My opinion is that if we are talking strictly about Modern Greek, the correct form would be έψιλο instead of έψιλον. pinikas (talk) 19:59, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

If it's not the spelling commoly used by native speakers, we can't put it up in Wikipedia... FilipeS (talk) 20:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Stigma, Sho, Sanpi, etc.

See further discussion at Talk:Alpha and Omega... AnonMoos (talk) 17:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Protection?

Reference note: The user going by CBMIBM (who has also been warned repeatedly on his talk page by editors) has archived the detailed talk page here to hide his recent massive edits to the Greek alphabet page. Perhaps a Wikipedian with some time can restore both the talk page, the Greek alphabet table, and place protection on the page. Sturmde (talk) 16:08, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Assuming that I archived Greek talk page to hide edits is not true. I simply archived talk page, because it was very big already. For proof of my good intentions, I restored Greek alphabet table again and did the same with templates. I removed these letters only because other editors had edit war and didn't wanted them here. I only provoked edit war again, thus I give up. Maybe you will restore my changes and protect Greek alphabet and its templates from other editors, but not from me - I wanted only add missing letters and nothing more. CBMIBM (talk) 10:49, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Major difference here. By archiving an ACTIVE discussion, you stifle discussion. By Wikipedia rules, an archived page isn't supposed to be edited. All your changes, and those made recently by others are very much disputed, and should be dealt with properly by using consensus and CfV. You claim good intentions, but you made changes based on the input of two people. Furthermore, it's very suspicious to both edit a page AND archive the talk page. It's simply deceitful, and you're not convincing me at all otherwise. Not that you have to. That's just my opinion.--Sturmde (talk) 16:46, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

This discussion was dead from more than half of month when I archived it. I really want to see Heta, Stigma and Sho in article, but I cannot add them again effectively, because of threat of edit war triggering mentioned above by me, which is manifested by reverts made by other editors after readding these letters by me. CBMIBM (talk) 12:19, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Image:Greek alphabet extended.png

With regard to the Wikinger (CBMIBM) image Image:Greek alphabet extended.png -- the additions to the standard Greek alphabet of 24 letters there are a miscellaneous grab-bag of various archaic letters (rarely used after ca. 300 B.C.), numerical symbols not usually used as letters, letters used only in the writing of non-Greek languages, and medieval ligatures identified with numerical symbols. There was never a single historical alphabetic sequence, or sequence of alphabetic symbols used numerically, which included all these "letters". See further at Talk:Alpha and Omega. AnonMoos (talk) 00:51, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

My Image:Greek alphabet extended.png is in reality a complete grab-bag of all Greek Unicode letters and variants called as such in official Unicode charts. CBMIBM (talk) 16:53, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Illegible

This sentence appears in the second paragraph of the section currently labeled history: "Its most notable change, as an adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet, is the introduction of vowel letters, without which Greek, unlike Phoenician, would be illegible." Is this sentence stating that Phoenician was illegible, or legible but without the use of vowels? I am assuming the latter simply because the former is absurd, and if so, I believe the sentence should be reworded to resonate the intended meaning more clearly. (PhilipDSullivan (talk) 00:17, 9 February 2008 (UTC))

The sentence means that Greek would be illegible without vowels, while Phoenician was not. FilipeS (talk) 17:20, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Filipe. (PhilipDSullivan (talk) 17:24, 9 February 2008 (UTC))

I took out the unlike Phoenician phrase. I believe the sentence still retains the same meaning while at the same time being slightly clearer. (PhilipDSullivan (talk) 17:33, 9 February 2008 (UTC))

That seems reasonable enough to me. FilipeS (talk) 18:45, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Greek keyboard

This page appears in the category Keyboard layouts, but I don't see anything about Greek keyboards here. There's an article about the QWERTZ keyboard (used in German-speaking countries), and one about the AZERTY keyboard (used in French-speaking countries), but I haven't found one on Greek keyboards. See the image at http://www.anotek.com/ANOTEKCLASSIC.GIF. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:57, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

English names and pronunciation

Am I the only one to object to the "Pronunciation" column in this section? The supposed English pronunciation is inaccurate (I've never heard anyone pronounce "psi" in English with a silent p) and it's a disgrace to not use proper IPA in an article on a linguistic subject. I was about to correct it myself until I realised it's an image. --rossb (talk) 22:35, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

All those three big images in that section are unnecessary, in my view. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:09, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the section. It is redundant with the existing table, aas RossB says pronunciations should be in IPA, and anyway images are a poor way to present information like this. --Macrakis (talk) 02:44, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[Letter Yot]

In Greek alphabet as equivalent of /j/ serves letter Yot. "J" is uppercase and "ȷ" is lowercase. That permits proper distinction from Iota that has value of /i/. Full non-degraded Greek alphabet is listed below, where are given IPA sound values of all Greek letters available as such in Unicode. Note that Beta is for /b/, while Wau is for /w/. Eta is of course for /e/, while Phi is of course for /ph/. This alphabet avoids digraphs completely, even Omega as long /oo/ can be used to write /u/, because English "saloon" that is pronounced /selun/ provides equivalence between /oo/ and /u/. 72.46.132.98 (talk) 20:26, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Is it just me? I can't for the life of me work out what the paragraph above is supposed to mean. --rossb (talk) 23:12, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

This is I - anonymous user, but not you - Ross Burgess. I stated above that today vernacular Greeks even don't know their alphabet in its entirety as defined below, and they currently makes weird tricks such as using Iota both for /i/ and /j/, assigning sound of Wau /w/ to Beta /b/, while substituting Beta itself with Mu-Pi cluster pronounced /b/, conflating of Eta and Iota to /i/ sound, pronouncing Phi as /f/ instead of /ph/, and finally using Omicron-Ypsilon cluster for /u/ instead of more logical solution of using Omega that is sort of duplicate of Omicron with /o/ sound, because Omega has /oo/ sound. Using Omega for /u/, is more logical, because even for example English word "saloon" is pronounced /selun/, what permits safe replacement of excessive Omicron-like sound /oo/ assigned to Omega with /u/. Greeks call themselves most logical nation, but despite of this, I easily fixed their un-logical solutions here. They even use more digraphs that are pronounced in other way as they are written. As one of such examples can serve Gamma-Gamma cluster pronounced /ng/, instead of correct Nu-Gamma cluster pronounced /ng/. 72.46.132.98 (talk) 10:05, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It reports on things, it does not propose correctives and reforms, criticize the status quo, or publish original research. The above discussion is unencyclopedia and doesn't belong on WP (including on Talk pages). --Macrakis (talk) 13:46, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Thus I must move on to http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org , where such things are appreciated. 72.46.132.98 (talk) 16:04, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

comments

Please take a look at this wiki - page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispilio_Tablet. In the last twelve years there are findings basically from to archaelogists n.sampson and g.hourmouziadis that testify that there have been written texts from 5000 - 6000bc. Please update the article