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)

As I predicted, codepoints in beta and final Unicode 5.1 remains the same, exactly according to official Unicode statement that even in beta stage codepoints remains final and stable. CBMIBM (talk) 09:06, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

My qualm is that Table_Greekletters now only almost contains the whole system for Greek numerals. If you want to call stigma merely a glyph, then perhaps our Table should be Table_Greekglyphs instead. Simply put, leaving out stigma necessitates a Table_Greeknumerals being added to almost each Greek letter page. By the way I do not understand why you compare Ϛ to ΣΤ, when the lower case, ϛ, looks like στ in . :)--Thecurran (talk) 04:22, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I should have noted that the last example shows stigma in a word-initial position so, since it is not restricted to word-medials and word-finals, there should be no problem accepting ϛῖγμα as a reasonable spelling in circumstances (eras/locales) that accepted stigma usage in words. As most sources did not permit stigma usage, asking for that exact spelling might be an unreasonable burden. The spellings of English letters are hardly agreed on ais it is.

Where are the sources that substantiate the statements, "But stigma was never an independent letter. It was always possible and correct to replace it with sigma-tau.", anyway? Given the use of globalized terms, like "never" and "always", it actually seems unverifiable. All one would have to believe in would be that a memo once existed that contained stigma but not sigma-tau. It should not be an important point either way as the pages for other obsolete letters do not show their Greek spellings. Also please, note that digraphs have an extra special usage in Greek in the first place, like the mu-pi that makes "b" in birra (beer) or the gamma-gamma that makes "ng" in evangelion (good news). :)-Thecurran (talk) 04:44, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

When is the source that substantiates the claim that stigma is a letter? FilipeS (talk) 09:46, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, your grammar seems somewhat ambiguous. The picture I chose was Image:Stigma-var.png from the Byzantine period uploaded by User:Bender235 as referenced in Stigma (letter). Please see also http://anubis.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n1743.pdf as referenced in Talk:Greek alphabet#Acrophonic_names_of_Greek_letters. It seems you are suggesting that stigma has never been a letter. What do you mean? :)--Thecurran (talk) 07:31, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I think people have become a bit tired of discussing stigma, just after (hopefully) finishing with that incredibly disruptive POV-pusher CBMIBM and his obsessions over it. Now, stigma, as a glyph element denoting an "s-t" combination, is indeed not a letter, but simply a glyph contraction in handwriting. The fact you're probably missing is how commonplace that was. There were dozens or even hundreds of conventional ligatures of that sort (see Greek ligatures), the "s-t" combination is merely one of them, with no special status whatsoever. The only reason it has its separate representation in the modern computer encodings is its role as a numeral, which really has little to do with its "s-t" function, and doesn't make it an alphabetic letter either. It never had a position in the alphabet, it never was a systematic element of the orthographic system (a grapheme in the technical sense), and it is never, ever, used in real-life encoded representations of Greek text these days, outside its role as a numeral. By the way, I also very much doubt even its name "stigma" is authentic. The word stigma is originally just a word meaning 'symbol, marking' (from a verb stizo, 'to mark') and has nothing to do with this particular symbol. Its use as a character name is evidently motivated by reanalysing the word as an acrophonic representing the initial st- sound combination, with -igma analogous to sigma and other letter names in -ma. But when that name was coopted in this way I don't know, it was very likely only in modern times. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:29, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I do not entirely agree with what you say but I can still see your point. The root of what I am saying though is that this table is on each page for the regular Greek letters and if we keep stigma off, we would also have to attach a Greek numeral table bearing each of the same symbols and stigma to each of these pages because Greek numerals are also a noteworthy subject. Having two such similar tables on each would be visually confusing. I understand you wish to count stigma as a glyph or numeral but not a letter, but please uderstand that it is a creation of the Greek alphabet and without practically doubling the table, perhaps changing the name of this one would serve both purposes nicely. :)--Thecurran (talk)

Of course the numerals are interesting. But why does that mean they have to be in a box repeated on all sorts of unrelated articles? Their role is explained in Greek numerals, in the main table at Greek alphabet, and again individually in the main text of each character article. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:51, 7 August 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 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.75.239.19 (talk) 14:57, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Even if the Dispilio Tablet contains "writing" (a claim which as far as I know Hourmouziadis has not published in any archaeology journal), it is surely not Greek, being far too early, and surely not related to the Greek Alphabet, which is what this article is about. --Macrakis (talk) 11:38, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Dispillio Tablet contains Linear A syllabary, that is not alphabetic at all. CBMIBM (talk) 12:01, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

It's not Linear A either, as far as I know. Far too early. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:21, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Linear A I got from this talk: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dispilio_Tablet . Which nature has script from Dispillio Tablet? Alphabetic, syllabic, word-level ideographic or even sentence-level ideographic? CBMIBM (talk) 17:29, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

The claim about Linear A was made as a piece of OR by some Wikipedian, and the posting on that talkpage merely quotes it as something unsourced and false. Nobody knows what kind of script those signs are, if they are writing at all. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:39, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Alternative version of beta

The article states that the alternative "curled" form of beta is mainly used at the ends of words. Given that a Greek word cannot normally end with a beta, I wonder why there should be a special version for this position? --rossb (talk) 16:44, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Ooops, my bad. I was writing from memory and must have got that wrong without thinking. There was some tradition though that it was regulated according to position in the word somehow. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:47, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Acrophonic names of Greek letters

For example, Greek letter Stigma can be spelled as Ϛιγμα using Stigma itself instead of Στιγμα, because here: http://anubis.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n1743.pdf is good example of its usage as Stigma itself within words instead of Sigma-Tau sequence within the same words with many book references in printed text beginning with words: "SMALL LETTER STIGMA was used widely in Greek typography throughout the history of printing Greek." CBMIBM (talk) 09:14, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Stop obsessing. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:30, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Please read and acknowledge properly provided verifiable sources, instead of talking clinical crap. I see that you have unjust prejudice against me by calling me (psychiatric) obsessionate. CBMIBM (talk) 09:51, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Fut.Perf. is accurately describing your behavior. Could you please stop with this stigma stuff? --Macrakis (talk) 13:41, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

If you still reject all official reliable Unicode sources, because of preferring non-Unicode sources, I stop because of your scepticism in manner of full Unicode Greek alphabet that is as follows:

Now I explain my reasons of interest in Greek alphabet: I think that each name in Greek should begin without exceptions acrophonically with letter to which it is assigned, and each symbol called as letter in Unicode should be present. In this way English Wikipedia is highly POV, because rejects official Unicode definition of Greek alphabet. In other wikis my edits were accepted flawlessly. Meanwhile I found somewhere Greek "Times Ind" counterpart of Gerhard Köbler's Latin "Times German" from http://www.koeblergerhard.de/idgwbhin.html that contains all Unicode Greek letters to write Proto-Indo-European as first Adamic language with first non-abjad alphabet - namely Greek. Both fonts maps characters identically inside their full 256 character set. I use for PIE naming of letters format: A, BA, GA, DA ... as Fijians do: http://www.fijituwawa.com/songs.shtml because this scheme finalizes each consonant spelling with A - first letter of alphabet. Greek numbers that I see inside "Times Ind" font are as follows: 0, I, II, III, III‧I, III‧II, III‧III, III‧III‧I, III‧III‧II, III‧III‧III to make borrowing of letters and digits from Phoenicians on equal footing. Really serifs are joined to form ligatures. Please note that Zero looks as full height derivative of Phoenician empty place ‧ sign. I noticed that name of Greek counterpart font is intended in that way, that "Times Ind" and "Times German" are a subset of "Times Ind-o-German-isch" divisable into "Times Ind-isch" and "Times German-isch". All letters in Greek counterpart font are capital, and are placed into codes of small letters of Latin counterpart, while capital places are filled with empty squares, because in font there were more small than capital letters, and PIE uses only small Latin letters in PDFs. "Times Ind" font is done in such way, that font change automatically changes small Latin PIE text into big Greek PIE text. As you see, I am rationalistic, but never psychic, as Fut.Perf described me. Do you allow placing this Greek alphabet proposal in Proto-Indo-European language article? CBMIBM (talk) 14:23, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

No. The Greek alphabet has nothing whatsoever to do with Proto-Indo-European. Stop pushing your confused private phantasies. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:32, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I only wanted to join "first tongue" with "first alphabet". Thus I will put these true reconstructions based on Anne Catherine Emmerich called by you as phantasies into Wikinfo, where such things are allowed and appreciated. Really, PIE had no alphabet, but sentence-level ideographic script that doesn't carry any phonetic information because of its very high abstraction level, as is described and referenced from Anne Catherine Emmerich in Adamic language article, thus best thing for PIE really would be earliest available non-abjad script - the Greek alphabet. My reconstructions are not confused, they want only to avoid confusion of tongues completely - especially for all Catholics. That's all. CBMIBM (talk) 14:39, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Please use Wikinfo for such Original Research things. Thanks. 91.94.180.26 (talk) 16:08, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

CBMIBM, Unicode is a character encoding standard, not an "official" definition of the Greek or any other alphabet. As for the business about "first tongue", "sentence-level ideographic script", etc., this is all fringe or original research and doesn't belong here. --Macrakis (talk) 16:23, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

But Unicode at least tells me which glyph is symbol and which is letter proper. CBMIBM (talk) 16:42, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

It defines some characters (not glyphs) as "letters" in a very useful but narrow technical sense. It is not authoritative for philological/linguistics issues. --Macrakis (talk) 19:55, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Both Indogermanisches Wörterbuch and Greek "Times Ind" font intended for native writing PIE are available in Files section of Cybalist. CBMIBM (talk) 08:39, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Huh? --Macrakis (talk) 16:41, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Don't be surprised. Gerhard Köbler already provided his Indogermanisches Wörterbuch here: http://www.koeblergerhard.de/idgwbhin.html and Cybalist simply mirrored it, adding some additional files mentioned above by me. Mirror is available only for Cybalist members. CBMIBM (talk) 17:29, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

"Huh?" referred to various logical errors, including assuming that a character included in a font somewhere is a member of the "Greek alphabet"; that there is such a thing as "a native writing PIE", etc. Please stop wasting our time. --Macrakis (talk) 17:38, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Alphabet Audio

got jealous of the German Alphabet.
where do i put this?

CuteHappyBrute (talk) 04:31, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Nice job. I put it in as a link at the top of the alphabet table, in the column that gives the modern Greek letter names. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:57, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

thanx a bunch mate ;]

CuteHappyBrute (talk) 06:13, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Upsilon

While in Cyprus I noticed that "Y" is often translated as "u" (at least when it falls in the middle of a place name). Is this a Cypriot anomaly, or does this need adding to the page (which only lists y, v & f as transliterations in the "Modern Greek" column)? 86.31.247.136 (talk) 15:55, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Greek alphabet

Template:Greek alphabet has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:26, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

gg vs. ng in Ancient Greek

From what I read somewhere, Ancient Greek "gg" used to be read "ng", so that "aggelos" was actually read "angelos"; similarly, "gk" was read "nk" and "gch" was read "nch". I couldn't find anything about the phonetical value of these groups of letters anywhere in the article. Shouldn't we write it in the section with the phonetical values of the letters? bogdan (talk) 22:41, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

This article is about the alphabet. Orthography and phonology, ancient and modern, are treated separately. In the "Digraphs and diphthongs" section, there is a "main article" pointer to Greek orthography which covers this and other issues. See also Ancient Greek phonology, Koine Greek phonology, and Modern Greek phonology. --Macrakis (talk) 01:30, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Image from Disney's Hercules (1997 film)

Hi, why are the letters used in this Hercules poster considered Greek? Most notable the e. I see this very often with Greek restaurants here in the Netherlands. Does anyone have an explanation? Mallerd (talk) 22:46, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

If you mean the one from the Disney cartoon, the creators are just being cute, like when English letters are written with caligraphy strokes to suggest Chinese. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 04:58, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes I meant the Disney cartoon. There is no real Greek alphabet which even looks like the cartoon? Mallerd (talk) 00:22, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Greek letters used in English text, he created what I meant. Faux Cyrillic is on the same par. Mallerd (talk) 15:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Nabla

Does the nabla symbol deserve any mention? BethelRunner (talk) 21:30, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

It is no more a letter of the Greek alphabet than the for all symbol ∀ is a letter of the Latin alphabet. In both cases, it is a mathematical symbol based on a letter. I suppose there could be a section on symbols whose design is based on letters. (Is the multiplication sign × based on the letter x?) --Macrakis (talk) 02:58, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

And don't forget the snack crackers called Goldfish, which are modeled on the lower-case of the letter Alpha. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 05:01, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Armenian Alphabet: Child System?

The Armenian alphabet is not a child system of the Greek alphabet. There have been many scholarly debates about this issue in the past, with some classifying the Armenian script as Greek, others as Aramaic. Today, everybody agrees that while three letters are direct adaptions from the Greek alphabet and the general vowel designating system is inspired by the Greek system, the Armenian alphabet is essentially a free invention inspired by all surrounding alphabets at the time of its creation, i.e. the various Persian Pahlavi alphabets (based on Aramaic and very clearly illustrated e.g. in the Armenian ayb [a]) and amongst others also the Greek alphabet. I would thus suggest removing the Armenian alphabet as a child system from the article. Besides of that, if you include the Armenian alphabet, you should include the Georgian one too (also an invention), for they both are interrelated.

Literature:

DANIELS, PETER T. (Hg.) und BRIGHT, WILLIAM (Hg.), The World’s Writing Systems. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996

HAARMANN, HARALD, Universalgeschichte der Schrift. 2., durchges. Auflage. Frankfurt/Main, New York: Campus Verlag, 1991

SCHMITT, RÜDIGER, Grammatik des Klassisch-Armenischen mit sprachvergleichenden Erläuterungen. 2., durchgesehene Auflage. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck, 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.167.154.82 (talk) 22:49, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Greek alphabet/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

I am failing this article for its good article review because it is almost completely devoid of inline citations. Please renominate it once it has more inline citations. Gary King (talk) 05:58, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Greek letters automatically converted by Mediawiki

Mediawiki will convert some Unicode characters to canonical mappings. For example, U+1F71 will be automatically converted to U+03AC. The greek letters that will be automatically converted by Mediawiki are 0374, 037E, 0387, 1F71, 1F73, 1F75, 1F77, 1F79, 1F7B, 1F7D, 1FBB, 1FBE, 1FC9, 1FCB, 1FD3, 1FDB, 1FE3, 1FEB, 1FEE, 1FEF, 1FF9, 1FFB, 1FFD.--✉ Hello World! 08:20, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Sl for this notification. For the less technically minded: This means that the "polytonic" characters with "oxia" (acute) accents are going to be replaced with the (nominally equivalent) characters from the "monotonic" range with "tonos" accents. Should be no problem in theory. In practice, there's a bit of a problem because browsers often select different fonts for characters from the polytonic and monotonic ranges. For me, on Firefox/WindowsXP, the replacement characters in the right-hand column of each pair in the table below are displayed differently than those on the left. (And that's true no matter which of the markup options is used.) This means that display of polytonic strings gets typographically mixed up. But we have this problem when mixing normal consonantal characters with polytonic accented vowels anyway, so I guess this change will not make too much of an additional difference. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:03, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Without special markup				Enclosed in {{lang-gr}}		Enclosed in {{polytonic}}
Original		Remapped		Original	Remapped	Original	Remapped
U+0374	ʹ			Greek: ʹ	Greek:	ʹ
U+037E	;			Greek: ;	Greek:	;
U+0387	·			Greek: ·	Greek:	·
U+1F71	ά		ά	Greek: ά	Greek: ά	ά	ά
U+1F73	έ		έ	Greek: έ	Greek: έ	έ	έ
U+1F75	ή		ή	Greek: ή	Greek: ή	ή	ή
U+1F77	ί		ί	Greek: ί	Greek: ί	ί	ί
U+1F79	ό		ό	Greek: ό	Greek: ό	ό	ό
U+1F7B	ύ		ύ	Greek: ύ	Greek: ύ	ύ	ύ
U+1F7D	ώ		ώ	Greek: ώ	Greek: ώ	ώ	ώ
U+1FBB	Ά		Ά	Greek: Ά	Greek: Ά	Ά	Ά
U+1FBE	ι			Greek: ι	Greek:	ι
U+1FC9	Έ		Έ	Greek: Έ	Greek: Έ	Έ	Έ
U+1FCB	Ή		Ή	Greek: Ή	Greek: Ή	Ή	Ή
U+1FD3	ΐ		ΐ	Greek: ΐ	Greek: ΐ	ΐ	ΐ
U+1FDB	Ί		Ί	Greek: Ί	Greek: Ί	Ί	Ί
U+1FE3	ΰ		ΰ	Greek: ΰ	Greek: ΰ	ΰ	ΰ
U+1FEB	Ύ		Ύ	Greek: Ύ	Greek: Ύ	Ύ	Ύ
U+1FEE	΅			Greek: ΅	Greek:	΅
U+1FEF	`			Greek: `	Greek:	`
U+1FF9	Ό		Ό	Greek: Ό	Greek: Ό	Ό	Ό
U+1FFB	Ώ		Ώ	Greek: Ώ	Greek: Ώ	Ώ	Ώ
U+1FFD	´			Greek: ´	Greek:	´

Original	Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
Replacement	Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ

Capital

Shouldn't alphabet in the page title be capitalized to "Greek Alphabet"?

TheUnfortunate (talk) 21:42, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization): "For page titles, always use lowercase after the first word, and do not capitalize second and subsequent words, unless: the title is a proper noun..." --macrakis (talk) 13:19, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks TheUnfortunate (talk) 16:17, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

The Letter "C"

I was looking at an icon of my Yi Ya's and I noticed the writing on it had the letter "C". I'm quite puzzled. Then I saw a picture of an ancient Greek mosaic from Israel with the letter "C" on it as well. Did Ancient & Byzantine Greece use the letter "C"? Kostantino888Z (talk) 01:00, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

See Sigma#Lunate sigma. Fut.Perf. ☼ 01:15, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

numeric values

in table 1, Resh Sin Taw and Waw do not share the corresponding numeric values. in the second table, Qoph does not share the corresponding numeric value. see: 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley

Cfzeitler (talk) 03:46, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Don't know what you mean by "share". Share with what? Do you mean there's a mistake somewhere? (And, incidentally, we are not dealing with Qabala here.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:36, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh. Excuse me. Share with the corresponding Greek letters. And although the numeric values of letters might not be strictly on topic(?) I thought quoting an authoritative source wouldn't hurt. ( I have never heard that there were _two_ sets of numeric values for any of the classic alphabets! )

Cfzeitler (talk) 03:13, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

oops! ( is my face red! ) Those are phoenician letters! i totally thought they were hebrew... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cfzeitler (talk • contribs) 04:35, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Latin Child?

It seems very odd to me that the Latin alphabet would be considered a "child" system. The first reason is just that I know how much the Greeks absolutely hate the Latin alphabet with all their heart and make a point of teaching this hatred to their children. However, besides that it just seem factually inaccurate to call Latin a Child system from Greek. The Phoenicians were out and about in ships doing their trading thing and establishing cities like Carthage and all that. The letters were out on the market in circulation. The Latin alphabet came into being from the Etruscan writing which seems to either have borrowed the letters directly from the Phoenicians, whom we know they had contact with, or adopted the "alphabet" at the same time or even before the Greeks did. It was certainly adopted for use by the Etruscans in its original form well before the Greeks adapted the alphabet to better represent the Greek language. In this way it would be much better to say that the Latin Alphabet is cognate with the Greek alphabet.

Keep in mind, this is a different situation from what happened with Cyrillic or Coptic where the Greek alphabet having already been adapted to write Greek lost many characteristics of the original Phoenician form. These are true child sytems. However, calling Latin a Child system of Greek is like calling Syriac a child system of Hebrew. There are clear similarities and some borrowing going on but the systems are cognate coming from an original source.

The Latin Language is not Greek. It is not based on Greek. It does not depend on Greek. It did not need to borrow anything from Greek in order to be understood in speech or in writing. Latin did borrow the letters K, Y and Z so that we could stick them into Greek words that were popular for a time but that does not mean that Latin is a Child System of Greek. Latin is a completely different Language with a Completely different alphabet that is either congnate with Greek or indeed may be older.

This is why Latin has F and V but Greek has neither. This is also why Latin does not have Theta, nor Phi, nor Psi. Latin adopted the letter H from the Phoenicians direclty which is why it has retained its H sound and has not been turned into an E or an I. The Latin letter X did not come from Chi but was created from the Roman Numeral system. The Roman Numeral system is also likely the reason the original Phoenician letter Y (vav) was cut short to V and twisted to form F.

There is no question that the Greeks adopted the alphabet from the Phoenicians direclty and not from the Romans but that does not mean that the Romans must have borrowed the alphabet from the Greeks whom they did not have contact with yet. Semitic peoples were in contact with the Etruscans and later the Romans well before the Romans came into meaningful contact with the Greeks. It is far more likely that the Latin Alphabet was borrowed directly from people like the Cathaginians than from the Greeks. Greece is not the only doorway into Europe. The Phoenicians didn't have to go to Greece first and give the Greeks the Alphabet but be denied access to the rest of Europe because the Greeks wanted to make sure that all the other European systems would be Child Systems. That is silly. The Romans were reading and writing Latin in the Latin alphabet well before Alexander's conquests made the Greek language and alphabet part of a lingua franca. The Romans were not in contact with the Greeks when they began writing, nor were the Greeks important enough to the Romans for them to be heard of.

Latin as a Child System of Greek is not factual and is pure biased conjecture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.127.251.137 (talk) 06:55, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Latin writing is child of Greek writing, because Greek people already had letters that survived in Latin, but were dropped later by Greek people themselves:

83.25.255.163 (talk) 18:51, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Rather than argue, please find reliable sources for your positions. --macrakis (talk) 20:43, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Reliable sources are here:

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8

91.204.208.141 (talk) 15:23, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Alphabet Set to Music

After helping my friend learn the Greek alphabet by singing it to the tune of "Frere Jacques." I found a free transcription of the song at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frère_Jacques, and used that to write up the alphabet as the lyrics. BUT I cannot add it to the page because I don't know how PLUS the page is protected! Help! --Lindsey (talk) 21:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

That's probably a nice idea for you and your friend, but I'm afraid it would have no place in this article anyway, since singing the alphabet to that tune is just a private idea of yours and not a notable, commonly encountered and well-documented practice. Please bear in mind that Wikipedia is not supposed to be a Howto-guide, but wants to document things that are attested in reliable sources. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:18, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I understand...I'm a noob here. Would there be a place for it under "External Links" or somesuch? I think this would be very beneficial for people who are trying to learn the alphabet as part of pledgeship for a fraternity or sorority. --Lindsey (talk) 01:55, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

No, not really, I'm afraid. There's some guidelines on what to include in external links at WP:EL. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:02, 27 February 2009 (UTC)