![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
The dialect of modern Greek spoken by Greek Cypriots differs in pronunciation from 'mainland' Greek in some respects. Kappa (Qoppa) is pronounced 'G', Tau (also called Daf) is pronounced 'D'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Conversion script ( talk • contribs) 15:51, 25 February 2002
This article gives classical names of letters but not modern names. There is also a question of how to transliterate. Conventions for transliterating classical Greek differ from those for Modern Greek. "ΕΥΚΛΙΔΗΣ" is almost always transliterated into "Euclid" when one writes in English, or "Euclides" if you want to keep the suffix that changes according to whether it's nominative, accusative, etc., but if the conventions that newspapers use for transliterating names of modern Greeks were followed, then maybe it would be "Efklides" or "Efkledes". This may not be much of a problem if you're talking about Euclid or about a modern Greek politician, but in the "Mount Athos" article, should one write "Ayion Oros" or "Hagion Oros"? The latter harmonizes with the name of Istanbul's famous "Hagia Sophia". In the "Transubstantiation" article, I wrote "Metabole is Greek Orthodox for 'transubstantiation'" (and last time I looked, no one had yet objected that "Greek Orthodox" is not a language), but I also mentioned that in modern transliterations it can be "metovole". Lest we ignoramuses continue to make these decisions, could some expert enlgihten us? -- Mike Hardy —Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.87.0.115 ( talk • contribs) 21:28, 19 December 2002
Well, there are two typo's in Mike Hardy's remark:Eudlid's Greek spelling; the modern transcription of metabole.
Greek | Traditional transcription | Modern transcription | Proposed transliteration |
---|---|---|---|
Eυκλειδης | Eukleides | Efklidis | eykleídes |
Aγιov Oρoς | Hagion Oros | Ayion Oros | ágion óros (classical accent) |
μεταβoλη | metabole | metavoli | metabolé |
Note that the traditional transcription is not exactly the same as the latinisation (i. e.,
transcription to Latin)
which results in Euclides and so on. -- In the transcription, I have used the vowels as pronounced in many European languages, e. g. Italian, because a transcription using the English pronunciation is too difficult for me.
I would propose to write Ayion Oros, because that is more similar to how it is called by the local population.
What concerns Hagia Sophia:as the local population does no more speak Greek,
we may use a more traditional transcription.
In the meantime, I have added modern pronunciation of the letter names. Is that what you mean by modern names, Mike? -- dnjansen 13:17 Jan 5, 2003 (UTC)
It is very important to include the names of the letters in both Greek and in English (actually Latin -- these names are the same in all Western European languages), and very important to include their phonetic value in both Ancient and Modern Greek. However, I see no good reason to include the pronunciations of the names of the letters in either ancient or modern Greek, since both pronunciations are completely predictable. That is, given the Greek spelling, you can determine the pronunciation in ancient and in modern Greek unambiguously. So I propose to remove both columns under Name / Pronunciation. This should make the table more readable. -- Macrakis 16:57, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Why is Bernal being used as an authority on the Greek alphabet? Are you people aware of how controversial his views are? There is no archaeological evidence that Phoenicians widely colonised Greece. We have one trading post at Kommos in Crete during the early Geometric Period (10th-9th century B.C.) that did indeed have Semitic speaking traders and artisans confined to one area of the town and their sanctuary, but no widespread colonisation that Bernal's comment implies. There is no doubt there are Semitic loan words in the Greek language but that does not mean the Aegean region was widely settled by Phoenicians, and it's more likely as a result of trading contact along coastal emporia.
See J.W. Shaw, "Phoenicians in Southern Crete," AJA 93 (1989) 164-83. -- Leanne
I've created a new stub on Greek alphabet/Temp that contains all the letters, for example. -- Lumidek 23:57, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Various distinct articles on Greek letters have distinct formats (e.g. on specifying the graphical representation of the letters -- some include it in the main paragraph, others at the end of the article and others not at all); maybe they should be unified as format at some time in the future? Not an urgent issue, just something to consider. -- Gutza 23:04, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The table at the top shows a greek small letter gamma (γ) where a delta should go. I suppose it's a typo in the numeric code entry. I don't know how to edit the "msg" table thing; it's not in the main article.
We need something other than iso-8859-1 for this page. How do we switch it to UTF-8?
--
Joeljkp 15:42, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
According to Michel Lejeune (Phonétique historique du mycénien et du grec ancien) and many other scholars (e.g. Leslie Threatte in the "Greek alphabet" section of The World's Wrinting Systems by Daniels and Bright), ζ has never been pronounced [dz]. In classical Greek, it was [zd].
Hence Ἀθήνασ-δε (-δε as in οἴκαδε "to one's house", from οἶκος and -δε suffix) → *Ἀθήναz-δε → Ἀθήναζε, "to Athenes", etc. Cf. also aeolic ὔσδος ~ attic ὄζος, etc.
Later, [zd] (Hellenistic period) became [z:], then [z] in Modern Greek. Vincent Ramos 15:42, 24 May 2004 (UTC)
On my computer system, I can't see the Digamma character. Possibly, that's because I don't have a Greek font that includes digamma. The same applies to San, Oopa and Sampi. What can I do to remedy this? Cosmo 09:37, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
P.S. I'm new to Wikipedia, and I am not too savvy about fonts, except the fonts that came with the MS WORD. Although I can read modern Greek text such as news and advertising (up to a point), I've never come across Digamma, San, Qopa or Sampi.
Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Digamma"
I answered at Talk:Digamma Pjacobi 09:02, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
With some help from other Wikipedians I am now able to read the Lord's Prayer on the Greek language page, but some symbols on the page are still unreadable. These include the two mentioned at the top, the accented second letter in the second rendering of the Greek word "alpha," the letter between beta and eta in the second rendering of "beta," the second forms of stigma and qoppa, etc. The second rendering of "rho" is perhaps the worse, coming back as "ρ?ω?." How do I get to view these letters? Vivacissamamente —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vivacissamamente ( talk • contribs) 02:52, 19 October 2004
I took the sentence "In ancient Greece, its letters were also used to represent numbers, called Greek numerals, in analogy with Roman numerals." from Greek letters which is now a redirect to here. Kappa 11:21, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I changed some of the Greek text (actually the Greek names of the first few letters in the Main Table) to Arial Unicode MS, which on my browser at least makes most of the characters display correctly. If there are no objections I could continue doing the same with the rest of the Greek text in the article. rossb 15:35, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Under the the "Greek" column, what's the difference between the first literation and the latter literation, separated by a solidus (slash)? - Centrx 23:45, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Is Greek the only language written in the Greek alphabet or are there also others? Michael Hardy 20:56, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I tried my best to convert all the pronunciations given from SAMPA to IPA, but I'm pretty sure some of those prons weren't SAMPA. I hope someone who knows could check these and fix them if there are errors. In particular I am concerned about the transcription of 'e', 'o', and 'g' in letter names. Nohat 00:31, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Question:what is a comparison to Hebrew doing in an English encyclopedia? Any objections against removing this? − Woodstone 11:46, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)
Foobaz·
o<
21:24, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)May I suggest to move this comparison to the Greek and/or the Hebrew version of Wikipedia. It is not relevant for the English version. It would not be practical to start comparing all the alphabets of the world to each other in this fashion. − Woodstone 21:09, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)
The whole remainder of the article has no mention of Hebrew. That's why the current state is confusing. If the reason is as explained here, that should be mentioned above the table for clarification and also in the section on history. Could one of you add that? − Woodstone 21:51, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)
It could have been closer to the table, but thanks and discussion closed. − Woodstone 22:30, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)
Right now, the names of the letters are written using both characters and using combining accents. This is confusing, because users will naturally think that there are two versions because there is some distinction being made. I propose that we systematically use precombined characters only, as is done on the other polytonic pages I've looked at. If a user's system doesn't support the precomposed characters (how common is this?), how likely is it that it will render the combining characters correctly? If in fact it is necessary sometimes to show both precomposed and combining variants, I suggest we simply define it as a "Small Matter of Programming" for the polytonic template....
PS I actually prefer combining diacritics in principle, but in practice precomposed work better.... -- Macrakis 23:27, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Is there any form of cursive for the Greek alphabet? I didn't find one in the internet.
The lunate form of Σ (Ϲ) is missing from the table in section 1. Gdr 23:51, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)
User:Xpo_FERENS inserted a reference to an alternative theory of the history of the Greek alphabet which denies its Phoenician origin. This link leads to an article from the Greek newspaper Apogevmatini quoting an article from the Greek magazine Davlos which claims, among other things, that "the Greeks were writing using not only Linear A and B, but also a type of writing identical to that of the alphabet since at least 6000 B.C." The article has many more extravagant claims like this, for example that Greek is not descended from Indo-European (which doesn't exist), that "every (ancient) Greek word is basically an acronym...where every letter provides a significant or less significant notional [i.e. semantic] element", that "Greek is the first and only created language of the human species which provided the basis for all "conventional" languages, as are all the other languages of the world (where there is no causative relationship between the form and the meaning). These other languages are a corrupt form of Greek.", etc. The Davlos site (in Greek only) has much more along these lines. I didn't read the details, but there were also articles on the "technology of the ancient gods", etc. I don't think this is noteworthy enough to report on (the way Wikipedia reports on holocaust denial etc.), but I'd like to hear others' opinions. -- Macrakis 22:59, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC) (revised)
I would like to comment that I added the link to the article in belief that it was a good source for others to get an idea that their is a theory that that questions the current Phoenician orthodoxy. I would appreiciate it if the reference I added to the article was re-inserted by he who removed it. - Xpo FERENS
The exact development of writing in Greece might be open to question - I remember the plates that were hard to explain. However, saying the alphabets have no relation and only look somewhat similar is obviously wrong. That site is plainly not a reliable resource, for instance, it goes on to claim that Greek isn't Indo-European. On the main page they explicitly state their aim is to show Greek culture was a gift from God, and so deny any debts to anyone. If there is anything worth mentioning here, we should be able to find a better source. Josh
I collected some transliterations of classical and modern Greek at Transliteration of Greek into English. I suggest to include at least one of the modern transliterations in the main table (my favourite is the UN/ELOT scheme). The next step would be IMO to use this transliteration for articles about modern Greek geographical and personal names (for instance shouldn't the "c" in Constantine Karamanlis and Costas Caramanlis be "k"), see discussion at Talk:Greece. Markussep 10:33, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
In English, many Greeks use the English equivalents of their names rather than direct transliterations or transcriptions of their Greek names. George Seferis is known as George, not Giorgios or Yorgos, in English—as shown by Google and Amazon search, and despite what Wikipedia currently uses; similarly for Aristotle Onassis. On the other hand, Yannis Ritsos is never referred to as John. Some cases are unclear: John Capodistrias and Ioannis Kapodistrias are both used. Note, however, that though both Ritsos and Kapodistrias were officially Ιωάννης, one is referred to using the informal form and the other using the formal form.... So I think you have to follow the general Wikipedia convention of using the most familiar name, even if that leads to inconsistency. Of course, the first paragraph of the article should give the person's full name in Greek letters for full clarity. See my comments in Talk:Greece for related discussion. -- Macrakis 22:35, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The Duenos inscription is the earliest known form of the Latin alphabet dating back to the 6th century BC. Latin alphabet comprised various versions of the Greek alphabet, brought to Italy by Greek colonists. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/latin2.htm
Below is a table with the Greek alphabet variations used in various districts or city-states of ancient Greece. File:Alphabet-en003.jpg
I have indicated with a red square the Greek letter variations that were dropped from the Greek alphabet before the 5th century BC. They include the symbols C, D, F, L, q, R, S and V.
Effectively only one Latin letter, G (variation of Γ or C) is not present on the above table. -- Odysses 4 July 2005 09:16 (UTC)
I'm not sure what your point is here. The only letters that were dropped from the alphabet were F and Q -- the other forms you have marked are just variant shapes. -- Macrakis 5 July 2005 18:28 (UTC)
It seems that we live again the days of 1850s. There was a strong dispute these days as to whether Troy was pure fiction by Homer or a real ancient city. Many historians these days strongly disputed all evidence indicating the historical existence of Troy. Heinrich Schliemann put an end to this when he uncovered Troy.
Again with the Greek alphabet, we have a great deal of indications that writing existed well before 850 BC.
The etymological analysis in Cratylus would not be possible without the use of letters. Likewise, the etymological synthesis of names would not be possible without the use of letters.
There is ample evidence that the ancient Greek alphabet could have been produced in the far depths of prehistory, long before Plato and Homer.
It would be reasonable to assume that the wise men of ancient Greece had rediscovered the long lost alphabet. For this reason they called it "Phoenician alphabet" after the mythical bird phoenix, since they knew it had been lost for centuries but it was revived. -- Odysses 09:42, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
--- Turks changed their writing system twice, but not with a separation period of several hundred years -- Mrg3105 22:10, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
i've been reading a lot recently about ancient greek pronunciation. some issues as currently represented:
Benwing 4 July 2005 06:37 (UTC)
It would make more sense to include the Phoenician letters rather than the Hebrew. I'd also propose to merge the "archaic" and "classical" pronunciations with a footnote for the archaic cases (perhaps using some convention like dagger† for archaic forms). Putting together the various proposed changes, we'd have:
Letter | Name | Pronunciation | Numeric value | Corresponding Phoenician letter |
HTML entity | Transliteration1 | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Greek | English | ancient | modern | |||||
Α α | ἄλφα | Alpha | [a] [a:] | [a] | 1 |
![]() |
α | a |
-- Macrakis 19:34, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
I'd skip the HTML and the numeric value as well (maybe I didn't phrase that clear enough), since they get enough attention on other pages. Phoenician sounds OK to me. Transliteration: see also Transliteration of Greek into English, there are many variants. Markussep 20:20, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Understood. The rationale for the proposal is that these properties are all directly related to the letters -- unlike, say, the pronunciation of the names. The main argument for removing transliteration is probably that the distinction between transliteration and transcription might be confusing for some readers, who might miss "gh" and "y" for gamma, for example. The HTML entity probably belongs in the last column. "Pronunciation" and "Numeric value" should be links (when the articles exist). -- Macrakis 00:29, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
I trimmed the table into this below. As you can see I didn't replace Hebrew by Phoenician, since I know too little about that. Archaic pronunciations between parentheses. Markussep 08:06, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
Letter | Name | Pronunciation | Corresponding Hebrew letter |
Transliteration1 | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Greek | English | ancient | modern | ancient | modern | ||
Α α | ἄλφα | Alpha | [a] [a:] | [a] | א 'Aleph | a | a |
Β β | βῆτα | Beta | [b] | [v] | ב Beth | b | v |
Γ γ | γάμμα | Gamma | [g] | [ʝ] before [e] or [i]; [ɣ] otherwise | ג Gimel | g | g |
Δ δ | δέλτα | Delta | [d] | [ð] | ד Daleth | d | d |
Ε ε | ἒ ψιλόν | Epsilon | [e] | [e] | ה He | e | e |
Ϝ ϝ (1) | Ϝαυ ? | Digamma | [w] | - | ו Vav | w | - |
Ζ ζ | ζῆτα | Zeta | [zd], later [zː] | [z] | ז Zayin | z | z |
Η η | ἦτα | Eta | [ɛː] ([h]) | [i] | ח Heth | e | i |
Θ θ | θῆτα | Theta | [tʰ] | [θ] | ט Teth | th | th |
Ι ι | ἰῶτα | Iota | [i] [iː] | [i] [j] | י Yod | i | i |
Κ κ | κάππα | Kappa | [k] | [k] | ך כ Kaph | k, c | k |
Λ λ | λάμβδα | Lambda | [l] | [l] | ל Lamed | l | l |
Μ μ | μῦ | Mu | [m] | [m] | ם מ Mem | m | m |
Ν ν | νῦ | Nu | [n] | [n] | ן נ Nun | n | n |
Ξ ξ | ξῖ | Xi | [ks] | [ks] | ס Samekh | x | x |
Ο ο | ὄ μικρόν | Omicron | [o] | [o] | ע `Ayin | o | o |
Π π | πῖ | Pi | [p] | [p] | ף פ Pe | p | p |
M (1) (Ϻ ϻ) | San | ([z]) | - | ץ צ Tzadik | s | - | |
Q (1) (Ϙ ϙ) | Qoppa | ([k]) | - | ק Qoph | q | - | |
Ρ ρ | ῥῶ | Rho | [r], [r̥] | [r] | ר Resh | r (ῥ: rh) | r |
Σ σ ς (final) |
σῖγμα | Sigma | [s] | [s] | ש Shin | s, ss (between vowels) | s |
Τ τ | ταῦ | Tau | [t] | [t] | ת Tav | t | t |
Υ υ | ὒ ψιλόν | Upsilon | ([u]) [y] [yː] | [i] [v] [f] | from ו Vav | u, y (between consonants) | y, v, f |
Φ φ | φῖ | Phi | [pʰ] | [f] | origin disputed (see text) | ph | f |
Χ χ | χῖ | Chi | [kʰ] ([ks]) | [ç] before [e] or [i]; [x] otherwise | ch | ch | |
Ψ ψ | ψῖ | Psi | [ps] | [ps] | ps | ps | |
Ω ω | ὦ μέγα | Omega | [ɔː] | [o] | o, ô | o | |
Ϡ ϡ (1) | Sampi | ([ss] [ks]) | - |
The second sentence of this article says that Greek is the oldest alphabet still in use today. This seems to me, to be a glaring mistake. The Hebrew alphabet is certainly older than Greek, and certainly in use today. I would delete that line, but it's so obviously wrong, That I think I may have misunderstood something. If nobody responds to this post, I will delete the line in question. Eliezerke 17:02, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
The original Hebrew alphabet known as Evrit is still used today though the font of the alphabet has been changed to Ashuryt or Assyrian. Since the alephbet was used in the Jewish scriptures, and these are dated to be at least 3,300 years old, that would make the Hebrew alephbet older by several centuries. It seems to me that nationalist pride has obscured the fairly well documented scientific evidence that Greeks are not native to Greece, and are in fact migrants to the area at about 3200 years ago. Even if they begun to use letters and writing in the 9th century BCE, it seems that several centuries passed during which they were well predisposed to borrow this knowledge from Punic traders, or indeed Israelites who also had access to use of ships. This borrowing is commonly observed throughout history on global scale in many cultures. On the other hand there is no evidence of dead languages being rediscovered after centuries of disuse. Of course given the self-perception of the Greeks in their own primacy within European culture it may be a hard pill to swallow (this is a Hebrew pun – the PIL in Hebrew means an elephant, or an object impossible to swallow, and even if cooked, swallowed only by very many in small portions; this is a further pun on the intellectual pigmy because it is the pigmies who hunt and eat elephants in Africa) by admitting that they borrowed letters and writing from Semitic speakers. This would also kind of ruin the Indo-European theory, and not a few academic careers. -- Mrg3105 07:13, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Hello, I'd first have to say that, well, I'm Greek, and I have a different opinion concerning the origins of the Greek alphabet, but this time, WITH proof, avec proof, or whatever...
I'll first point you out the webpage containing the evidence (Both in English and Greek, though, being a greek page, content is less in the English version...), and then I'll say a few words...Here goes.
The Hellenic Language (In Greek)
The Hellenic Language (In English)
Now, if you know how to read Greek, that was quite enlightening.But even if you don't, look inside the greek page.There are more pictures anyways, and you might catch something more than the English one...Anyways, it shows us usage of a (primitive, or whatever) used in Dispilio in Kastoria back in 5.250 B.C, which is also the first writing in the world, till now, of course.Amongst other things.Also, it shows us the usage of Greek words in Hawai and Peru (The fact that the Minoans had gone all around the world even by 4000 B.C is not disputed.Look HERE (Greek) and HERE (English).Note that the English article is much smaller and poorer.), comparison charts between Linear 'A, Linear 'B, and more...
That might show you that, well, the Greeks had a system of writing from THAT far back, but it still doesn't solidly prove that we didn't get our Alphabet from the Phoenicians.Well, this does(Unfortunately, only in greek):
The Hellenic Alphabet in use in Milos by 2500 B.C
All in all, that article shows us all that the Alphabet *I* (Along with many, many others) use today was actually a evolutionary work, done by us, and not adapted from someone else...
Anyways, I just wanted to point out another side of the coin, the *dark side*.Although we too learn in our schools that we "adapted" the Phoenician Alphabet, these are SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE, not just conclusions made from whatever happened back then.Anyways, a LOT of the research is done by foreign scientists, not Greek ones...So no room for Nationalism.Could this be added in the article as a different view, but one backed up by serious evidence? I believe that it's for the best.An encyclopedia has to be objective, and that means telling the whole story.
Aaaaand I'm out....
It's technically imposssible, because Proto-Indo-European has more features such as 8 cases, dual number, etc. than Greek: http://www.koeblergerhard.de/idgwbhin.html (grammar in Vorwort) And PIE, not Greek is Adamic: [3] Wikinger 18:19, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure I agree with the removal of my addition as "song trivia":A catchy tune that may be readily adapted to learning to recite and remember the Greek alphabet is the theme song from the 1970s police drama Hawaii Five-O. I listed it in the "Additional information section" which gave various aids for learning the alphabet. It was a silly but helpful prop recommended to students by my Greek professor when I was in college. -- MPerel ( talk| contrib) 16:15, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
What's the difference between the Western & Eastern versions of the Greek alphabet?? <font=symbol> ABGDEZHQIKLMNXOPRSTUFCYW is the _______ Greek alphabet; the other one differs in that... Georgia guy 00:15, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
To the extent that the text of this section is copied from my article "Character Codes for Greek:Problems and Modern Solutions", I authorize its use in Wikipedia under the usual Wikipedia license. Stavros Macrakis, 25 November 2005.
Would it be silly to include information on the proper stroke order when writing these characters by hand? I couldn't find it on the internet so that's partly why I'm asking here. I'm wondering, for instance, which stroke of Lambda should go first, or which stroke of Phi. Lambda looks a lot better to me when I draw the leftmost stroke first, but I'm curious to know what the standard order is. A5 15:42, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
An anonymous editor added the modern names of the letters, unfortunately at the wrong spot (after the letter combinations), in a phonetic transcription using English spelling (ee for [i] etc). I reverted this because this edit had a poor style not fit for an encyclopedia. It is true that the modern names of the letters are missing. They are included in the Greek version at el:Ελληνικό αλφάβητο. I would prefer the pronounciation of the modern names in IPA, because this is the standard. However, including the modern names in the table would make it very wide. One option would be to have two tables, one for the modern and one for the historic names and pronunciations. Andreas 02:15, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree that this is too obscure a point to be reflected in this article. But it's possibly appropriate to mention it in the individual articles for the various letters, and I've made a start by updating Mu (letter) accordingly. -- rossb 16:24, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Several of the phonemes represented by single letters, e.g. Γ = /ɣ/, have allophones, in this case [ʝ] and [ɣ]. Since this is an article about the alphabet, and not modern Greek phonology, this seems to be out of place here, just as dialectal pronunciations would be (e.g. Cretan [ʒ]). There is an extensive (though, alas, not very good) discussion of the phonology in Greek language. I would prefer to keep just the phonemes and not all the variant realizations in the main table here. -- Macrakis 02:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
The dialect of modern Greek spoken by Greek Cypriots differs in pronunciation from 'mainland' Greek in some respects. Kappa (Qoppa) is pronounced 'G', Tau (also called Daf) is pronounced 'D'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Conversion script ( talk • contribs) 15:51, 25 February 2002
This article gives classical names of letters but not modern names. There is also a question of how to transliterate. Conventions for transliterating classical Greek differ from those for Modern Greek. "ΕΥΚΛΙΔΗΣ" is almost always transliterated into "Euclid" when one writes in English, or "Euclides" if you want to keep the suffix that changes according to whether it's nominative, accusative, etc., but if the conventions that newspapers use for transliterating names of modern Greeks were followed, then maybe it would be "Efklides" or "Efkledes". This may not be much of a problem if you're talking about Euclid or about a modern Greek politician, but in the "Mount Athos" article, should one write "Ayion Oros" or "Hagion Oros"? The latter harmonizes with the name of Istanbul's famous "Hagia Sophia". In the "Transubstantiation" article, I wrote "Metabole is Greek Orthodox for 'transubstantiation'" (and last time I looked, no one had yet objected that "Greek Orthodox" is not a language), but I also mentioned that in modern transliterations it can be "metovole". Lest we ignoramuses continue to make these decisions, could some expert enlgihten us? -- Mike Hardy —Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.87.0.115 ( talk • contribs) 21:28, 19 December 2002
Well, there are two typo's in Mike Hardy's remark:Eudlid's Greek spelling; the modern transcription of metabole.
Greek | Traditional transcription | Modern transcription | Proposed transliteration |
---|---|---|---|
Eυκλειδης | Eukleides | Efklidis | eykleídes |
Aγιov Oρoς | Hagion Oros | Ayion Oros | ágion óros (classical accent) |
μεταβoλη | metabole | metavoli | metabolé |
Note that the traditional transcription is not exactly the same as the latinisation (i. e.,
transcription to Latin)
which results in Euclides and so on. -- In the transcription, I have used the vowels as pronounced in many European languages, e. g. Italian, because a transcription using the English pronunciation is too difficult for me.
I would propose to write Ayion Oros, because that is more similar to how it is called by the local population.
What concerns Hagia Sophia:as the local population does no more speak Greek,
we may use a more traditional transcription.
In the meantime, I have added modern pronunciation of the letter names. Is that what you mean by modern names, Mike? -- dnjansen 13:17 Jan 5, 2003 (UTC)
It is very important to include the names of the letters in both Greek and in English (actually Latin -- these names are the same in all Western European languages), and very important to include their phonetic value in both Ancient and Modern Greek. However, I see no good reason to include the pronunciations of the names of the letters in either ancient or modern Greek, since both pronunciations are completely predictable. That is, given the Greek spelling, you can determine the pronunciation in ancient and in modern Greek unambiguously. So I propose to remove both columns under Name / Pronunciation. This should make the table more readable. -- Macrakis 16:57, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Why is Bernal being used as an authority on the Greek alphabet? Are you people aware of how controversial his views are? There is no archaeological evidence that Phoenicians widely colonised Greece. We have one trading post at Kommos in Crete during the early Geometric Period (10th-9th century B.C.) that did indeed have Semitic speaking traders and artisans confined to one area of the town and their sanctuary, but no widespread colonisation that Bernal's comment implies. There is no doubt there are Semitic loan words in the Greek language but that does not mean the Aegean region was widely settled by Phoenicians, and it's more likely as a result of trading contact along coastal emporia.
See J.W. Shaw, "Phoenicians in Southern Crete," AJA 93 (1989) 164-83. -- Leanne
I've created a new stub on Greek alphabet/Temp that contains all the letters, for example. -- Lumidek 23:57, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Various distinct articles on Greek letters have distinct formats (e.g. on specifying the graphical representation of the letters -- some include it in the main paragraph, others at the end of the article and others not at all); maybe they should be unified as format at some time in the future? Not an urgent issue, just something to consider. -- Gutza 23:04, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The table at the top shows a greek small letter gamma (γ) where a delta should go. I suppose it's a typo in the numeric code entry. I don't know how to edit the "msg" table thing; it's not in the main article.
We need something other than iso-8859-1 for this page. How do we switch it to UTF-8?
--
Joeljkp 15:42, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
According to Michel Lejeune (Phonétique historique du mycénien et du grec ancien) and many other scholars (e.g. Leslie Threatte in the "Greek alphabet" section of The World's Wrinting Systems by Daniels and Bright), ζ has never been pronounced [dz]. In classical Greek, it was [zd].
Hence Ἀθήνασ-δε (-δε as in οἴκαδε "to one's house", from οἶκος and -δε suffix) → *Ἀθήναz-δε → Ἀθήναζε, "to Athenes", etc. Cf. also aeolic ὔσδος ~ attic ὄζος, etc.
Later, [zd] (Hellenistic period) became [z:], then [z] in Modern Greek. Vincent Ramos 15:42, 24 May 2004 (UTC)
On my computer system, I can't see the Digamma character. Possibly, that's because I don't have a Greek font that includes digamma. The same applies to San, Oopa and Sampi. What can I do to remedy this? Cosmo 09:37, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
P.S. I'm new to Wikipedia, and I am not too savvy about fonts, except the fonts that came with the MS WORD. Although I can read modern Greek text such as news and advertising (up to a point), I've never come across Digamma, San, Qopa or Sampi.
Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Digamma"
I answered at Talk:Digamma Pjacobi 09:02, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
With some help from other Wikipedians I am now able to read the Lord's Prayer on the Greek language page, but some symbols on the page are still unreadable. These include the two mentioned at the top, the accented second letter in the second rendering of the Greek word "alpha," the letter between beta and eta in the second rendering of "beta," the second forms of stigma and qoppa, etc. The second rendering of "rho" is perhaps the worse, coming back as "ρ?ω?." How do I get to view these letters? Vivacissamamente —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vivacissamamente ( talk • contribs) 02:52, 19 October 2004
I took the sentence "In ancient Greece, its letters were also used to represent numbers, called Greek numerals, in analogy with Roman numerals." from Greek letters which is now a redirect to here. Kappa 11:21, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I changed some of the Greek text (actually the Greek names of the first few letters in the Main Table) to Arial Unicode MS, which on my browser at least makes most of the characters display correctly. If there are no objections I could continue doing the same with the rest of the Greek text in the article. rossb 15:35, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Under the the "Greek" column, what's the difference between the first literation and the latter literation, separated by a solidus (slash)? - Centrx 23:45, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Is Greek the only language written in the Greek alphabet or are there also others? Michael Hardy 20:56, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I tried my best to convert all the pronunciations given from SAMPA to IPA, but I'm pretty sure some of those prons weren't SAMPA. I hope someone who knows could check these and fix them if there are errors. In particular I am concerned about the transcription of 'e', 'o', and 'g' in letter names. Nohat 00:31, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Question:what is a comparison to Hebrew doing in an English encyclopedia? Any objections against removing this? − Woodstone 11:46, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)
Foobaz·
o<
21:24, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)May I suggest to move this comparison to the Greek and/or the Hebrew version of Wikipedia. It is not relevant for the English version. It would not be practical to start comparing all the alphabets of the world to each other in this fashion. − Woodstone 21:09, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)
The whole remainder of the article has no mention of Hebrew. That's why the current state is confusing. If the reason is as explained here, that should be mentioned above the table for clarification and also in the section on history. Could one of you add that? − Woodstone 21:51, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)
It could have been closer to the table, but thanks and discussion closed. − Woodstone 22:30, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)
Right now, the names of the letters are written using both characters and using combining accents. This is confusing, because users will naturally think that there are two versions because there is some distinction being made. I propose that we systematically use precombined characters only, as is done on the other polytonic pages I've looked at. If a user's system doesn't support the precomposed characters (how common is this?), how likely is it that it will render the combining characters correctly? If in fact it is necessary sometimes to show both precomposed and combining variants, I suggest we simply define it as a "Small Matter of Programming" for the polytonic template....
PS I actually prefer combining diacritics in principle, but in practice precomposed work better.... -- Macrakis 23:27, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Is there any form of cursive for the Greek alphabet? I didn't find one in the internet.
The lunate form of Σ (Ϲ) is missing from the table in section 1. Gdr 23:51, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)
User:Xpo_FERENS inserted a reference to an alternative theory of the history of the Greek alphabet which denies its Phoenician origin. This link leads to an article from the Greek newspaper Apogevmatini quoting an article from the Greek magazine Davlos which claims, among other things, that "the Greeks were writing using not only Linear A and B, but also a type of writing identical to that of the alphabet since at least 6000 B.C." The article has many more extravagant claims like this, for example that Greek is not descended from Indo-European (which doesn't exist), that "every (ancient) Greek word is basically an acronym...where every letter provides a significant or less significant notional [i.e. semantic] element", that "Greek is the first and only created language of the human species which provided the basis for all "conventional" languages, as are all the other languages of the world (where there is no causative relationship between the form and the meaning). These other languages are a corrupt form of Greek.", etc. The Davlos site (in Greek only) has much more along these lines. I didn't read the details, but there were also articles on the "technology of the ancient gods", etc. I don't think this is noteworthy enough to report on (the way Wikipedia reports on holocaust denial etc.), but I'd like to hear others' opinions. -- Macrakis 22:59, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC) (revised)
I would like to comment that I added the link to the article in belief that it was a good source for others to get an idea that their is a theory that that questions the current Phoenician orthodoxy. I would appreiciate it if the reference I added to the article was re-inserted by he who removed it. - Xpo FERENS
The exact development of writing in Greece might be open to question - I remember the plates that were hard to explain. However, saying the alphabets have no relation and only look somewhat similar is obviously wrong. That site is plainly not a reliable resource, for instance, it goes on to claim that Greek isn't Indo-European. On the main page they explicitly state their aim is to show Greek culture was a gift from God, and so deny any debts to anyone. If there is anything worth mentioning here, we should be able to find a better source. Josh
I collected some transliterations of classical and modern Greek at Transliteration of Greek into English. I suggest to include at least one of the modern transliterations in the main table (my favourite is the UN/ELOT scheme). The next step would be IMO to use this transliteration for articles about modern Greek geographical and personal names (for instance shouldn't the "c" in Constantine Karamanlis and Costas Caramanlis be "k"), see discussion at Talk:Greece. Markussep 10:33, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
In English, many Greeks use the English equivalents of their names rather than direct transliterations or transcriptions of their Greek names. George Seferis is known as George, not Giorgios or Yorgos, in English—as shown by Google and Amazon search, and despite what Wikipedia currently uses; similarly for Aristotle Onassis. On the other hand, Yannis Ritsos is never referred to as John. Some cases are unclear: John Capodistrias and Ioannis Kapodistrias are both used. Note, however, that though both Ritsos and Kapodistrias were officially Ιωάννης, one is referred to using the informal form and the other using the formal form.... So I think you have to follow the general Wikipedia convention of using the most familiar name, even if that leads to inconsistency. Of course, the first paragraph of the article should give the person's full name in Greek letters for full clarity. See my comments in Talk:Greece for related discussion. -- Macrakis 22:35, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The Duenos inscription is the earliest known form of the Latin alphabet dating back to the 6th century BC. Latin alphabet comprised various versions of the Greek alphabet, brought to Italy by Greek colonists. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/latin2.htm
Below is a table with the Greek alphabet variations used in various districts or city-states of ancient Greece. File:Alphabet-en003.jpg
I have indicated with a red square the Greek letter variations that were dropped from the Greek alphabet before the 5th century BC. They include the symbols C, D, F, L, q, R, S and V.
Effectively only one Latin letter, G (variation of Γ or C) is not present on the above table. -- Odysses 4 July 2005 09:16 (UTC)
I'm not sure what your point is here. The only letters that were dropped from the alphabet were F and Q -- the other forms you have marked are just variant shapes. -- Macrakis 5 July 2005 18:28 (UTC)
It seems that we live again the days of 1850s. There was a strong dispute these days as to whether Troy was pure fiction by Homer or a real ancient city. Many historians these days strongly disputed all evidence indicating the historical existence of Troy. Heinrich Schliemann put an end to this when he uncovered Troy.
Again with the Greek alphabet, we have a great deal of indications that writing existed well before 850 BC.
The etymological analysis in Cratylus would not be possible without the use of letters. Likewise, the etymological synthesis of names would not be possible without the use of letters.
There is ample evidence that the ancient Greek alphabet could have been produced in the far depths of prehistory, long before Plato and Homer.
It would be reasonable to assume that the wise men of ancient Greece had rediscovered the long lost alphabet. For this reason they called it "Phoenician alphabet" after the mythical bird phoenix, since they knew it had been lost for centuries but it was revived. -- Odysses 09:42, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
--- Turks changed their writing system twice, but not with a separation period of several hundred years -- Mrg3105 22:10, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
i've been reading a lot recently about ancient greek pronunciation. some issues as currently represented:
Benwing 4 July 2005 06:37 (UTC)
It would make more sense to include the Phoenician letters rather than the Hebrew. I'd also propose to merge the "archaic" and "classical" pronunciations with a footnote for the archaic cases (perhaps using some convention like dagger† for archaic forms). Putting together the various proposed changes, we'd have:
Letter | Name | Pronunciation | Numeric value | Corresponding Phoenician letter |
HTML entity | Transliteration1 | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Greek | English | ancient | modern | |||||
Α α | ἄλφα | Alpha | [a] [a:] | [a] | 1 |
![]() |
α | a |
-- Macrakis 19:34, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
I'd skip the HTML and the numeric value as well (maybe I didn't phrase that clear enough), since they get enough attention on other pages. Phoenician sounds OK to me. Transliteration: see also Transliteration of Greek into English, there are many variants. Markussep 20:20, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Understood. The rationale for the proposal is that these properties are all directly related to the letters -- unlike, say, the pronunciation of the names. The main argument for removing transliteration is probably that the distinction between transliteration and transcription might be confusing for some readers, who might miss "gh" and "y" for gamma, for example. The HTML entity probably belongs in the last column. "Pronunciation" and "Numeric value" should be links (when the articles exist). -- Macrakis 00:29, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
I trimmed the table into this below. As you can see I didn't replace Hebrew by Phoenician, since I know too little about that. Archaic pronunciations between parentheses. Markussep 08:06, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
Letter | Name | Pronunciation | Corresponding Hebrew letter |
Transliteration1 | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Greek | English | ancient | modern | ancient | modern | ||
Α α | ἄλφα | Alpha | [a] [a:] | [a] | א 'Aleph | a | a |
Β β | βῆτα | Beta | [b] | [v] | ב Beth | b | v |
Γ γ | γάμμα | Gamma | [g] | [ʝ] before [e] or [i]; [ɣ] otherwise | ג Gimel | g | g |
Δ δ | δέλτα | Delta | [d] | [ð] | ד Daleth | d | d |
Ε ε | ἒ ψιλόν | Epsilon | [e] | [e] | ה He | e | e |
Ϝ ϝ (1) | Ϝαυ ? | Digamma | [w] | - | ו Vav | w | - |
Ζ ζ | ζῆτα | Zeta | [zd], later [zː] | [z] | ז Zayin | z | z |
Η η | ἦτα | Eta | [ɛː] ([h]) | [i] | ח Heth | e | i |
Θ θ | θῆτα | Theta | [tʰ] | [θ] | ט Teth | th | th |
Ι ι | ἰῶτα | Iota | [i] [iː] | [i] [j] | י Yod | i | i |
Κ κ | κάππα | Kappa | [k] | [k] | ך כ Kaph | k, c | k |
Λ λ | λάμβδα | Lambda | [l] | [l] | ל Lamed | l | l |
Μ μ | μῦ | Mu | [m] | [m] | ם מ Mem | m | m |
Ν ν | νῦ | Nu | [n] | [n] | ן נ Nun | n | n |
Ξ ξ | ξῖ | Xi | [ks] | [ks] | ס Samekh | x | x |
Ο ο | ὄ μικρόν | Omicron | [o] | [o] | ע `Ayin | o | o |
Π π | πῖ | Pi | [p] | [p] | ף פ Pe | p | p |
M (1) (Ϻ ϻ) | San | ([z]) | - | ץ צ Tzadik | s | - | |
Q (1) (Ϙ ϙ) | Qoppa | ([k]) | - | ק Qoph | q | - | |
Ρ ρ | ῥῶ | Rho | [r], [r̥] | [r] | ר Resh | r (ῥ: rh) | r |
Σ σ ς (final) |
σῖγμα | Sigma | [s] | [s] | ש Shin | s, ss (between vowels) | s |
Τ τ | ταῦ | Tau | [t] | [t] | ת Tav | t | t |
Υ υ | ὒ ψιλόν | Upsilon | ([u]) [y] [yː] | [i] [v] [f] | from ו Vav | u, y (between consonants) | y, v, f |
Φ φ | φῖ | Phi | [pʰ] | [f] | origin disputed (see text) | ph | f |
Χ χ | χῖ | Chi | [kʰ] ([ks]) | [ç] before [e] or [i]; [x] otherwise | ch | ch | |
Ψ ψ | ψῖ | Psi | [ps] | [ps] | ps | ps | |
Ω ω | ὦ μέγα | Omega | [ɔː] | [o] | o, ô | o | |
Ϡ ϡ (1) | Sampi | ([ss] [ks]) | - |
The second sentence of this article says that Greek is the oldest alphabet still in use today. This seems to me, to be a glaring mistake. The Hebrew alphabet is certainly older than Greek, and certainly in use today. I would delete that line, but it's so obviously wrong, That I think I may have misunderstood something. If nobody responds to this post, I will delete the line in question. Eliezerke 17:02, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
The original Hebrew alphabet known as Evrit is still used today though the font of the alphabet has been changed to Ashuryt or Assyrian. Since the alephbet was used in the Jewish scriptures, and these are dated to be at least 3,300 years old, that would make the Hebrew alephbet older by several centuries. It seems to me that nationalist pride has obscured the fairly well documented scientific evidence that Greeks are not native to Greece, and are in fact migrants to the area at about 3200 years ago. Even if they begun to use letters and writing in the 9th century BCE, it seems that several centuries passed during which they were well predisposed to borrow this knowledge from Punic traders, or indeed Israelites who also had access to use of ships. This borrowing is commonly observed throughout history on global scale in many cultures. On the other hand there is no evidence of dead languages being rediscovered after centuries of disuse. Of course given the self-perception of the Greeks in their own primacy within European culture it may be a hard pill to swallow (this is a Hebrew pun – the PIL in Hebrew means an elephant, or an object impossible to swallow, and even if cooked, swallowed only by very many in small portions; this is a further pun on the intellectual pigmy because it is the pigmies who hunt and eat elephants in Africa) by admitting that they borrowed letters and writing from Semitic speakers. This would also kind of ruin the Indo-European theory, and not a few academic careers. -- Mrg3105 07:13, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Hello, I'd first have to say that, well, I'm Greek, and I have a different opinion concerning the origins of the Greek alphabet, but this time, WITH proof, avec proof, or whatever...
I'll first point you out the webpage containing the evidence (Both in English and Greek, though, being a greek page, content is less in the English version...), and then I'll say a few words...Here goes.
The Hellenic Language (In Greek)
The Hellenic Language (In English)
Now, if you know how to read Greek, that was quite enlightening.But even if you don't, look inside the greek page.There are more pictures anyways, and you might catch something more than the English one...Anyways, it shows us usage of a (primitive, or whatever) used in Dispilio in Kastoria back in 5.250 B.C, which is also the first writing in the world, till now, of course.Amongst other things.Also, it shows us the usage of Greek words in Hawai and Peru (The fact that the Minoans had gone all around the world even by 4000 B.C is not disputed.Look HERE (Greek) and HERE (English).Note that the English article is much smaller and poorer.), comparison charts between Linear 'A, Linear 'B, and more...
That might show you that, well, the Greeks had a system of writing from THAT far back, but it still doesn't solidly prove that we didn't get our Alphabet from the Phoenicians.Well, this does(Unfortunately, only in greek):
The Hellenic Alphabet in use in Milos by 2500 B.C
All in all, that article shows us all that the Alphabet *I* (Along with many, many others) use today was actually a evolutionary work, done by us, and not adapted from someone else...
Anyways, I just wanted to point out another side of the coin, the *dark side*.Although we too learn in our schools that we "adapted" the Phoenician Alphabet, these are SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE, not just conclusions made from whatever happened back then.Anyways, a LOT of the research is done by foreign scientists, not Greek ones...So no room for Nationalism.Could this be added in the article as a different view, but one backed up by serious evidence? I believe that it's for the best.An encyclopedia has to be objective, and that means telling the whole story.
Aaaaand I'm out....
It's technically imposssible, because Proto-Indo-European has more features such as 8 cases, dual number, etc. than Greek: http://www.koeblergerhard.de/idgwbhin.html (grammar in Vorwort) And PIE, not Greek is Adamic: [3] Wikinger 18:19, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure I agree with the removal of my addition as "song trivia":A catchy tune that may be readily adapted to learning to recite and remember the Greek alphabet is the theme song from the 1970s police drama Hawaii Five-O. I listed it in the "Additional information section" which gave various aids for learning the alphabet. It was a silly but helpful prop recommended to students by my Greek professor when I was in college. -- MPerel ( talk| contrib) 16:15, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
What's the difference between the Western & Eastern versions of the Greek alphabet?? <font=symbol> ABGDEZHQIKLMNXOPRSTUFCYW is the _______ Greek alphabet; the other one differs in that... Georgia guy 00:15, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
To the extent that the text of this section is copied from my article "Character Codes for Greek:Problems and Modern Solutions", I authorize its use in Wikipedia under the usual Wikipedia license. Stavros Macrakis, 25 November 2005.
Would it be silly to include information on the proper stroke order when writing these characters by hand? I couldn't find it on the internet so that's partly why I'm asking here. I'm wondering, for instance, which stroke of Lambda should go first, or which stroke of Phi. Lambda looks a lot better to me when I draw the leftmost stroke first, but I'm curious to know what the standard order is. A5 15:42, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
An anonymous editor added the modern names of the letters, unfortunately at the wrong spot (after the letter combinations), in a phonetic transcription using English spelling (ee for [i] etc). I reverted this because this edit had a poor style not fit for an encyclopedia. It is true that the modern names of the letters are missing. They are included in the Greek version at el:Ελληνικό αλφάβητο. I would prefer the pronounciation of the modern names in IPA, because this is the standard. However, including the modern names in the table would make it very wide. One option would be to have two tables, one for the modern and one for the historic names and pronunciations. Andreas 02:15, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree that this is too obscure a point to be reflected in this article. But it's possibly appropriate to mention it in the individual articles for the various letters, and I've made a start by updating Mu (letter) accordingly. -- rossb 16:24, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Several of the phonemes represented by single letters, e.g. Γ = /ɣ/, have allophones, in this case [ʝ] and [ɣ]. Since this is an article about the alphabet, and not modern Greek phonology, this seems to be out of place here, just as dialectal pronunciations would be (e.g. Cretan [ʒ]). There is an extensive (though, alas, not very good) discussion of the phonology in Greek language. I would prefer to keep just the phonemes and not all the variant realizations in the main table here. -- Macrakis 02:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)