Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Xi (/ z aɪ / ZY or /(k) s aɪ / (K)SY; [1] [2] uppercase Ξ, lowercase ξ; Greek: ξι) is the fourteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiceless consonant cluster. Its name is pronounced in Modern Greek. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 60. Xi was derived from the Phoenician letter samekh.
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. [2] [3] It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, [4] and is the earliest known alphabetic script to have developed distinct letters for consonants as well as vowels. [5]
The charts below show how the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents the Ancient Greek (AG) and Modern Greek (MG) pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. The Ancient Greek pronunciation shown here is a reconstruction of the Attic dialect in the 5th century BC.
In Ancient Greek, the diaeresis (Greek: διαίρεσις or διαλυτικά, dialytiká, 'distinguishing') – ϊ – appears on the letters ι and υ to show that a pair of vowel letters is pronounced separately, rather than as a diphthong or as a digraph for a simple vowel.
As an initial letter in Classical Greek, it always carried the rough breathing (equivalent to h) as reflected in the many Greek-derived English words, such as those that begin with hyper-and hypo-. This rough breathing was derived from an older pronunciation that used a sibilant instead; this sibilant was not lost in Latin, giving rise to such ...
The word zeta is the ancestor of zed, the name of the Latin letter Z in Commonwealth English. Swedish and many Romance languages (such as Italian and Spanish) do not distinguish between the Greek and Roman forms of the letter; "zeta" is used to refer to the Roman letter Z as well as the Greek letter.
Ancient Greek phonology is the reconstructed phonology or pronunciation of Ancient Greek.This article mostly deals with the pronunciation of the standard Attic dialect of the fifth century BC, used by Plato and other Classical Greek writers, and touches on other dialects spoken at the same time or earlier.
Letters with no equivalent in the classical Greek alphabet such as heta (Ͱ & ͱ), meanwhile, usually take their nearest English equivalent (in this case, h) but are too uncommon to be listed in formal transliteration schemes. Uncommon Greek letters which have been given formal romanizations include: