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Eta
Eta ( ; uppercase , lowercase ; ''ē̂ta'' or ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel, . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative, , in most dialects of Ancient Greek, its sound value in the classical Attic dialect was a long open-mid front unrounded vowel, , which was raised to in Hellenistic Greek, a process known as iotacism or itacism. In the ancient Attic number system (Herodianic or acrophonic numbers), the number 100 was represented by "", because it was the initial of , the ancient spelling of = "one hundred". In the later system of (Classical) Greek numerals eta represents 8. Eta was derived from the Phoenician letter heth . Letters that arose from eta include the Latin H and the Cyrillic letters И and Й. History Consonant h The letter shape 'H' was originally used in most Greek dialects to represent the voiceless glottal fricative, . In this function, it was borrowed in the 8t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cumaean Alphabet
Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the archaic and early classical periods, until around 400 BC, when they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that is the standard today. All forms of the Greek alphabet were originally based on the shared inventory of the 22 symbols of the Phoenician alphabet, with the exception of the letter Samekh, whose Greek counterpart Xi () was used only in a subgroup of Greek alphabets, and with the common addition of Upsilon () for the vowel . The local, so-called ''epichoric'', alphabets differed in many ways: in the use of the consonant symbols , and ; in the use of the innovative long vowel letters ( and ), in the absence or presence of Η in its original consonant function (); in the use or non-use of certain archaic letters ( = , = , = ); and in many details of the individual shapes of each letter. The system now familiar as the standard 24-letter Greek alphabet was originally t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epichoric Alphabets
Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the Archaic Greece, archaic and Classical Greece, early classical periods, until around 400 BC, when they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that is the standard today. All forms of the Greek alphabet were originally based on the shared inventory of the 22 symbols of the Phoenician alphabet, with the exception of the letter Samekh, whose Greek counterpart Xi (letter), Xi () was used only in a subgroup of Greek alphabets, and with the common addition of Upsilon () for the vowel . The local, so-called ''epichoric'', alphabets differed in many ways: in the use of the consonant symbols , and ; in the use of the innovative long vowel letters ( and ), in the absence or presence of Η in its original consonant function (); in the use or non-use of certain archaic letters ( = , = , = ); and in many details of the individual shapes of each letter. The system now familiar as the standa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
I (Cyrillic)
I (И и; italics: ''И и'' or ; italics: ) is a letter used in almost all modern Cyrillic alphabets with the exception of Belarusian alphabet, Belarusian. It commonly represents either the close front unrounded vowel (e.g., in Russian), like the pronunciation of in "machine", or the near-close near-front unrounded vowel , (e.g., in Ukrainian), like the pronunciation of in "bin". History Because the Cyrillic letter И was derived from the Eta (letter), Greek letter Eta (Ηη), the Cyrillic had the shape of up to the 13th century. The name of the Cyrillic letter И in the Early Cyrillic alphabet was (''iže''), meaning "which". In the Cyrillic numerals, Cyrillic numeral system, the Cyrillic letter И had a value of 8, corresponding to the Greek letter Eta (Eta, Ηη). In the Early Cyrillic alphabet, like in the Greek alphabet of the time (see Iotacism), there was little or no distinction between the letter / and the letter , the latter of which was deri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as well as consonants. In Archaic Greece, Archaic and early Classical Greece, Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in Archaic Greek alphabets, many local variants, but, by the end of the 4th century BC, the Ionia, Ionic-based Euclidean alphabet, with 24 letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard throughout the Greek-speaking world and is the version that is still used for Greek writing today. The letter case, uppercase and lowercase forms of the 24 letters are: : , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of several scripts, such as the Latin script, Latin, Gothic alphabet, Gothic, Coptic script, Coptic, and Cyrillic scripts. Throughout antiquity, Greek had only a single uppercas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Numerals
Greek numerals, also known as Ionic, Ionian, Milesian, or Alexandrian numerals, is a numeral system, system of writing numbers using the letters of the Greek alphabet. In modern Greece, they are still used for ordinal number (linguistics), ordinal numbers and in contexts similar to those in which Roman numerals are still used in the Western world. For ordinary cardinal number (linguistics), cardinal numbers, however, modern Greece uses Arabic numerals. History The Minoans, Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations' Linear A and Linear B alphabets used a different system, called Aegean numerals, which included number-only symbols for powers of ten: = 1, = 10, = 100, = 1000, and = 10000. Attic numerals composed another system that came into use perhaps in the 7th century BC. They were acrophonic, derived (after the initial one) from the first letters of the names of the numbers represented. They ran = 1, = ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iotacism
Iotacism (, ''iotakismos'') or itacism is the process of vowel shift by which a number of vowels and diphthongs converged towards the pronunciation in post-classical Greek and Modern Greek. The term "iotacism" refers to the letter iota, the original sign for , with which these vowels came to merge. The alternative term ''itacism'' refers to the new pronunciation of the name of the letter eta as after the change. Vowels and diphthongs involved Ancient Greek had a broader range of vowels (see Ancient Greek phonology) than Modern Greek has. Eta () was a long open-mid front unrounded vowel , and upsilon () was a close front rounded vowel . Over the course of time, both vowels came to be pronounced like the close front unrounded vowel iota () . In addition, certain diphthongs merged to the same pronunciation. Specifically, Epsilon-iota () initially became in Classical Greek before it later raised to () while, later, omicron-iota () and upsilon-iota () merged with upsilon (). As ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rough Breathing
In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing ( or ; ) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, diphthong, or after rho. It remained in the polytonic orthography even after the Hellenistic period, when the sound disappeared from the Greek language. In the monotonic orthography of Modern Greek phonology, in use since 1982, it is not used at all. The absence of an sound is marked by the smooth breathing. The character, or those with similar shape such as , have also been used for a similar sound by Thomas Wade (and others) in the Wade–Giles system of romanization for Mandarin Chinese. Herbert Giles and others have used a left (opening) curved single quotation mark for the same purpose; the apostrophe, backtick, and visually similar characters are often seen as well. History The rough breathing comes from the left-hand half of the letter H. In some archaic Greek alphabets, the letter was used ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Italic Alphabet
The Old Italic scripts are a family of ancient writing systems used in the Italian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place. The most notable member is the Etruscan alphabet, which was the immediate ancestor of the Latin alphabet used by more than 100 languages today, including English. The runic alphabets used in Northern Europe are believed to have been separately derived from one of these alphabets by the 2nd century AD. Origins The Old Italic alphabets ultimately derive from the Phoenician alphabet, but the general consensus is that the Etruscan alphabet was imported from the Euboean Greek colonies of Cumae and Ischia (Pithekoūsai) situated in the Gulf of Naples in the 8th century BC; this Euboean alphabet is also called 'Cumaean' (after Cumae), or 'Chalcidian' (after its metropolis Chalcis). The Cumaean hypothesis is supported by the 1957–58 excavations of Veii by the British School at Rome, which found piece ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Short I
Short I or Yot/Jot (Й й; italics: ''Й й'' or ; italics: ) (sometimes called I Kratkoye, , Ukrainian: йот) or I with breve, Russian: и с бреве) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It is made of the Cyrillic letter И with a breve. The short I represents the palatal approximant , like the pronunciation of in ''yesterday''. Depending on the romanization system in use and the Slavic language that is under examination, it can be romanized as , , or . For more details, see romanization of Russian, romanization of Ukrainian, romanization of Belarusian and romanization of Bulgarian. History Active use of (or, rather, the breve over ) began around the 15th and 16th centuries. Since the middle of the 17th century, the differentiation between and is obligatory in the Russian variant of Church Slavonic orthography (used for the Russian language as well). During the alphabet reforms of Peter I, all diacritic marks were removed from the Russian writing sy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hellenistic Greek
Koine Greek (, ), also variously known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek, Septuagint Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-regional form of Greek spoken and written during the Hellenistic period, the Roman Empire and the early Byzantine Empire. It evolved from the spread of Greek following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC, and served as the lingua franca of much of the Mediterranean region and the Middle East during the following centuries . It was based mainly on Attic and related Ionic speech forms, with various admixtures brought about through dialect levelling with other varieties. Koine Greek included styles ranging from conservative literary forms to the spoken vernaculars of the time. As the dominant language of the Byzantine Empire, it developed further into Medieval Greek, which then turned into Modern Greek. Literary Koine was the medium of much post-classical Greek literary and sc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dionysius Thrax
Dionysius Thrax ( ''Dionýsios ho Thrâix'', 170–90 BC) was a Greek grammarian and a pupil of Aristarchus of Samothrace. He was long considered to be the author of the earliest grammatical text on the Greek language, one that was used as a standard manual for perhaps some 1,500 years, and which was until recently regarded as the groundwork of the entire Western grammatical tradition. Life His place of origin was not Thrace, as the epithet "Thrax" denotes, but probably Alexandria. His Thracian background was inferred from the name of his father Tērēs (Τήρης), which is considered to be a Thracian name. One of his co-students during his studies in Alexandria under Aristarchus was Apollodorus of Athens, who also became a distinguished grammarian. Rudolf Pfeiffer dates his shift to the isle of Rhodes to , when political upheavals associated with the policies of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II are thought to have led to his exile. According to a report in Athenaeus' Deipnosophi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
