Talk:Digamma

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Contents


[edit] Old Stuff

Rare greek letters test sheet

Normal: "Ϝ ϝ" Digamma -- Ϙ ϙ Qoppa -- Ϡ ϡ Sampi -- "Ϻ ϻ" San
Bold: "Ϝ ϝ" Digamma -- Ϙ ϙ Qoppa -- Ϡ ϡ Sampi -- "Ϻ ϻ" San
Cursive: "Ϝ ϝ" Digamma -- Ϙ ϙ Qoppa -- Ϡ ϡ Sampi -- "Ϻ ϻ" San
Typewriter: "Ϝ ϝ" Digamma -- Ϙ ϙ Qoppa -- Ϡ ϡ Sampi -- "Ϻ ϻ" San

Pjacobi 09:01, 17 Sep 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 09:32, 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, Oopa or Sampi.

There is next to no modern use (or even classical use, for most) of these letters, apart from some use as Greek numbers (see de:Griechische Zahlen, no article yet here).

I've installed tons of fonts for test purposed but I still can't get the San and the glyph for the large Sampi is only OK in typewriter font.

A good starting point to find a missing font is http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts.html and if you decide to spend $5 for James Kass' Code 2000 you have a reasonable starting point for a wide range of scripts (free alternatives are listed at Alan's site).

This still leaves the issue whether your browser will select the right font and how and if you must make specific settings. In my experience the Gecko browsers (Netscape 7, Mozilla, Firefox) are more helpful by switching automatically to another font if a glyph is missing in the selected font.

Pjacobi 09:01, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)


There is a mathematical function called the "digamma function" but I don't know what the appropriate symbol for it is. It certainly doesn't look like a sigma-tau or an F or anything. 67.164.12.169 01:11, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Linear B

User:87.202.138.201 added the following to the article, with the edit comment "I think Linear B material is now justified and acceptable. Perhaps the point of dispute, "derived", shouldn't be used anywhere.)".

Digamma has the same position in the alphabet, with the Phoenician letter Waw (letter), which also has the numerical value 6. In addition they have the same phonetic value.
There is no serious scholarly dispute about the origin of the letter digamma. The very fact that it is in the same position as the Phoenician Alphabet's Waw, with the same phonetic value, and a very similar shape, is certainly part of the argument. I see no reason to deny its Phoenician origin in the article.
The sound w of Digamma was present in Linear B, the early script that used to represent the Greek language. The syllabograms wa we wi wo, of Linear B are phonetically equivalent to syllables starting with Digamma. For example the Ancient Greek word for king, that had been inscribed in Linear B by three syllabic signs pronounced wa-na-ka, was turned into the alphabet word Wanaks, that starts with Digamma.
I am not sure what the point of this section is. After all, the sound /d/ of Delta was also present in Linear B. Perhaps it is to demonstrate that the /w/ sound is attested both in Linear B and in early Greek alphabets (though of course in the case of Linear B it is reconstructed), and therefore in early forms of Greek? In that case, perhaps it belongs in the History of Greek article? I have tried to rephrase the material to be relevant to Digamma -- see what you think.

--Macrakis 22:50, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

The point of dispute is the Phoenecian origin of the Greek Alphabet. I believe, like many others, in a theory that says that Phoenecian Alphabet was derived from some early Greek Alphabet and not the other way around. Possibly the Phoenecians used the Ancient Cretan Alphabet. Phoenecians could have been Proto-Hellenic in origin, possibly colonists from the lost Aegean civilization. Of couse all of these are just theories at the moment, so why should someone embrace the Phoenecian origin theory as true?
Greek language has been written in Linear B, centuries before the first inscribed Phoenecian alphabet. So there is a question here: When the Greeks decided to use letters instead of syllabograms, and since they were more advanced in literature at that time, why to use an alphabet of another civilization (if they were indeed) and don't construct their own? What is you opinion?
Pantelis, from Thessaloniki, Greece.
Despite the fact that it may be interesting to discuss these theories, the main policy of encyclopedic work is no original research, so, our own takes on the issue should not be reflected in the article, and we cannot decide by a discussion here, what the origin of the greek script is. Instead, from the many others you should select some, who published their theories, so that this can eventually cited in the article. --Pjacobi 13:45, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
No serious scholar believes the Greek alphabet to be derived from anything but Phoenician. It is not just that the Greek letters look like the Phoenician ones: they are in the same alphabetic order, and have very close phonetic values -- except of course for the vowels, which were the crucial Greek innovation. The ancients also believed that their letters came from Phoenician. As User:Chronographos says in Talk:Pelasgians:
Plato, Kritias, B.29 : "Φοίνικες δ' ηύρον γράμματα αλεξίλογα" (=the Phoenicians invented letters, the speechsavers", what an amazing word!). There are also numerous archaic inscriptions referring to the office of the scribe called "ποινικαστάς" in Doric (Attic would be φοινικαστής), from times when the Phoenician alphabet was a relative novelty and a professional scribe was needed to write stuff down in it. Chronographos 09:18, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't even know what it means to say that the Phoenicians have been "Proto-Hellenic". Surely their language is not related to Greek, though Greek does have borrowings from it. Did the populations mix? No doubt, but I don't see what that has to do with anything. And I don't know what you mean by the "lost Aegean civilization".
As for why the Greeks didn't start with Linear B rather than Phoenician, there is a long period in the archaeological record with no writing at all, so apparently they returned to illiteracy. And anyway, Linear B was itself borrowed from a non-Greek writing system, Linear A, which is undeciphered, but appears to be neither Indo-European nor Semitic.
It appears there is a movement in Greece, centered around publications like Davlos and grecoreport.com, which is propagating preposterous nationalistic stuff -- see my comments in Talk:Greek alphabet under '"Alternative theory" of history'. Sigh. I suppose everyone has to have the moral equivalent of creationists. --Macrakis 16:46, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
Well if you acuse me of belonging to "propagating preposterous nationalistic" "movement in Greece", I'll return it to you asking: what movement do you represent? You seem like a respectable person and therefore you shouldn't put tags over theories or opinions like "nationalistic", as I should not question your motives. For your information I haven't even read Davlos, or similar magazines, and many of my beliefs are based on personal logical assumptions. Also there isn't any widespread nationalistics or anti-semitic movements in Greece, cause parties that represent those get around 0.01% in the elections.
Please justify opinions like "a non-Greek writing system, Linear A". Linear A is still undeciphered, like you stated, so how do you know it's not Greek? As for the lost Aegean civilization, I'm talking about people that lived on the Aegean land, before the erruption of the Thera volcano, that caused the submerging of it. I would like to discuss my opinions, if they aren't treated in the same manner, Darvin's opinions were treated at the 19th century.
Finally, I am glad for not beeing a "serious scholar" of our times, but just an "ερασιτέχνης" of history. (herasitechnis =lover of art)
Just to mention that you dont have to decipher a language (ie. the meanings of words) in order to understand its structure and maybe conclude if it belongs to one language family or not(based on similarities and statistics - research basically). Syntax (which defines structure) is different from Grammar (which defines words).--81.103.162.59 13:46, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ukrainian Difamma

The Name Digamma has also fifth letter of the Ukrainian alphabet - Ґ. The letter had the phonetic value ɡ, unlike letter Г (sound ɦ)--Yakudza 19:19, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Font

I've set the font as Arial Unicode MS in my /monobook.css so I can view (most) uncommon letters, but the polytonic template remakes the letters to spaces for me. – SmiddleTC@ 16:09, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Alexandrian?

I'm a relative innocent when it comes to Greek; reasonably well-read on the subject of languages in general, familiar with the sound of Greek and able to puzzle out written Greek personal names and some words, but not a Grecophone by any stretch. However, I expect I'd have seen it somewhere if Modern Greek had descended from the Alexandrian dialect. Surely that should say Attic? TCC (talk) (contribs) 01:57, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Semi-serif

On the middle horizontal line of this letter, the semi-serif is kind of annoying. Georgia guy (talk) 19:39, 6 February 2008 (UTC)