Template talk:Greek alphabet

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[edit] Image:Beginning and End.svg

Sampi as such wasn't even really a "letter" of the Greek alphabet at all -- it was a special symbol used for the purpose of writing numbers. AnonMoos (talk) 15:46, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What to include

The current version of this template reads:

v • d • e Greek alphabet
Α α | Β β | Γ γ | Δ δ | Ε ε | Ϝ ϝ | Ϛ ϛ | Ζ ζ | Η η | Ͱ ͱ | Θ θ | Ι ι | J ȷ | Κ κ | Λ λ | Μ μ
Ν ν | Ξ ξ | Ο ο | Π π | Ϻ ϻ | Ϸ ϸ | Ϙ ϙ | Ρ ρ | Σ σ | Τ τ | Υ υ | Φ φ | Χ χ | Ψ ψ | Ω ω | Ϡ ϡ

There are several problems here:

• several include undefined Unicode codepoints: Ͷ (U+0376), Ͱ (U+0370), Ͳ (U+0372)
• Sho (Ϸ) is not a Greek letter at all, but an additional letter used with the Greek alphabet for Bactrian
• Stigma (Ϛ) was never a letter, but a ligature and a numeral
• Qoppa appears twice (Ϙ and Ϟ)
• Yot (ϳ) is a modern philological notation, and was never a Greek letter.

I have removed these, because I don't think they're controversial.

In my editorial judgement, the archaic letters digamma, san, qoppa, and sampi don't belong in the general Greek alphabet template, but since that is likely to be controversial, I'm leaving them in. --Macrakis (talk) 02:36, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

See previous discussion at Talk:Alpha and Omega#Alpha and Sampi. If it was just Wikinger, I would have reverted, but when Michael Everson (User:Evertype) got involved, I decided to wait... AnonMoos (talk) 15:35, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

First of all, I'm not sure why this version of the template even exists, it's used only on two or three articles, all others have the larger infobox-style template {{Table_Greekletters}} at the top. Which does this thing better, by visually separating the standard alphabetic set from a small group of obsolete/archaic/numeral etc. items. Apart from this, I agree with Macrakis. These templates aren't listing of Unicode codepoints, but of Wikipedia articles, and should therefore be adapted to what articles we actually have. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:31, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

So we're agreed that the archaic letters should be dropped from this template? --Macrakis (talk) 12:32, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I am not agreed. All of those letters are letters, and have been encoded in Unicode because of it. The template should include all the letters people may find. The template is not "Basic Greek" letters, and in an online environment the template shold be inclusive rather than exclusive. The arguments given above by Stavros are purist, but purism is not encyclopaedic. And it is simply silly to say that SHO is not "Greek" just because it was not used for the Greek languages. SHO was an innovation in the Greek alphabet. QOPPA appears twice because the two letters are used distinctly: the Z-form is used in modern Greek legal contexts as a number, and the Q-form is never used in that context, and the reverse tends to be true in linguistics, where the Q-form is typically used. We should use the inclusive version of the template.

v • d • e Greek alphabet
Α α | Β β | Γ γ | Δ δ | Ε ε | Ϝ ϝ, Ͷ ͷ | Ϛ ϛ | Ζ ζ | Η η | Ͱ ͱ | Θ θ | Ι ι | ϳ | Κ κ | Λ λ | Μ μ | Ν ν
Ξ ξ | Ο ο | Π π | Ϻ ϻ | Ϸ ϸ | Ϙ ϙ, Ϟ ϟ | Ρ ρ | Σ σ ς | Τ τ | Υ υ | Φ φ | Χ χ | Ψ ψ | Ω ω | Ϡ ϡ, Ͳ ͳ

-- Evertype·✆ 15:05, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, numeral symbols which are used strictly and only as numeral symbols are NOT letters by any meaningful definition of the word "letter" (whether the listing in the Unicode standard calls them that or not). And if Sho, then why not the Coptic letters? AnonMoos (talk) 15:56, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Evertype, can you find any reliable sources (outside Unicode documents) which refer to Sho, Heta, Stigma, and Jod etc. as members of the "Greek alphabet"? Their classification as "letters" in Unicode is a technical decision which no doubt makes perfect sense in the context of character encoding standards for computer processing, but doesn't seem relevant to the larger question. --Macrakis (talk) 16:49, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

(undent) I'm not in principle against having some mention of (some of) these characters, but I'd want to keep them out of the alphabetic sequence, which should be reserved to the standard set. Also, variants that don't have an article of their own but are treated together with their main form (like Heta, which is just a redirect to Eta) should not be listed. Remember, this is a list of shortcuts to existing Wikipedia entries, not a list of Unicode codepoints. As for Sho, its status in {{Greek alphabet}} is on a par with the status of, let's say, Ƣ in {{Latin alphabet}} (look it up, it is of course not there). Likewise, "Greek letter Yot" has the same status here as, say ɸ in {{Latin alphabet}} - a recent cross-script borrowing used solely for technical linguistic purposes, technically classified as part of the borrowing script (certainly for good reasons), but not part of a borrowing alphabet in any meaningful sense. Also, I see no good reason to list separate upper and lower case forms for those items where that distinction is a recent typographical invention and only marginally used in practice anyway; as the two forms invariably look more or less identical, the double listing at this point adds no encyclopedic value.

But anyway, before I go on arguing, I'd like to hear comments on my previous point: Why do we have this duplicate template in the first place? Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:52, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm doing a lot of travelling in the next while; I will come beck to this topic as soon as I can. If the interlopers are kept, however, it is best to show them in their alphabetical order, don't you think? I mean, they do HAVE a place in the order. -- Evertype·✆ 09:34, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

If the archaic letters are kept, they should be distinguished in some way from the canonical/classical letters, perhaps by being parenthesized, perhaps by being put at the end. I don't feel strongly either way, but I'd still prefer to drop them entirely. This is after all just a summary, and the full Greek alphabet article (to which the header links) has all the gory details. --Macrakis (talk) 13:16, 27 March 2008 (UTC)