Upsilon

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Upsilon

Upsilon (uppercase ?, lowercase ?; ) is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
. In the system of Greek numerals

Greek numerals

Greek numerals are a numeral system using letters of the Greek alphabet. They are also known by the names Milesian numerals, Alexandrian numerals, or alphabetic numerals....
it has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw

Waw (letter)

Waw is the sixth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician alphabet, Aramaic alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet, and Arabic alphabet ....
.

arly Greek it was pronounced like English oo . In Classical Greek, it was pronounced like French u or German ü, —a sound that is not found in most dialects of English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
. In Modern Greek

Modern Greek

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Upsilon'

Start a new discussion about 'Upsilon'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

Upsilon (uppercase ?, lowercase ?; ) is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
. In the system of Greek numerals

Greek numerals

Waw (letter)

Waw is the sixth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician alphabet, Aramaic alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet, and Arabic alphabet ....
.

Pronunciation

In early Greek it was pronounced like English oo . In Classical Greek, it was pronounced like French u or German ü, —a sound that is not found in most dialects of English

English language

Modern Greek

Modern Greek refers the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic modern features of the language had been present centuries earli...
it is pronounced like continental i or English ee, , and in diphthongs, or . In ancient Greek it occurred in both long and short versions, but this distinction has been lost in Modern Greek.

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

English words of Greek origin

The Greek language has contributed to the English language vocabulary in three ways:#directly as an immediate donor,#indirectly through other intermediate language, as an original donor , and...
, such as those that begin with hyper- and hypo-. This rough breathing was derived from an older pronunciation which used a sibilant

Sibilant consonant

A sibilant is a type of fricative or affricate consonant, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the vocal tract towards the sharp edge of the teeth....
instead; this sibilant was not lost in Latin, giving rise to such cognates as super- (for hyper-) and sub- (for hypo-).

Upsilon participated as the second element in falling diphthongs, which have subsequently developed in various ways: for instance after alpha or epsilon it is pronounced [f] or [v].

Correspondence with Latin Y

The usage of Y

The letter Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled wye or occasionally wy' , plural wyes....
in Latin dates back to the I century BC. It was used to transcribe loanwords from Greek, so it was not a native sound of Latin and was usually pronounced /u/ or /i/. The latter pronunciation was the most common in the Classical period and was used by most people except the educated ones. The Roman Emperor
Roman Emperor

The Roman Emperor was the ruler of the Roman Empire during the imperial period . The Romans had no single term for the office: Latin language titles such as imperator , Augustus , Caesar and princeps were all associated with it....
Claudius
Claudius

Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus or Claudius I was the fourth Roman Emperor, a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, ruling from January 24, AD 41 to his death in AD 54....
proposed introducing a new letter
Claudian letters

The Claudian letters were developed by, and named after, the Roman Emperor Claudius . He introduced three new letters:*a reversed C to replace BS and PS, much like X stood in for CS and GS, and inspired by the Greek Psi ....
into the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
to transcribe the so-called sonus medius (a short vowel before labial consonants), but in inscriptions was sometimes used for Greek upsilon instead.

The name of the letter was originally just ? (y; also called hy, hence "hyoid", meaning "y-shaped"). It changed to ? ?????, (u psilon, meaning 'simple u') to distinguish it from οι, which had come to have the same pronunciation. The name of the letter in modern Greek is pronounced (in contrast to the letter ?, which is pronounced ). It is also rarely called "ypsilon" in English because of its resemblance to the Roman letter Y
Y

The letter Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled wye or occasionally wy' , plural wyes....
.

Four letters of the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
arose from it: V
V

V is the twenty-second letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled vee ....
and Y
Y

The letter Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled wye or occasionally wy' , plural wyes....
and, much later, U
U

U is the twenty-first letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled u ....
and W
W

W is the 23 letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled double-u ....
. In the Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet is a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by five Slavic languages national languages as well as non-Slavic . It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past....
, the letters U
U (Cyrillic)

U is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the vowel after non-palatalized consonants.In some languages variations of this letter are used:...
(?, ?) and Izhitsa
Izhitsa

Izhitsa is a letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet. It was used to represent upsilon in words derived from Greek language, such as ????? . However, because it made the same sound /i/ as the normal letter ?, it was considered superfluous....
(?, ?) arose from it.

Usage

In particle physics
Particle physics

Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the elementary particle constituents of matter and radiation, and the interactions between them....
the capital Greek letter ? denotes an Upsilon particle
Upsilon particle

The Upsilon meson is a flavor meson formed from a bottom quark and its antiparticle. It was discovered by the E288 collaboration, headed by Leon Lederman, at Fermilab in 1977, and was the first particle containing a bottom quark to be discovered because it is the lightest that can be produced without additional massive particles....
. Note that the symbol should always look like ? in order to avoid confusion with a Latin Y denoting the hypercharge
Hypercharge

In particle physics, the hypercharge of a particle is related to the strong interaction, and is distinct from the similarly named weak hypercharge, which has an analogous role in the electroweak interaction....
.
Automobile manufacturer Lancia
Lancia

Lancia Automobiles S.p.A. is an Italy automobile manufacturer founded in 1906 by Vincenzo Lancia and which became part of the Fiat in 1969. The company has a long history of producing distinctive cars and also has a strong rally heritage....
has a model called the Ypsilon. See Lancia Ypsilon
Lancia Ypsilon

The Lancia Y or later Lancia Ypsilon is a supermini car produced by Italy automaker Lancia since 1996. It is the replacement of the Lancia Y10, although larger and more expensive....
.