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Zeta (letter)
 
 
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Zeta (uppercase ?, lowercase ?; Zita) is the sixth 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 7. It was derived from the Phoenician letter
Phoenician alphabet

The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BC. It was used for the writing of Phoenician language, a Northern Semitic languages language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia....
 Zayin . Letters that arose from Zeta include the Roman Z
Z

Z is the twenty-sixth and final Letter of the modern English alphabet....
 and Cyrillic ? (Ze)
Ze (Cyrillic)

Ze is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant . It's easily confusable with the figure 3 . It can also be confused with the Russian letter E , which represents the vowel when it does not follow a soft consonant....
.

Unlike the other Greek letters
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....
, this letter did not take its name from the Phoenician
Phoenician alphabet

The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BC. It was used for the writing of Phoenician language, a Northern Semitic languages language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia....
 letter it was derived from; it was given a new name on the pattern of beta
BETA

BETA is a pure object-oriented language originating within the "Scandinavian School" in object-orientation where the first object-oriented language Simula programming language was developed....
, eta
ETA

or ETA , is an illegal and armed Basque nationalist and separatist organisation. Founded in 1959, it evolved from a group advocating traditional cultural ways to a paramilitary group demanding Basque independence....
 and theta
Theta

Theta is the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, derived from the Phoenician letter Teth. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 9....
.

Zeta has the numerical value 7 rather than 6 because the letter digamma
Digamma

Digamma is an Archaic Greece letter of the Greek alphabet, used primarily as a Greek numeral.The letter had the phonetic value of a voiced labial-velar approximant ....
 (also called 'stigma
Stigma (letter)

Stigma is a ligature of the Greek alphabet letters sigma and tau , sometimes used in modern times to represent the Greek numeral 6. However, today the letters st are more widely used to represent the number 6 or the ordinal 6th....
' as a Greek numeral) was originally in the sixth position in the alphabet.

Zeta can be said to be the origin of the most common pronunciation of the Roman letter Z
Z

Z is the twenty-sixth and final Letter of the modern English alphabet....
.

lower case letter can be used to represent:

Pronunciation
The letter ? represents a voiced alveolar fricative
Voiced alveolar fricative

The voiced alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a sibilant or non-sibilant fricative is being described....
  in modern Greek
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...
.

The sound represented by zeta in Classical Greek is disputed.






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Zeta (uppercase ?, lowercase ?; Zita) is the sixth 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 7. It was derived from the Phoenician letter
Phoenician alphabet

The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BC. It was used for the writing of Phoenician language, a Northern Semitic languages language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia....
 Zayin
Phoenician Zayin
. Letters that arose from Zeta include the Roman Z
Z

Z is the twenty-sixth and final Letter of the modern English alphabet....
 and Cyrillic ? (Ze)
Ze (Cyrillic)

Ze is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant . It's easily confusable with the figure 3 . It can also be confused with the Russian letter E , which represents the vowel when it does not follow a soft consonant....
.

Unlike the other Greek letters
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....
, this letter did not take its name from the Phoenician
Phoenician alphabet

The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BC. It was used for the writing of Phoenician language, a Northern Semitic languages language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia....
 letter it was derived from; it was given a new name on the pattern of beta
BETA

BETA is a pure object-oriented language originating within the "Scandinavian School" in object-orientation where the first object-oriented language Simula programming language was developed....
, eta
ETA

or ETA , is an illegal and armed Basque nationalist and separatist organisation. Founded in 1959, it evolved from a group advocating traditional cultural ways to a paramilitary group demanding Basque independence....
 and theta
Theta

Theta is the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, derived from the Phoenician letter Teth. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 9....
.

Zeta has the numerical value 7 rather than 6 because the letter digamma
Digamma

Digamma is an Archaic Greece letter of the Greek alphabet, used primarily as a Greek numeral.The letter had the phonetic value of a voiced labial-velar approximant ....
 (also called 'stigma
Stigma (letter)

Stigma is a ligature of the Greek alphabet letters sigma and tau , sometimes used in modern times to represent the Greek numeral 6. However, today the letters st are more widely used to represent the number 6 or the ordinal 6th....
' as a Greek numeral) was originally in the sixth position in the alphabet.

Zeta can be said to be the origin of the most common pronunciation of the Roman letter Z
Z

Z is the twenty-sixth and final Letter of the modern English alphabet....
.

Symbol

The lower case letter can be used to represent:
  • The damping ratio
    Damping ratio

    In engineering, the damping ratio is a measure of describing how oscillations in a system die down after a disturbance. Many systems exhibit oscillatory behavior when they are disturbed from their position of static equilibrium....
     of a spring-system in engineering and physics
  • The effective nuclear charge on an electron in quantum chemistry
  • The Riemann zeta function
    Riemann zeta function

    In mathematics, the Riemann zeta function, named after Germany mathematician Bernhard Riemann, is a prominent function of great significance in number theory because of its relation to the prime number theorem....
     in mathematics
    Mathematics

    Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space, change, and related topics of pattern and form. Mathematicians seek out patterns whether found in numbers, space, natural science, computers, imaginary abstractions, or elsewhere....
  • The lag angle in helicopter blade dynamics
  • Relative vorticity in the atmosphere
    Atmosphere

    An atmosphere is a layer of gases that may surround a material body of sufficient mass, by the gravity of the body, and are retained for a longer duration if gravity is high and the atmosphere's temperature is low....
     and ocean
    Ocean

    An ocean is a major body of Seawater, and a principal component of the hydrosphere. Approximately 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean, a World Ocean that is customarily divided into several principal oceans and smaller seas....
  • A number whose discrete values (eigenvalues) are the positive roots of transcendental equations, used in the series solutions for transient one-dimensional conduction equations.


Pronunciation


The letter ? represents a voiced alveolar fricative
Voiced alveolar fricative

The voiced alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a sibilant or non-sibilant fricative is being described....
  in modern Greek
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...
.

The sound represented by zeta in Classical Greek is disputed. See Ancient Greek phonology
Ancient Greek phonology

Ancient Greek phonology is the study of the phonology, or pronunciation, of Ancient Greek. Because of the passage of time, the original pronunciation of Ancient Greek, like that of all ancient languages, can never be known with absolute certainty....
 and Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching
Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching

Ancient Greek has been pronounced in various ways by those studying Ancient Greek literature in various times and places. This article covers those pronunciations; the modern scholarly reconstruction of its ancient pronunciation is covered in Ancient Greek phonology....
.

Most handbooks agree on attributing to it the pronunciation (like Mazda), but some scholars believe that it was an affricate (like Italian
Italian language

Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands....
 mezzo). The modern pronunciation was, in all likelihood, established in the Hellenistic age and was probably a common, if not exclusive, practice already in Classical Attic, considering that it could count as one or two consonants metrically in the Attic drama.

Arguments in favour of


  1. IE *zd becomes ? in Greek (e.g. *sísdo > ). Contra: these words are rare and it is therefore more probable that *zd was absorbed by *dz (< *dj, *gj, *j).
  2. Without there would be an empty space between and in the Greek sound system , and a voiced affricate would not have a voiceless correspondent. Contra: a) words with and are rare; b) there was in etc.; and c) there was in fact a voiceless correspondent in Archaic Greek ( > Attic, Boeotian , Ionic
    Ionic Greek

    Ionic Greek was a sub-dialect of the Attic-Ionic dialectal group of Ancient Greek .Ionic dialect appears to have spread originally from the Greek mainland across the Aegean at the time of the Dorian invasions, around the 11th Century B.C....
    , Doric
    Doric Greek

    Doric or Dorian was a ancient Greek dialects of ancient Greek Greek language. Its variants were spoken in the southern and eastern Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes, some islands in the southern Aegean Sea, some cities on the coasts of Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, Epirus and Macedon....
     ).
  3. Persian names with zd and z are transcribed with ? and s respectively in Classical Greek (e.g. Artavazda = ~ Zara(n)ka- = . Similarly, the Philistine city Ashdod
    Ashdod

    Ashdod , is the List of Israeli cities in Israel, located in the South District of the country, on the Mediterranean Sea Israeli Coastal Plain, with a population of 207,000....
     was transcribed as .
  4. ? disappears before ? like before s(s), st: e.g. * > , * = * > . Contra: ? may have disappeared before /dz/ if one accepts that it had the allophone in that position like /ts/ had the allophone : cf. Cretan
    Cretan Greek

    Cretan Greek is a dialect of the Greek language, spoken by more than half a million people in Crete and many thousands in the Greek diaspora....
      ~ (Hinge).
  5. Verbs beginning with ? have in the perfect reduplication like the verbs beginning with st (e.g. = ). Contra: a) The most prominent example of a verb beginning with st has in fact < *se- in the perfect reduplication (; b) the words with /ts/ > s(s) also have : Homer
    Homer

    Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek language epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as of the Homeric Hymns....
     , Ion. .
  6. Alcman
    Alcman

    Alcman was an Ancient Greek choral lyric poet from Sparta. He is the earliest representative of the Alexandrinian canon of the nine lyric poets....
    , Sappho
    Sappho

    Sappho...
    , Alcaeus
    Alcaeus

    Alcaeus may refer to several ancient Greek figures, notably:*Alcaeus , the son of Perseus and the father of Amphitryon*Alcaeus of Mytilene, a lyric poet of the archaic period...
     and Theocritus
    Theocritus

    Theocritus , the creator of ancient Greek bucolic poetry, flourished in the 3rd century BC....
     have sd for Attic-Ionic ?. Contra: The tradition would not have invented this special digraph for these poets if was the normal pronunciation in all Greek. Furthermore, this convention is not found in contemporary inscriptions, and the orthography of the manuscripts and papyri is Alexandrine
    Alexandria

    Alexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports....
     rather than historical. Thus, indicates only a different pronunciation from Hellenistic Greek , i.e. either or .
  7. The grammarians Dionysius Thrax
    Dionysius Thrax

    Dionysius Thrax was a Hellenization grammarian who lived and is thought by some to have worked in Alexandria and later at Rhodes.The first extant grammar of Greek language, "Art of Grammar" is attributed to him but many scholars today doubt that the work really belongs solely to him due to the difference between the technical appr...
     and Dionysius of Halicarnassus
    Dionysius of Halicarnassus

    Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus....
     class ? with the "double" letters ?, ? and analyse it as s + d. Contra: The Roman grammarian Verrius Flaccus
    Verrius Flaccus

    Marcus Verrius Flaccus , was a Ancient Rome grammarian and teacher, flourished under Augustus Caesar and Tiberius....
     believed in the opposite sequence, d + s (in Velius Longus
    Velius Longus

    Velius Longus , Latin grammarian during the reign of Trajan , author of an extant treatise on orthography . He is mentioned by Macrobius and Servius as a commentator on Virgil....
    , De orthogr. 51), and Aristotle
    Aristotle

    Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
     says that it was a matter of dispute (Metaph. 993a) (though Aristotle might as well be referring to a pronunciation).
  8. Some Attic transcriptions of Asia Minor toponyms (ß???a?te???, a??e???, etc) show a -??- for ?; assuming that Attic
    Attic Greek

    Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek"....
     value was , it may be an attempt to transcribe a dialectal pronunciation; the reverse cannot be ruled completely, but a -sd- transcription would have been more likely in this case. This suggest that different dialects had different pronunciations.
  9. Some Attic
    Attic Greek

    Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek"....
     inscriptions have -s?- for -sd- or -?-, which is thought to parallel -sst- for -st- and therefore to imply a pronunciation.


Arguments in favour of [dz]

  1. The Greek inscriptions almost never write ? in words like or , so there must have been a difference between this sound and the sound of . Contra: a few inscriptions do seem to suggest that ? was pronounced like sd (though it may indeed be a minority pronunciation).
  2. It seems improbable that Greek would invent a special symbol for the bisegmental combination , which could be represented by sd without any problems. , on the other hand, would have the same sequence of plosive and sibilant as the double letters of the Ionic alphabet ? and ? , thereby avoiding a written plosive at the end of a syllable. Contra: the use of a special symbol for is no more or no less improbable that the use of ? for and ? for , and such use of special letters may be justified by the fact that they are the only double sounds that could appear at a word initial.
  3. Boeotia
    Boeotia

    Boeotia, Beotia, or B?otia , formerly Cadmeis, was a region of ancient Greece, north of the eastern part of the Gulf of Corinth. It was bounded on the south by Megaris and the Kithairon mountain range that forms a natural barrier with Attica, on the north by Opuntian Locris and the Euripus Strait at the Gulf of Euboea, and on the...
    n, Elean
    Elis

    Elis, or Eleia is an ancient district, that corresponds with the modern Elis Prefecture. It is in southern Greece on the Peloponnesos peninsula, bounded on the north by Achaea, east by Arcadia, south by Messenia, and west by the Ionian Sea....
    , Laconia
    Laconia

    Laconia , also known as Lacedaemonia, is a prefecture in Greece. Laconia has the legal status of a Prefectures of Greece, with Sparti its administrative capital....
    n and Cretan dd are more easily explained as a direct development from *dz than through an intermediary *zd. Contra: a) the sound development dz > dd is improbable (Mendez Dosuna); b) ? has disappeared before ? > dd in Laconian (Aristoph., Lys. 171, 990) and Boeotian (Sch. Lond. in Dion. Thrax 493), which suggests that these dialects have had a phase of metathesis
    Metathesis (linguistics)

    Metathesis is a sound change that alters the order of phonemes in a word. The most common instance of metathesis is the reversal of the order of two adjacent phonemes, such as "comfterble" for comfortable ....
     (Teodorsson).
  4. Greek in South Italy has preserved until modern times. Contra: a) this may be a later development from or ; b) even if it is derived from an ancient , it may be a dialectal pronunciation.
  5. Vulgar Latin
    Vulgar Latin

    Vulgar Latin is a blanket term covering the popular dialects and sociolects of the Latin which diverged from each other in the early Middle Ages, evolving into the Romance languages by the 9th century....
     inscriptions use the Greek letter Z for indigenous affricates (e.g. zeta = diaeta), and the Greek ? is continued by a Romance affricate in the ending > Italian. -eggiare, French -oyer. Contra: whether the prononciation of was , or , di would probably still have been the closest native Latin sound.


In summary

is attested only in Lesbian
Lesbos Island

Lesbos is a Greece List of islands of Greece located in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It has an area of 1632 Square kilometre with 320 kilometres of coastline, making it the third largest Greek island and the largest of the numerous Greek islands scattered in the Aegean....
 and Sparta
Sparta

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From circa 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars....
n lyric poetry
Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry refers to a usually short poem that expresses personal feelings, which may or may not be set to music. Aristotle, in Poetics , contrasted lyric poetry with drama and epic poetry....
 from the Archaic age
Archaic period in Greece

The archaic period in Greece is a period of Ancient Greece history. The term originated in the 18th century and has been standard since. This term arose from the study of Greek art, where it refers to styles mainly of Decorative art and Plastic arts, falling in time between Geometric Art and the art of Classical Greece....
 and in Bucolic poetry from the Hellenistic Age
Hellenistic civilization

File:Diadochen1.pngHellenistic civilization represents the zenith of Ancient Greece influence in the Classical Antiquity from 323 BC to about 146 BC ....
. Most scholars would take this as an indication that the -pronunciation existed in the dialects of these authors.
  • The transcriptions from Persian by Xenophon
    Xenophon

    Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens and Xenophon of Thebes, was a soldier, mercenary and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates....
     and testimony by grammarians support the pronunciation in Classical
    Classical Greece

    Classical Greece was a culture that was highly advanced and which heavilly influenced the cultures of Ancient Rome and much of the Western World....
     Attic
    Attic Greek

    Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek"....
    . On the other hand. The fact that (e.g. ) and (e.g. ) are distinguished in all Classical
    Classical Greece

    Classical Greece was a culture that was highly advanced and which heavilly influenced the cultures of Ancient Rome and much of the Western World....
     inscriptions and literary texts indicates a different pronunciation.
is attested from c. 350 BC in Attic
Attic Greek

Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek"....
 inscriptions, and was the probable value in Koine
Koine Greek

Koine Greek is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-Classical antiquity . Other names are Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Common, or New Testament Greek....
. or may have existed in some other dialects in parallel.

See also


  • Z, z - Latin
    Z

    Z is the twenty-sixth and final Letter of the modern English alphabet....
  • ?, ? - Ze (Cyrillic)
    Ze (Cyrillic)

    Ze is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant . It's easily confusable with the figure 3 . It can also be confused with the Russian letter E , which represents the vowel when it does not follow a soft consonant....