Disputatio Formulae:Abecedarium Graecum

Names

• Koppa
• Labda
• Mu, nu, upsilon, ... cur non my, ny, ypsilon? —Myces Tiberinus 00:55 ian 1, 2005 (UTC)

I was just going by the article names that had already been created, but then I deleted the articles that just had a list of greek letters and no textual contents. I see you have corrected Koppa & Labda, feel free to change Mu, Nu and Upsilon too, I'm not fussed. Abecedarium also has a hebrew template, but I have no idea what the corresponding Latin names for the hebrew letters are. If you can fix, please do. Nicolus 02:08 ian 1, 2005 (UTC)

Reverts of 17 June

My edits in template Template:Abecedarium Graecum are valid. Whole Scandinavians acknowledges these Greek letters. Look here:

• http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grekiska_alfabetet
• http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%A6ske_alfabet
• http://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%ADskt_stafr%C3%B3f
• http://nn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Det_greske_alfabetet
• http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Det_greske_alfabetet

I can provide you too Simple and Polish wikis that acknowledges these Greek letters:

• http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet
• http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfabet_grecki

I hope that you believed me.

67.159.47.43 17:36, 17 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I had the impression there was a link with Poland!

Well, first, what is accepted by "whole Scandinavians" (whatever that means) may differ from reality. Second, there has been discussion of the issue here on Vicipaedia, and the discussion doesn't seem to be resolved yet. Third, the evidence of what is the Greek alphabet is (a) what has been used for writing in Greek, (b) what has been used for counting in Greek. God and Unicode don't occur in that list.

If you want to pursue the discussion, get an account. You'll be welcome. And when you've joined us, keep in mind that you may do better if you write on subjects in which you are not emotionally involved! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 17:50, 17 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

There are too GREEK and German wikis which acknowledges these Greek letters.

• http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%95%CE%BB%CE%BB%CE%B7%CE%BD%CE%B9%CE%BA%CF%8C_%CE%B1%CE%BB%CF%86%CE%AC%CE%B2%CE%B7%CF%84%CE%BF
• http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griechisches_Alphabet

Greeks are native, thus most professional in topic of Greek Alphabet, and Germans are very sensitive to fakes, being very strict and pragmatic in this matter, thus if they allowed these letters, you have proof. 77.243.225.87 18:00, 17 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

Hi, citing Wikipedia to back up Wikipedia is... not useful. You can't use one translation of a book to prove facts in another translation of the same book. I've looked at some of your edits and, while the letters certainly exist, you'll want to at the very least provide citations (in external sources) that 1) they are reckoned as part of the Greek alphabet, not just the Greek script (which is used by other languages, and has other purposes, such as the numeral system, and has other members, such as the extensive system of ligatures), and that 2) the names you are giving to them exist (either use the original Greek name—if there is one—transliterated in the Latin manner, or use an existing Latin name, but do not invent a name trying to be Latin); also that 3) if you're going to put them in order with the others, that the order is appropriate (for example, sho is placed by different scholars after pi, after omega, or after sigma[1]; you'll need a reason for where you're placing it). —Mucius Tever 02:26, 18 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

Moreover have the following observations been refuted?: en:Template talk:Greek alphabet If not, there is no basis for the proposed change.Already the obsolete letters are discussed at our page:Abecedarium Graecum#Litterae priscae--Rafaelgarcia 02:58, 18 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

But these Wikis cited by me has references inside themselves. 87.96.84.94 08:26, 18 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

It's necessary to get back to basics here. The purpose of the template is to help users by listing the Greek alphabet as it is used (a) in writing Greek and (b) in counting. If changes make it less useful or more confusing for those two purposes, they are undesirable and we will have to revert them. The template has nothing to do with Unicode and can never provide a complete history of the variations in the Greek alphabet. If someone wants to write an article, or add a section to an existing article, in Latin, with full evidence and proper references, explaining what these letters are and in what circumstances they formed part of the Greek alphabet, fine! If the material is accurate and useful it will be welcome. But (especially if adding material that is controversial) you are more likely to be taken seriously if you get an account; also if you use scientific/historical evidence in discussion. Arguing from what other people think is not usually persuasive. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:30, 18 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

Thus I as Unicode-limited specialist in Greek letters have nothing to do in those wikis where you don't accept all Greek letters that ever existed. I hoped that they will be displayed here to show full capabilities of Greek writing system, but this hope vanished here. Recently Italians and French accepted too these letters:

• http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfabeto_greco
• http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_grec

91.94.250.22 12:13, 18 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

It does make one wonder. If a person out on a promotion crusade for imaginary 'archaic Bactrian' letters can impose their idée fixe on several wikis, maybe this is a cool way of changing other truths we do not like, too. Why not use it to impeach the US President or add a third Christmas holiday on Wikipedia? ;)--Ceylon 21:25, 19 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

As you surely know, on other wikis (especially English) many, many such crusades take place. We see fewer of them here (these days, few crusaders speak Latin). Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:06, 20 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

Let's all presidents will be impeached, and let's kings return, as is today in Scandinavia. I prefer feudalism over democracy. 91.94.38.24 08:58, 20 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

Sho can be used not only in Bactrian. It is useful to write Hebrew names in Greek, where Shin occurs. Recently, much more wikis adopted full 32-letter set. 207.10.232.238 17:26, 20 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

Sho in Hebrew? Don't pull my leg. Ancient Hebrew did not have such sound at all. It had /s/ (shin), /ts/ (samekh), /ts’/ (sadhe) and /ɬ/ (sin). The sh-pronunciation is only valid in modern Israeli Hebrew. 83.9.9.138 07:25, 6 Iulii 2008 (UTC)

Queries

Now that attention has been drawn to this template (!) I have three problems with it.

1. It does not highlight the 24 letters which are used in writing Greek (from the 4th century BC right up to today) and that everybody learns -- the real Greek alphabet, I might call it, from alpha to omega
2. It does not indicate the numerical values, either of those 24 letters, or of the extra 3 (and the only good reason for including those extra 3 in this order is because they were used as numerals)
3. "San" is not visible (in my browser) [added later: San is in any case an interloper, not used either in the standard Greek alphabet or in counting, so my preferred solution would be to omit it from the template]

Does anyone else sympathize here? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 11:48, 18 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

Look at the spanish version es:Plantilla:Letras griegas for an example of how they handled it. But the italians have an extra letter it:Template:Alfabeto greco navbox called heta. No body seems to have included the numerical values. Perhaps an extra section after the obsolete letters listing numerical values could be added. --Rafaelgarcia 12:27, 18 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. Even in the template in the Greek wikipedia the numerical values are not included -- although they are still used occasionally in modern Greece, in much the same way as we still use Roman numerals. In medieval manuscripts, and in modern printing of ancient Greek, the 27-letter alphabet is the normal numeral system, and every reader needs to know it. (Its big problem, as with Roman numerals too, is that there is no notation for zero.) Maybe I'll work on the template. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:52, 18 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

If I may comment as an outsider (someone who doesn't have a dog in this fight), it appears that our anonymous friend's argument could be extended to say that the Latin alphabet includes the letters edh & thorn, on the grounds that a particular culture that adopted that alphabet happened to include those letters in it. Isn't the absurdity of that argument self-evident? IacobusAmor 12:41, 18 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

It's worse—the argument as built so far is comparable to adding those Middle English letters, French "Œ", Turkic "Ƣ", Roman numerals such as "CCIↃↃ", and both the Old English æ 'aesc' and the Latin ligature æ, sticking them somewhere in the regular order, and calling it the "full Latin alphabet". —Mucius Tever 23:48, 18 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly it. And while an article on the Latin or Greek alphabet can welcome all that extra information, all the possible obsolete or regional variants, etc., a template is for quick-reference. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:52, 18 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

Greeks doesn't have as much additional letters as Latins have. While Greeks has only eight additional letters, Latins have hundreds of them, even in Vietnamese. 91.94.159.121 14:39, 24 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

Revised template

I've had time to revise the template the way I suggested. Does it make sense this way? Please comment. The formatting is a bit rough -- I didn't know how to make the lower part arrange in 3 columns so I fudged it. Improvements welcome. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 08:35, 25 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

Looks good! --UV 20:19, 25 Iunii 2008 (UTC)

Andrew Dalby spreads errors

Andrew Dalby blocked and reverted anon for fixing error, in this way he reintroduced errors, because bad glyphs are now pointing to bad letters.

http://la.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Formula%3AAbecedarium_Graecum&action=historysubmit&diff=1084424&oldid=1084420

Note that thankful to Andrew Dalby misedit, San wikilink is falsely marked with Qoppa variant. Please restore corrected version, thanks. 64.191.50.30 21:02, 26 Februarii 2010 (UTC)

I've fixed the link so both qoppas link to the qoppa article. Do you have a source for "san" being 90? Opoudjis for one mentions theories that it might be 900 (the same as sampi), but disagrees with the opinion. —Mucius Tever 22:43, 26 Februarii 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your correction, Myces. I can no longer remember why we once thought that the lightning sign was san. Possibly from the page Numeri Graeci, which made the same link. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:15, 27 Februarii 2010 (UTC)