AlphaAlpha 'ælfə (uppercase , lowercase ; ἄλφα, álpha, or álfa) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph , which is the West Semitic word for "ox". Letters that arose from alpha include the Latin letter A and the Cyrillic letter А. In Ancient Greek, alpha was pronounced ä and could be either phonemically long ([aː]) or short ([a]). Where there is ambiguity, long and short alpha are sometimes written with a macron and breve today: Ᾱᾱ, Ᾰᾰ.
DeclensionIn linguistics, declension (verb: to decline) is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and articles to indicate number (e.g. singular, dual, plural), case (e.g. nominative case, accusative case, genitive case, dative case), gender (e.g. masculine, neuter, feminine), and a number of other grammatical categories. Meanwhile, the inflectional change of verbs is called conjugation.
Rough breathingIn the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing (dasỳ pneûma or δασεῖα daseîa; spīritus asper) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an h sound before a vowel, diphthong, or after rho. It remained in the polytonic orthography even after the Hellenistic period, when the sound disappeared from the Greek language. In the monotonic orthography of Modern Greek phonology, in use since 1982, it is not used at all. The absence of an /h/ sound is marked by the smooth breathing.
RhoRho 'roʊ (uppercase Ρ, lowercase ρ or ; ρο or ρω) is the seventeenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 100. It is derived from Phoenician letter res . Its uppercase form uses the same glyph, Ρ, as the distinct Latin letter P; the two letters have different Unicode encodings. Rho is classed as a liquid consonant (together with Lambda and sometimes the nasals Mu and Nu), which has important implications for morphology.
SigmaSigma ('sɪgmə; uppercase Σ, lowercase σ, lowercase in word-final position ς; σίγμα) is the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 200. In general mathematics, uppercase Σ is used as an operator for summation. When used at the end of a letter-case word (one that does not use all caps), the final form (ς) is used. In Ὀδυσσεύς (Odysseus), for example, the two lowercase sigmas (σ) in the center of the name are distinct from the word-final sigma (ς) at the end.
Imperfective aspectThe imperfective (abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a general imperfective, others have distinct aspects for one or more of its various roles, such as progressive, habitual, and iterative aspects. The imperfective contrasts with the perfective aspect, which is used to describe actions viewed as a complete whole.
ThetaTheta (UKˈθiːtə, USˈθeɪtə; uppercase: Θ or ; lowercase: θ or ; thē̂ta thɛ̂ːta; Modern: thī́ta ˈθita) 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. In Ancient Greek, θ represented the aspirated voiceless dental plosive t̪h, but in Modern Greek it represents the voiceless dental fricative θ. In its archaic form, θ was written as a cross within a circle (as in the Etruscan or ), and later, as a line or point in circle ( or ).
Chi (letter)Chi 'kaɪ,_"xi: (uppercase Χ, lowercase χ; χῖ) is the twenty-second letter of the Greek alphabet. Its value in Ancient Greek was an aspirated velar stop /kh/ (in the Western Greek alphabet: /ks/). In Koine Greek and later dialects it became a fricative ([x]/[ç]) along with Θ and Φ. In Modern Greek, it has two distinct pronunciations: In front of high or front vowels (/e/ or /i/) it is pronounced as a voiceless palatal fricative [ç], as in German ich or like the h in some pronunciations of the English words hew and human.
PhiPhi (faɪ; uppercase Φ, lowercase φ or φ; φεῖ pheî phéî̯; Modern Greek: φι fi fi) is the twenty-first letter of the Greek alphabet. In Archaic and Classical Greek (c. 9th century BC to 4th century BC), it represented an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive ([ph]), which was the origin of its usual romanization as . During the later part of Classical Antiquity, in Koine Greek (c. 4th century BC to 4th century AD), its pronunciation shifted to that of a voiceless bilabial fricative ([ɸ]), and by the Byzantine Greek period (c.
OmicronOmicron (ˈoʊmᵻkrɒn,_ˈɒmᵻkrɒn,_oʊˈmaɪkrɒn; uppercase Ο, lowercase ο, όμικρον) is the fifteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. This letter is derived from the Phoenician letter ayin: . In classical Greek, omicron represented the close-mid back rounded vowel o in contrast to omega which represented the open-mid back rounded vowel ɔː and the digraph ου which represented the long close-mid back rounded vowel oː. In modern Greek, both omicron and omega represent the mid back rounded vowel o̞ or ɔ̝.
