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Concept
Alpha
Summary
Alpha '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.
ὥρα = ὥρᾱ hōrā hɔ́ːraː "a time"
γλῶσσα = γλῶσσᾰ glôssa ɡlɔ̂ːssa "tongue"
In Modern Greek, vowel length has been lost, and all instances of alpha simply represent the open front unrounded vowel a.
In the polytonic orthography of Greek, alpha, like other vowel letters, can occur with several diacritic marks: any of three accent symbols (ά, ὰ, ᾶ), and either of two breathing marks (ἁ, ἀ), as well as combinations of these. It can also combine with the iota subscript (ᾳ).
In the Attic–Ionic dialect of Ancient Greek, long alpha [aː] fronted to ɛː (eta). In Ionic, the shift took place in all positions. In Attic, the shift did not take place after epsilon, iota, and rho (ε, ι, ρ; e, i, r). In Doric and Aeolic, long alpha is preserved in all positions.
Doric, Aeolic, Attic χώρᾱ chṓrā – Ionic χώρη chṓrē, "country"
Doric, Aeolic φᾱ́μᾱ phā́mā – Attic, Ionic φήμη phḗmē, "report"
Privative a is the Ancient Greek prefix ἀ- or ἀν- a-, an-, added to words to negate them. It originates from the Proto-Indo-European * (syllabic nasal) and is cognate with English un-.
Copulative a is the Greek prefix ἁ- or ἀ- ha-, a-. It comes from Proto-Indo-European *.
Alpha (disambiguation)
The letter alpha represents various concepts in physics and chemistry, including alpha radiation, angular acceleration, alpha particles, alpha carbon and strength of electromagnetic interaction (as fine-structure constant). Alpha also stands for thermal expansion coefficient of a compound in physical chemistry.
Official source
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