Digamma - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Digamma like letter

Note: the phonetic transcriptions follow the International Phonetic Alphabet. The quoted Greek letters autonymiquement as letters are not put in italic, contrary to the Latin letters.

Origin phenician

When the Greek people borrowed from VIIIe century before our era the letters phenicians to create their alphabets (there indeed were many grindings of the Greek alphabet before the Ionian model of Millet is not essential on Athens into -403), they made use of the letter wāw (or wāu ) to transcribe the /w/ consonant inherited the Indo-European . This phoneme, however, was shown very weak in Greek, since all the dialects did not keep it and, especially, it did not preserve in the dominant language ─ the Ionian-attic ─ which will become, later, the Koinè, itself giving rise to the modern Greek . Present in Mycénien, Greek of Laconie, Béotie and Cyprus and in other areas, it is absent (or very quickly eliminated) into Ionian, Eastern attic, and dorien. The more or less gradual disappearance of this phoneme in the language thus returned the existence of a sign to note it rather fragile.

The layout of the wāw evolved/moved in various ways according to the alphabets, among those which needed to note the /w/ phoneme, although one now represents it in a standardized form very near to a F Latin, that is to say Ϝ (that one represents in tiny by ϝ; let us recall that the tiny ones appeared well after the capitals and that the existence of such tiny a ─ unknown of the ancient inscriptions ─ is a typographical artifice). Other forms are attested, but seldom used in the modern editions of Greek texts, including one similar to a ᄃ (especially presents in the alphabet of Béotie). The Ordre Levantine having been respected by the Greeks, the letter, named ϝαῦ waũ (according to Varron), occupied the 6th place in the alphabet and had the numeral value 6 (what enabled him not to be entirely eliminated from the alphabet). It is later that one indicated it by the descriptive name of δίγαμμα dígamma , by reference to form Ϝ, similar to two Γ gammas in capitals which would have been piled up.

The same letter phenician had been also used to note the vocalic phoneme /u/ (of wheel ), passed then to /y/ (of street ) in Ionian-attic, adopting several layouts different from the first, among which upsilon Υ (which was perennialized) and V (which did not remain in the Ionian standard model but transmitted via the Etruscan Alphabet to the Romans). In kind, the Greek digamma is only the consonant reflection of the wāw phenician, letter which also gave, like vocalic version, Υ .

Disappearance of the letter

However, after the adoption by Athens of the Ionian model ─ model become thereafter, because of the intellectual radiation, military and financier of the City, that of all Greece ─, the digamma left more or less quickly the uses (according to the areas; IIe century constitutes a deadline): indeed, into Ionian (and thus in Ionian-attic), the /w/ phoneme was amuï in all the positions, naturally involving the uselessness of a sign to transcribe it. Thus, one does not find any more a trace of the digamma in the current alphabet, either in the modern language, exit mainly of the Athenian Koinè (for the question of employment like signs numerical, to see low).

Importance in the epigraphic and philological study

However, the /w/ consonant (that it is carried out, or even by articulatory Renforcement) being frequent in the others Greek Dialectes old (and thus in their writing: the letter is present in the alphabets of Crete, Corcyre, Béotie, Corinthe, Laconie, Arcadie, inter alia), it is necessary, in the transcription of epigraphic inscriptions or literary texts, to have a specific nature. In the same way, the compared Linguistique of the Indo-European Langues and the diachronic study of the Greek language require such a character, which explains why it is frequently read in the didactic texts or the university editions of texts not Ionian-attics.

Examples:

in epigraphy: ϜΑΡΓΟΝ wargon (éléen), ϜΟΙΚΟΣ woikos (thessalien), ϜΕϘΟΝΤΑΣ wekontas (locrien), ΒΟϜΑ (pamphylien);
at Alcée de Mytilène, which wrote as a lesbian (Asian wind dialect): ϝρῆξις wrễxis “tear” (in Ionian-attic: ῥῆξις rhễxis ); in the same way at Sappho: Τὸν ϝὸν παῖδα κάλει tòn wòn paĩda kálei “it names it his/her own child”;
although already disappeared from the language of Homère, the /w/ consonant appears there in filigree by the Scansion of the dactylic hexameters. The Aède, indeed, practical of the Hiatuses normally prevented, lengthens normally short syllables in a manner that the Old ones took for a poetic license. However, to restore a /w/ where these phenomena occur (not systematically, however), makes it possible to understand that the memory of such a consonant had been maintained, grace, in particular, with the existence of formulas ready with employment drawn from various dialects in which /w/ had been sometimes preserved. In this case, one will note /w/ by a digamma . As Jean Humbert (cf lower bibliography) explains it:

“Still that the hexameter dactylic, of which it uses, excludes in theory the hiatuses between the vowels, it knows that the same hiatus is authorized in a formula such as Τενέδοιο τε ἶφι ἀνάσσεις “you reigns as a sovereign on Ténédos”, without suspecting that the two hiatuses disappear if one reads ϝῖφι (cf lat. uis “force”) and ϝανάσσεις (cf myc. wanake = ἄνακτες “sovereigns”), thus restoring the ϝ whose, also far one goes up, the Ionian one did not preserve traces. ”

the lengthening of certain syllables is explained in a similar way. Although the digamma was never written in the oldest editions of Homère, certain editors restore it however, which allows a more faithful analysis of the text but does not mean that it was really marked at the time of Homère, even less with that of the fixing of the written text (Life century before our era, under Pisistrate). It is the case in the edition Castillan E of Shine Segalá there Estalella of the Homeric texts (at Editorial Voluntad, 1934), which writes for example worms 3 of the first song of the Iliade πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϝιδι προΐαψε where other editions will have only Ἄϊδι (in Ἅιδης Ionian-attic or ᾍδης with the Nominatif);

in comparative or diachronic analyzes modern (in this case, the digamma is a philological artifice making it possible to transcribe an old /w/ phoneme even when there does not exist attested form using it): “The genitive of πῆκυς should be πήκεος attested at Hérodote” ( Greek Grammaire of Ragon at Nathan/Gigord, paragraph 61, notices III; to notice the use of the Asterisk to indicate a not attested reconstituted form). In the same manner, the transcription of texts Mycénien S, language in which /w/ is preserved perfectly, called upon the digamma .

It is all the more however frequent that the /w/ phoneme was noted by other letters, when it had been reinforced: one finds for example at Sappho the “flexible” Adjectif vrádinos (with resulting from /w/) written βράδινος (in Ionian-attic: ῥαδινός rhadinós ).

Transmission with the Latin alphabet

The Latin letter F comes, indirectly, of the Greek digamma , transmitted by the Etruscans. If the letter decides /f/ and not /w/ in Latin, it is because it was used by the Etruscans ─ then by the Romans ─ in the Digramme FH to represent /f/ synthetically, absent from the Greek (there existed however of other notations in Etruscan Alphabet), in competition with F only for /v/, phoneme non-existent in Latin. The digraph is synthetic since /vh/ can be carried out, that is to say /v/ devoized. The Romans were satisfied with Y (traced V ) to write /u/ and /w/ and simplified the C-W communication FH in F starting from IVe century before our era.

Transmission with other alphabets

It is notable that the digamma also exists in the gotic Alphabet and the Copt alphabet. It is used in both cases for alphabetical numeration (cf gotic Numération and Numération copte ).

Digamma like number/ stigma

Although the digamma definitively disappeared as a consonant in IIe century, its role as a numeral letter (with value 6) of the alphabetical numbering system of Millet enabled him “to survive” the centuries.

Its layout, however, strongly changed (more especially as the sign being used more in the current alphabetical writing, it had become of rarer use): in Uncial Greek medieval then in the cursive writing, it comes from there, by simplification of the ductus , with being written (in only one curved feature and without central cross-piece). However, that made it strongly resemble (and fortuitously) the binding Stigma , (where one recognizes the lunar Sigma, Ϲ, similar to the Latin letter C ), very frequent then and currently traced Ϛ (ϛ into tiny). With final, the two signs were confused, the digamma , rare as an independent, being eclipsed with the profit of binding, more current letter.

Since, the digamma used as number is written with a stigma in the modern texts, the old digamma , Ϝ, remaining generally limited to the textual uses or like signs numeral in the old text-editings. However, as the binding stigma disappeared as such, as well as the other bindings, at the XVIIIe century (although it was preserved a little longer), it is not always accessible to the editors, which very often replace it by its broken up form, sigma tau : στ. Lastly, by a confusion due to the fortuitous resemblance between the eye of the stigma and that of the final sigma ─ ─ certain editors (seldom in Greece) confuse the two characters. It is however an abusive employment

In conclusion, number 6 can be written several manners: ϝʹ (especially in epigraphy or for old texts), ϛʹ or στʹ (ʹ being to avoid).

Data-processing coding

The letter digamma is coded by Unicode with the following sites:

capital Ϝ (U+03DC):

UTF-8 : 0xCF 0x9C;
UTF-8, octal representation: \317\234 ;

decimal numerical entity HTML: & #988; ;

tiny ϝ (U+03DD): UTF-8 : 0xCF 0x9D; UTF-8, octal representation: \317\235 ; decimal numerical entity HTML: & #989; .

The numeral digamma confused with the Stigma is coded same manner as this binding. Random links: Nahuatl | Johann Georg Wagler | Bioman 2: Maskman | Farnay | Canton of Mouy