Talk:Digamma

message: Rare greek letters test sheet
:Normal: "Ϝ ϝ" Digamma -- Ϙ ϙ Qoppa -- Ϡ ϡ Sampi  -- "Ϻ ϻ" San
:Bold: "Ϝ ϝ" Digamma -- Ϙ ϙ Qoppa -- Ϡ ϡ Sampi  -- "Ϻ ϻ" San
:Cursive: "Ϝ ϝ" Digamma -- Ϙ ϙ Qoppa -- Ϡ ϡ Sampi  -- "Ϻ ϻ" San
:Typewriter:   "Ϝ ϝ" Digamma -- Ϙ ϙ Qoppa -- Ϡ ϡ Sampi  -- "Ϻ ϻ" San 
Pjacobi 09:01, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old Stuff 

message: The Name Digamma has also fifth letter of the Ukrainian alphabet - Ґ. The letter had the phonetic value , unlike letter Г (sound )--Yakudza 19:19, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ukrainian Difamma 

message: I've set the font as Arial Unicode MS in my /monobook.css so I can view (most) uncommon letters, but the polytonic template remakes the letters to spaces for me. – SmiddleTC@ 16:09, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Font 

message: I'm a relative innocent when it comes to Greek; reasonably well-read on the subject of languages in general, familiar with the sound of Greek and able to puzzle out written Greek personal names and some words, but not a Grecophone by any stretch. However, I expect I'd have seen it somewhere if Modern Greek had descended from the Alexandrian dialect. Surely that should say Attic? TCC (talk) (contribs) 01:57, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alexandrian? 

message: On the middle horizontal line of this letter, the semi-serif is kind of annoying. Georgia guy (talk) 19:39, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The Palatino Linotype glyph also has this.  I would have assumed that was how it was written... Although the Greek article shows two different versions:  one with the 'semi-serif' (embedded in ), and one with a full serif.  —DIV (128.250.80.15 (talk) 10:27, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-serif 

message: "because its omission left the meter defective. An example is the word ἄναξ (king) found in the Iliad, which would originally have been ϝάναξ [wanaks]"
Could someone please explain how the meter could become defective by removing the digamma? The removal doesn't change the number of syllables, so the meter should still be the same as with the digamma. Or is the present example just poorly chosen? -92.226.151.26 (talk) 19:07, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: See syllable weight.  In quantitative verse, a syllable fits the metrical scheme by being "long" or "short" (some prefer the terms "heavy" and "light").  A syllable with a short vowel is generally short if the vowel is followed only by a single consonant, but long if the vowel is followed by two (or more) consonants.  The poet of the Iliad did not pronounce digamma.  But he used traditional poetic phrasing inherited from poets who did.  Thus the knowledge that a digamma has disappeared can often explain why a syllable gets to fill a "long" spot in the metrical scheme despite there being only one consonant after its short vowel, or why hiatus is allowed where not ordinarily tolerated.  You were right to complain about the text, though: the sentence beginning "An example is..." did not by itself give an example of the phenomenon stated in the previous sentence!  I tried to apply first aid to fix this ().  Wareh (talk) 00:11, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: metric change

message: Can anyone here do what Guocozuoduo may not intend to do, and offer an explanation of the significance of the curved form of digamma?  Since digamma is only a letter in Ancient Greek as far as I know, and modern texts do not use this form, I am left guessing.  My best guess would be that it could be based on the kind of Medieval cursive that led to the replacement of digamma as a numeral by stigma, but I am loath to assign any speculative legitimacy to an edit that remains utterly unexplained. A modern-font version of something not printed in books, used to illustrate this article, would seem like OR to me. Wareh (talk) 16:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Curved form of digamma 

message: The google knol link I removed fails twice over,
*it conflates digamma (the Greek phoneme deriving from PIE *w) with the PIE voiced labiovelar *gw
*it assmes the /gu/ sound in Germanic loanwords in Romance (guard/ward, guerre/war, see Old Frankish) has something to do with *gw
most googe knol pages I have seen are worse than worthless, and this is a good illustration of what happens when you invite anyone to "contribute their knowledge" without any sort of review system. I say this because Wikipedia's less than perfect system of peer review positively shines by comparison. --dab (𒁳) 11:13, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: EL

message: The article contains the paragraph
: The digamma survives even today as /v/ in the Modern Greek Tsakonian dialect, the only dialect not descended from ancient Koine Greek, the famous, and only, example being βάννε /'vannε/ ("lamb" for standard Greek ) (cf. Cretan ).
I'm guessing that  should read , otherwise the sentence doesn't appear to make sense...? — OwenBlacker (Talk) 13:23, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The paragraph needs to be rewritten.  The intent is presumably that the ancient sound /w/ survives as Tsakonian /v/.  But it is not written with a digamma. --Macrakis (talk) 15:29, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Modern usage 

message: Just a small thing about structure: Erutuon just reintroduced the extra first-level heading, "Greek" . I don't really see the sense in that: the whole page is exclusively about Greek. That heading appears to be quite redundant with the next, "Greek w". Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:13, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The current structure, in which Greek w and Numeral are separate, is good. I changed the structure only because Numeral was placed as a subsection under Greek w. — Eru·tuon 22:55, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heading levels 

message: :moved here from above. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:09, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It's commonly accepted the digamma sound (/w/) was "part of living Greek", up to a certain time; that hardly needs further emphasis. But your reasoning about Latin is slightly beside the point: you are talking here about the sound /w/, not about the letter F, and unlike the letter, the sound was not borrowed from Greek into Latin, but inherited by both in parallel from proto-Indo-European; therefore, the fact that it exists in Latin tells us little or nothing about how long it was preserved in Greek. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:09, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Digamma and Latin 

message: Nobody knows what digamma was ORIGINALLY called. You would need a time machine and a tape recorder to go back thousands of years.  Whatever the connection between digamma and stigma is, a statement about this requires documentation; not just saying something.  (EnochBethany (talk) 16:19, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The original name "waw" (or "wau" etc.) is easily sourced to Woodard, Roger D. (2010). "Phoinikeia grammata: an alphabet for the Greek language". In Bakker, Egbert J., A companion to the ancient Greek language Oxford: Blackwell, p.30f.; also Jeffery, Lilian H. (1961). The local scripts of archaic Greece. Oxford: Clarendon, p.24, and no doubt innumerable other works. The reason we know that it must have been called like that is that (a) it was called like that in Phoenician; (b) it is called that by Latin authors; (c) it re-appears in the form βαῦ or οὐαῦ in later Greek authors. Please read the literature. As for the connection between digamma and stigma, that too is easily sourceable, e.g. Gardthausen, Griechische Paleographie, p.238; Thompson, Handbook of Greek and Latin Palaeography, p.104. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:32, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually you have no idea what it was ORIGINALLY called.   You don't have a time machine.  And who is this "we" that knows?  Nobody to whom you refer has a time machine.  How could you know the vowel in waw?  Or that it wasn't pronounced vav?  If you go back to an ancient language that originally had no vowels, how could you prove what vowel  was used?  How could you possibly know how the Phoenicians pronounced the name of that letter or even what it's first name was?  Perhaps you could restate it more scientifically:  "It appears that the earliest know name for the letter was waw or vav; though the vowel on its name is impossible to prove.  You have now reverted twice my edit, which includes a citation, though the original paragraph has no citations whatsoever.  Will you revert a 3rd time?  (EnochBethany (talk) 19:39, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wikipedia doesn't care whether you believe the original name can be known. The reliable academic literature says it was "waw"/"wau". There is nothing doubtful about that. It doesn't matter whether you personally can be bothered to learn and understand why scholarship is unanimously of this opinion; we follow what the literature says. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:43, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Unprovable Comments on Digamma

message: The letter F also has the sixth position in the English alphabet. GreekAlphabeta (talk) 22:47, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh for chrissake, will you finally stop spamming this nonsense all over the place? I've explained to you more than once why comments like this are against the policies of this place and are quite unwelcome here. This is your final warning. If you continue filling the place with this type of baseless and brainless speculation, I will start simply removing all your postings on sight, or ask for you to be blocked again. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:03, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number 6 

message: Hello, from the Ancient‑Greek studies at dis‑tance, that I have per‑formed in Belgium in 2012, the "Smooth‑breathing" and "Rough‑breathing" serves to in‑dicate & marking the ab‑olition of the archaic letter Di‑gamma Ϝ [v] (Smooth) or Sigma/San Σ/Ϻ [ʃ/s] (Rough) in the word, the Ϝ or Σ/Ϻ can be at beginning or middle, it de‑pend of the position of the breathing.
{Di‑gamma Ϝ {also called ϜΑΥ : vau/vaw} is V be‑cause W was Υ/ΟΥ [u/w] from Phoenician 𐤅 [u], Ϝ don't share shape and sound with Υ / 𐤅, after some‑time Υ be‑came later [y] and [i] in Modern‑Greek ; Pamphylian Digamma/Wau/Waw Ͷ is [w], also Ϝ [v] be‑came Latin F [f], V & F are labio‑dental sound and can be con‑fused, when W & F have nothing in com‑mon, so Latin letter F sound [f] come from Ancient‑Greek letter Ϝ sound [v]...}.
* http://www.webtopos.gr/eng/languages/greek/alphabet/earlyletters.htm (Source as V)
* http://www.webtopos.gr/eng/languages/greek/alphabet/upsilon.htm (Source as U, W)
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digamma#Pamphylian_digamma
In the French pre‑cise book of Ancient‑Greek "Le Grand Bailly" or "Abrégé Bailly" breathing (spirit in French) are re‑pre‑sented in the words and in the de‑finition, in [RAC : racine/root] Section is ad‑ded the original word with Di‑gamma Ϝ or Sigma/San Σ/Ϻ. In older editions of "Le Grand Bailly" or "Abrégé Bailly", the "Table of roots" (which is no longer pre‑sent in the new editions) speci‑fies the list of roots using Di‑gamma Ϝ [v] & Sigma/San Σ/Ϻ [ʃ/s], yet in Wikipedia English or French, no one mention that the "Smooth breathing" and "Rough breathing" was used for Di‑gamma Ϝ & Sigma/San Σ/Ϻ removing, why ??? They talk only about a‑spired H (no one can make a‑spired H be‑fore a RHO, it's im‑possible), so it's wrong... Also In Wiktionary page for Ancient‑Greek words using breathing, the W/V or S/SH is never mentioned in "Archaic pro‑nunciation", like for ex‑ample :
* ὙΠΕΡ / HYPER that was originally writed ΣΥΠΕΡ / SHYPER [ʃuper] (Latin : SVPERIOR), or
* ἙΞ / HEX → ΣΕΞ / SHEX [ʃeks] (Latin : Six) or
* ἘΞ /  EX → ϜΕΞ /  VEX [veks] (Latin : Ex‑) or
* ἘΡΓΟΝ → ϜΕΡΓΟΝ [verg‧on] (English : Work, Dutch : Werk) or
* ἩΛΙΟΣ / HELIOS → ΣΗΛΙΟΣ / SHELIOS [ʃɛli‧os] {Attic} (Latin : Sol, Solis, English : Sun) or
* ἉΛΙΟΣ/ ALIOS → ΣΑΛΙΟΣ / SHALIOS [ʃali‧os] {Dorian} (Latin : Sol, Solis, English : Sun) or
* ΟἸΝΟΣ → ϜΟΙΝΟΣ [vojn‧os] (Latin : VINVM, English : Wine, French : Vin) or
* ἈΡΗΣ / ARES → ͶΑΡΗΣ / WARES [warɛs] (God of War, War God, war it‑self personi‑fied) or
* ῬΕΩ → ΣΡΕΩ [ʃre‧ɔ] (flow) & ῬΕΩ/ἘΡΩ → ϜΡΕΩ/ϜΕΡΩ [vre‧ɔ/ver‧ɔ] (Speak/Verity/Love) or
* ἈΝΑ → ϜΑΝΑ or ΑϜΝΑ [vana / avna].
{I don't use ac‑cent acute / grave in Ancient‑Greek words be‑cause at that time they didn't ex‑ist, also writing Ancient‑Greek word in minuscule is an error, be‑cause at that epoch only capital script with‑out ac‑cent ex‑isted, minuscule should be used only for Modern‑Greek in your Wiktionary or Wikipedia...}.
Gmazdên (talk) 12:09, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about. You are mixing together too many topics, and you seem to have misunderstood a great number of things. If you wish to make a proposal for this article, please raise one issue at a time and express yourself more clearly about what it is you actually want. Also, please refrain from copying the same posting across so many different talkpages, where most of its contents are completely off-topic. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:37, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: DI‑GAMMA / VAU : Smooth‑breathing & SIGMA / SAN : Rough‑breathing

message: This article is a little confusing. The section on Greek suggests that the letter was obsolete by classical times, surviving longer in the Aeolian dialect (but the article doesn't say how long. Could somebody add a date, or at least a century, when this dialect lost the letter)?
The lede says "In modern print, a distinction is made between the letter in its original alphabetic role as a consonant sign... and the numeric symbol."  Why does modern print typeset a letter which has not been used in over 2000 years? The section on glyph development mentions the development in the "ninth and tenth century", and the "glyph confusion" section talks about medieval use-- huh?  The section on "early handwriting" could also use some dates (does "early" mean 500 BC or 500 AD?), and a mention of whether it's the letter or the numeral that's being discussed. Geoffrey.landis (talk) 15:13, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll just try to answer some of your questions here before looking into what, if anything, should be clarified in the article: About alphabetic digamma in modern print, it is used in philological discussions and editions of archaic texts that used it, e.g. when quoting text from ancient dialectal inscriptions on local monuments. It is also used by linguists and grammarians when discussing reconstructed pre-literal forms of Greek words. About the medieval glyph development: the passages you mention are referring not to the use as a regulal alphabetic letter, but to the use as a numeric symbol, which persisted throughout that period. As for "early handwriting", that's basically "handwriting as far back as we have archaeological records" – which basically means anything after the expansion under Alexander the Great. (Only the desert conditions of places like Egypt created the chance of writing on soft materials like vellum or papyrus to get preserved; whatever was written on such perishable materials in the original Greek world of the classical era got lost.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:18, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Obsolete, or not? 

message: At the very end of the "Numeral" section, the text currently reads:  "although in practice ΣΤ΄ is much more often."  
This wording should be changed in one of two possible ways.  Either (1) change it by inserting the word "found":  "although in practice ΣΤ΄ is found much more often.", or (2) change it by replacing the word "often" with the word "common":  "although in practice ΣΤ΄ is much more common." 72.42.152.105 (talk) 13:44, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: , thanks a lot for pointing that out. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:54, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-protected edit request on 6 July 2021 

message: Ϝ is sometimes used to represent the digamma function, though the Latin letter F (which is nearly identical) is usually substituted.
A hypothetical particle Ϝ speculated to be implicated in the 750 GeV diphoton excess, now known to be simply a statistical anomaly 172.117.237.102 (talk) 17:39, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mathematical use of Digamma 

message: The image of "A fragment of Papyrus 115" names "616" as the Number of the Beast - this is obviously a typo. 198.109.220.243 (talk) 00:55, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: No, 616 is a notable textual variant in some older manuscripts, including the specific manuscript shown there. See Number of the beast for explanation. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:52, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error - 616 Is Not the Number of the Beast