Q: Greek Alphabet

[OldGuy]

@Polycarp

And two archaic letters, never used in Classical, Koiné, or Modern Greek, but present in the oldest inscriptions, and part of the letter-equals-number system used by the Greeks for writing numbers, were digamma, following epsilon in alphabetic sequence when used, and looking like F; and koppa or qoppa, cognate to Roman Q and resembling the “female” or Venus symbol without the crosspiece, or perhaps a lollipop with a very short stick, following pi.

OK a bit of a hijack I admit, but this makes it clear why our F and Q are where they are in the alphabet. I’ve heard that Latin dropped the Z and only added it back later expalining why it’s at the end. J is a variant of I so placed there. V and W are variants of U so go after the latter.

But how the heck did G get to where it is in the alphabet.

[Wolfian]

@Agent Foxtrot

You can’t really spell out specific equivalencies like that. The English word for “Greek” is “Ελληνικά” in Greek. Similar-looking letters are used for different things in the Greek alphabet.

Adam

You do realize that the Greeks don’t call themselves “Greeks,” right? “Ελληνικά” in English is Hellenia, basically “land of the Hellenes.” The Greeks call themselves “Hellenes.” This “Greek” stuff came from the Romans (bloody Romans!) who took the name of one group of Hellenes living in the heel of Italy and applied it to the entire group of people. It would be like calling all dogs “Pit Bulls” because that’s the first dog you saw.

The Romans have a history of doing that. Why do you think the “Germans” call their country “Deutscheland?”

Though you do have a point. One thing that drove me up the wall was the advertisements for “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” with Greek spelled “GRSSK.” How do you pronouce that? My big fat Grssssssk Wedding? I didn’t know that Cobra Commander was Greek.

@Diogenes the Cynic

A lot of the fraternity pronunciations of Greek letters are totally wrong. The letters that are typically pronounced to rhyme with “pie” are actually prounced with “ee” sounds. (iota = “EEota,” pi = “pee,” phi = “fee,” chi = “kee” and psi = “psee” (like the last syllable of the word “pepsi.”

You probably think Caesar said “Weni, wedi, wici” too.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Wolfian

You probably think Caesar said “Weni, wedi, wici” too.

Not only that but his name was pronounced KY-sar.

[Helen_s_Eidolon]

As to the question of which Greek letters have no Latin counterparts: some letters in the Greek alphabet either divide the functions of one letter into two (the sounds produced by omega and omicron are both in the Latin letter ‘o’, similarly for epsilon and eta and ‘e’) and some letters are the combination of two Latin letters (psi being ‘ps’ and theta being ‘th’).

I think the only one that doesn’t really have any equivalent is chi - being a more throaty sound than English has, resembling, for example, the Hebrew chai.