Delta, for no particular reason. Nothing to do with the airline, anyhow.
I am intrigued that at the moment it holds a 10-7 lead over its nearest competitor. Glad to be in the majority (well, the plurality) on something, but I would not have guessed that.
µ got my vote because it’s so fun to write. I used μg and μl often during my laboratory years.
Why Greek? Why not Hebrew? What’s your favorite Hebrew letter (and is it the same as your favorite Greek letter)?
No, this isn’t a threadshit nor a hijack!
Set the Hebrew alphabet alongside the Greek alphabet, letter-for-letter, and note: With a few aberrations, they are the same alphabet – and in fact, some substantial portions of them are also the same as the Latin and English and Cyrillic alphabets.
Αα Alpha א Alef (Aleph)
Ββ Beta ב Bet / Vet
Γγ Gamma ג Gimmel
Δδ Delta ד Dalet
Εε Epsilon ה He (Hay)
ו Vav
Ζζ Zeta ז Zayin
ח Ḥet
Ηη Eta
Θθ Theta ט Tet
Ιι Iota י Yod (notice it even has the property of being the smallest letter)
Κκ Kappa ך כ Kaf / Ḥaf
Λλ Lambda ל Lamed
Μμ Mu ם / מ Mem
Νν Nu ן / נ Nun
Ξξ Xi ס Sameḥ
Οο Omicron ע Ayin
Ππ Pi ף / פ Pe / Fe
ץ / צ Tsadi
ק Qof
Ρρ Rho ר Resh
Σσς Sigma ש Sin / Shin
Ττ Tau ת Tav
Υυ Upsilon
Φφ Phi
Χχ Chi
Ψψ Psi
Ωω Omega
Omega of course. Resistance is futile.
I had never noticed that before. I now rather like them both a little bit better.
I’m going with 𝜈 because it doesn’t look like it sounds and it’s fun to write.
Technically, it stands for Ἰησοῦς Χριστός Θεοῦ Υἱός Σωτήρ. But yes, it’s a fish that says “fish.” And it is funny when people put them on upside down.
Just can’t decide.
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Well yeah. They are both, Greek and the Aramaic alphabet that Hebrew uses, direct descendants of the Phoenician alphabet.
But ה, the ancient Israelite culture just did not create the world’s great math minds … compared to the Greeks virtually נ. (FWIW I’ve always been partial to ח … I just like saying that back of the throat sound! ע too, also for the sound it makes, not quite silent but subtle. And the way ו switches up from a consonant to two different vowel sounds depending on where dots are placed, or just knowing where they are supposed to be in the context of the word, always was fun too!)
Seriously the why not Hebrew is because Hebrew letters don’t have much separate symbolic value to most, other than for a few playing dreidel, and in their dual role as numbers. Greek letters OTOH have been placeholders for complex ideas for many centuries of Western thought. Jewish intellectualism contributing to Western culture was relatively thin in the days of ancient Israel (short of that whole birthing the big monotheistic religions thing, anyway).
Sigmagirl, here’s how you decide. make a list of letter and what you like up each one then add them up. The one with the bigger sum wins!
Δδ - Θθ - Λλ - Φφ - Ψψ
I chose Φ because it was the only one that hadn’t received a vote yet.
I’ll pick theta for the happy memories of my Calc 3 professor, Dr. Bauer. He had a thick German accent and pronounced it “TAY-tuh”. I can still hear him saying “The enclosed AHN-gl TAY-tuh”. Cool prof, one time as he wandered about the room during an exam he looked at my work and said “you forgot to divide by the sine”. Oh, thanks prof!
I’m surprised nobody has picked tau (at least yet), given how it’s kind of gained a bit of popularity over the years with the math geeks who tout it over pi as being a more useful constant for those sorts of equations. (Tau is equal to 2pi).
Laconic, even.
Personally, I’m going to go with double-𝜈, also called double-nu. What’s that letter? Well, I just made it up and it looks like 𝜈𝜈, except run together. But they need a letter to represent the /w/ sound, so I figured I’d invent one.
(OK, not terribly original. You come up with a new Greek letter. See if you can do any better.)
I like how completely squiggly they look, too.
Though I find that there is apparently some weird script version of all the Greek letters (as I see used on Numberphile or Periodic Videos) that I don’t know and would love to learn. Maybe it’s cursive?
I think I’ll pick Xi as it also has a nice “big” form: the three lines version. I always thought it was neat that three disconnected lines could be a letter.
Though, on my screen, it appears to have a line through them, which I’ve not seen before. It looks like a serif capital I with a line through it. Is this another letter with multiple forms?
No need. They already had a letter for /w/ (except they decided they didn’t want to pronounce /w/ any more, so they tossed out the letter along with the sound).
Instead of double-nu, they called it double-gamma. Literally: digamma. Because it was shaped like two gammas stacked one on top of the other: F. Looked like f, sounded like w, now discarded and forgotten (except to write the number 6). So you were on the right track with that.
I voted for Ψψ Psi, just because I’ve always thought it looks cool
Similarly, I like Stigma (ϛ), although it’s really a ligature (like digamma). It’s also used for the number 6 - take that, digamma!
Alas, in the poll I had to vote Ψ. Although I did find them useful when running Champions…
Dammit, Puly, you ruined my joke! I was going to say every one goes for pi because, well, pi is awesome and delicious but tau is better because it’s 2 pi (s). I picked Phi because it gets no love and omicron always sounded like a Decepticon.
Xi, because it has an alternate form that’s like a Z but with an additional zag, more like the conventional lighting bolt.