I recently traveled to Athens, Greece to speak at Devoxx Greece, without question the furthest south and east in Europe I’ve been.
The above is a Greek typewriter, with – in my English-centric worldview – many strange characters. Yes, I knew that Greek has characters I knew from mathematics and the names of US fraternities and sororities, but it’s more meaningful when you see it daily as you travel through Athens. I see ∑ and think of how it’s used in mathematics, not its pronunciation. And for the curious:
Language and linguistics
- In both Ancient and Modern Greek, the sigma represents the voiceless alveolar fricative [s]. In Modern Greek, this sound is voiced to the voiced alveolar fricative [z] when occurring before [m], [n], [v], [ð], or [ɣ].
- The uppercase form of sigma (Σ) was re-borrowed into the Latin alphabet—more precisely, the International African Alphabet—to serve as the uppercase of modern esh (lowercase: ʃ).
- In phonology, σ is used to represent syllables.
- In linguistics, Σ represents the set of symbols that form an alphabet (see also computer science).
- In historical linguistics, Σ is used to represent a Common Brittonic consonant with a sound between [s] and [h]; perhaps an aspirated [ʃʰ].
A precursor before any future trip is to ensure I can phonetically sound Greek words to make sense to me. Fortunately, English is frequently used in Athens; I don’t know about other areas of Greece.
At least it isn’t impossibly complex like a Chinese typewriter.
