# Greek: why single letters for ps and ks, but not others?



## Treaty

Hi,

Why did the Greek decided to use a single letter to represent only these two consonant clusters but not others (e.g., ~r, ~t, ~l and ~n which can also be initials). Was there a phonological reason? Or just coincidence?

P.S. as a side question is πσ or κσ spelling possible in Greek?


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## rushalaim

Those letters may be ligatures of combining two letters together. 
For example, John 19:36 συντρι*βήσ*εται (older version)
and Exodus 12:9 συντρί*ψ*ετε (modern version)


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## sotos

rushalaim said:


> Those letters may be ligatures of combining two letters together.
> For example, John 19:36 συντρι*βήσ*εται (older version)
> and Exodus 12:9 συντρί*ψ*ετε (modern version)


Correct. But not all Ψ's  Ξ's are the result of this phenomenon. Maybe the Greeks thought that the number of letters should be limited, so that everybody can easily learn reading. Indeed, that was the real neoterism of alphabet.


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## Riverplatense

So is it just a coincidence that there's an aspirated (φ θ χ) and a sigmatic (ψ ζ ξ) row of graphemes representing unvoiced occlusives? I have always interpreted the fact that there's not an actual letter for  as the Greek's impression of it not being a «full» sound, which, however, doesn't go for sigma.



Treaty said:


> P.S. as a side question is πσ or κσ spelling possible in Greek?



Well, even _Shakespeare _is written Σαίξπηρ in Modern Greek. Yet there are examples, when κ and σ belong to different syllables: έκσταση (Modern), ἕκστασις (Ancient).


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## Saley

History of the Greek alphabet - Wikipedia:


> The unusual use of special letters for the consonant clusters [kʰs] and [pʰs] can be explained by the fact that these were the only combinations allowed at the end of a syllable. With this convention, all Greek syllables could be written with at most one final consonant letter.


However, I’m not convinced that it was the actual reason to introduce them.


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## elroy

Saley said:


> I’m not convinced that it was the actual reason to introduce them.


 Why not?  Sounds plausible to me.


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## berndf

Riverplatense said:


> So is it just a coincidence that there's an aspirated (φ θ χ) and a sigmatic (ψ ζ ξ) row of graphemes representing unvoiced occlusives?


The only problem with this explanation is that there is no indication that zeta ever representened an unvoiced sound, neither the Greek letter itself nor the Phoenician zet from which it is derived.


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## rushalaim

berndf said:


> The only problem with this explanation is that there is no indication that zeta ever representened an unvoiced sound, neither the Greek letter itself nor the Phoenician zet from which it is derived.


Some say that Phoenician צ Tsade-letter related with ז Zeta-letter. Tsade is combined sound and lacks in Greek. (Does German pronounce [dz] like [ts] _"zeit"_?)


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## berndf

The exclusive use of <z> for unvoiced [ts] and [ s ] is a later development that is explained by the phonological needs of High German.


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## Riverplatense

berndf said:


> The only problem with this explanation is that there is no indication that zeta ever representened an unvoiced sound



Oh, I didn't think of it ... But in fact, also in Modern Greek ζ is always voiced (even if not an affricate any more), and in Latin it's _zona_, _zelus _[ʣ-], too. By the way, also in Italian all Greek-derived <z> are pronounced [ʣ]: _zona _[ˈʣɔna], but _zompare _[ʦomˈpare].


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## apmoy70

Treaty said:


> Hi,
> 
> Why did the Greek decided to use a single letter to represent only these two consonant clusters but not others (e.g., ~r, ~t, ~l and ~n which can also be initials). Was there a phonological reason? Or just coincidence?


Definitely a phonological reason, the aorist is formed by adding the tense suffix *«-σα»* [-sa] to the verb-stem (besides *augment* of course) which leads to a commonly occuring series of consonant combinations (labial consonant + «-σα», velar + «-σα») e.g:

*«Λείπω» le̯ípō* (dictionary form, 1st p. sing. Present tense) --> _(trans.) to leave behind, (intrans.) to be wanting, disappear_ > Aorist *«ἔ-λειπ-σᾰ»* > *«ἔ-λειψᾰ» é-le̯ip͡să*.

*«Γράφω» grắpʰō* (dictionary form, 1st p. sing. Present tense) --> _to scratch, carve, write_ > Aorist *«ἔ-γραφ-σᾰ»* > *«ἔ-γραψᾰ» é-grap͡să*.

*«Ἄρχω» ắrkʰō* (dictionary form, 1st p. sing. Present tense) --> _to rule_ > Aorist *«ἦ-ρχ-σα»* > *«ἦ-ρξᾰ» ê-rk͡să**

Only in Attic and the so-called, "eastern" alphabets (Aeolic & Ionic) the cluster «-πσ-» is written with «ψ», in all the other ancient Greek dialects the digraph «-φσ-» for [ps] is preferred.

***Note that the geminate sigma «-σσ-» will also change into «-ξ-» in the aorist:
*«χαράσσω» kʰărássō* --> _to make pointed, sharpen, engrave, strike, stamp_ > Aorist *«ἐ-χάρασ-σᾰ»* > *«ἐ-χάραξᾰ» ĕ-kʰắrak͡să*


Treaty said:


> P.S. as a side question is πσ or κσ spelling possible in Greek?


Depends, in compounds for instance, formed by the joining of the preposition «ἐκ-» + verb/noun, the clusters «-κσ-» or «-κφ-» are retained:
*«Ἐκσείω» ĕkse̯íō* --> _to shake off/out_, *«ἔκστασις» ékstasis* (fem.) --> _displacement, trance, ecstasy_; now that I think about it, we do not pronounce in MoGr the «-κσ-» in *«χάραξα»* (the aphetic of the Classical «ἐχάραξα») identical with the «-κσ-» in «έκσταση» (the modern form of the Classical «ἔκστασις»).
Τhe former is [ˈxaɾa*k͡s*a], the latter is [ˈe*k.s*tasi].


berndf said:


> The only problem with this explanation is that there is no indication that zeta ever representened an unvoiced sound, neither the Greek letter itself nor the Phoenician zet from which it is derived.


So, is zeta a [ʣ] or a [sd]?  (the perennial argument amongst historical linguists)


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## berndf

apmoy70 said:


> So, is zeta a [ʣ] or a [sd]?  (the perennial argument amongst historical linguists)


Or [zd].


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## Saley

apmoy70 said:


> Definitely a phonological reason,


I don’t understand how your examples of assimilation before σ justify the need for ξ and ψ letters. The same way velars before μ pass to γ (e.g. διώκ-ω > δε-δίωγ-μαι), labials to μ (e.g. βλάβ-η > βέ-βλαμ-μαι), and dentals to σ (e.g. κομιδ-ή > κε-κόμισ-μαι), but there are no special letters for γμ, μμ, and σμ. Can you explain your reasoning, please?


> Only in Attic and the so-called, "eastern" alphabets (Aeolic & Ionic) the cluster «-πσ-» is written with «ψ», in all the other ancient Greek dialects the digraph «-φσ-» for [ps] is preferred.


Does this indicate a difference in pronunciation between the dialects?


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## apmoy70

Saley said:


> I don’t understand how your examples of assimilation before σ justify the need for ξ and ψ letters. The same way velars before μ pass to γ (e.g. διώκ-ω > δε-δίωγ-μαι), labials to μ (e.g. βλάβ-η > βέ-βλαμ-μαι), and dentals to σ (e.g. κομιδ-ή > κε-κόμισ-μαι), but there are no special letters for γμ, μμ, and σμ. Can you explain your reasoning, please?


The reasoning is that the clusters «-πσ-» & «-κσ-» are much more common than the «-μγ-» or «-γμ-», so much so, that the alphabet the Athenians used for writing the Attic dialect, and the Greeks in Asia Minor, Thessaly & NE Aegean islands (Ionian/Aeolic dialects aka "Eastern") felt the need to introduce two new consonants, the Ψ (which is not a Phoenician letter but a modification of Y), and the Ξ (for which they employed the Phoenician samekh).



Saley said:


> Does this indicate a difference in pronunciation between the dialects?


No, not at all, prior to the standardization of the Greek alphabet (403 BCE) each region used its own variant of the alphabet, and had its own way to write the double consonants Ψ Ξ, thus, the Cretans did not use a specific letter for [ks], they decided to use the cluster *KϺ* for it (where *Ϻ* is the letter San), the Greeks of Cumae and Neapolis in Campania, Italy (Magna Graecia), Locris, and the western islands of Cephallonia, Ithaca, used *Χ* for [ks], the Doric way of writing [ks] was *KK* (e.g. «ἐδίδακκεν» for «ἐδίδαξεν»), in Boeotia and Phocis, [ps] was written with ΦΣ, and [ks] with ΧΣ and so on.


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## rushalaim

apmoy70 said:


> and the Ξ (for which they employed the Phoenician samekh).


Do you mean Hebrew Samekh-letter? Presumably, Phoenician Shat-letter for Greek Ξ.
I mean, Phoenician (and Arabic) s-sound is modern Hebrew sh-sound, and Phoenician (and Arabic) sh-sound is modern Hebrew s-sound.


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> Do you mean Hebrew Samekh-letter?


Yes, Xi is from Samekh.


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## Saley

Has anyone come across letter and bigram frequency lists for Ancient Greek?

If the frequencies of ξ and ψ appeared to be considerably higher than those of consonantal bigrams, this would substantiate apmoy70’s explanation.


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## gburtonio

Given that all the different dialect groups felt the need to find a special character or digraph for /ps/ and /ks/, could we posit that they had phonemic status, i.e. they were perceived as a single sound rather than two? I could understand creating a new character purely for the purposes of efficiency, given the relatively high frequency of /ps/ and /ks/, but why the digraphs KM and KK? If you're going to use two characters, you may as well write KΣ, unless something else is going on.


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## Delvo

Ξ is easy enough to explain the existence of. They got the alphabet from the Phoenicians, who had three voiceless sibilant letters already there; the Greeks didn't need to "add" anything. Σ got the plain straightforward sound assignment, which left two extras. One of those ended up as Ξ because if you've got an extra letter available, you might as well find  a use for it, probably for something fairly close to what you were first taught that it was for and also fairly common in your own spoken language. The third was "Ϻ", which fell out of use, presumably because it was redundant (and not distinct enough from "M"). That leaves only Ψ as any trouble to explain. And there isn't a good solid answer available. Trying to sort out some of these details of the ancient Greek alphabet(s) tends to result in writing with a lot of words like "probably" in it. The Greeks just didn't always explain what they were thinking or give us convenient sets of before-&-after examples to work with.

In a way, the ancient Greeks ended up with more than either the original 22 Phoenician letters or the modern standard 24 Greek ones, because those (originally) 22 evolved somewhat independently in different Greek cities, and a single letter could come to look and/or sound different in two cities, which then created the possibility of any city adopting versions of what had once been the same letter as two separate letters when contact among Greek cities increased later... or even in the same city they could start drawing a single letter in two forms to represent small differences in pronunciation that the original set didn't account for, which would have the same result of yielding two letters where there had been one. Thus they ended up with pairs like ΟΩ (short & long /o/), ΚΧ (plain /k/ & aspirated /kʰ/), ϜΥ (consonant /w/ & vowel /u/; consonant later dropped, but not before the Italians got their hands on it and apparently /w/→/v/→/f/), and ϘΦ (when some Greek cities had done /kʷʰ/→/pʰ/ but others hadn't yet; form associated with older sound later dropped, but not before the Italians got their hands on it as Q). Notice that in each split, one of the resulting pair got bumped to the end of the alphabet, after Τ. That placement in alphabetical order is what happens to letters that were formed by splitting from another letter this way, which tells us that Ψ was such a case, but not what else it might have split from.

This splitting phenomenon also gave ancient Greek writers at least two more potential sibilant letters to choose from in addition to the four that have already been mentioned here or the three basic Phoenician originals, without telling us clearly which ones came from which Phoenician originals: Ψ, ϡ ("sampi"), and something we don't even have a Unicode code for which looked a bit like Cyrillic И in reverse italics or a V and a Λ smooshed together ("Arcadian (t)san"). The latter two of those, of course, fell out of use along with "Ϻ" by the time a single version of the Greek alphabet was standardized, but the fact that they ever existed at all, at least in certain cities, tells us at least a general story of Greek writers speaking a language with only one voiceless sibilant sound but facing an array of Phoenician-based letters for them, and coming up with more than one idea of what to do with the extras. So the story of Ψ is just the surviving, visible part of a situation that was a bit of a mess from the start.

My theory for Ψ is to just figure the answer is the one that follows the shortest route from Phoenician, for both sound and visual appearance, which tells me it's from Phoenician "ṣad", which had the form of a long vertical stroke with some zig-zagging attached at the top (compacted into an asterisk-like starburst of three crossed lines at the top in some Greek cities), the same Phoenician source which apparently also yielded "Ϻ" by extending the last line of the original zig-zag. Second place would be šin, which looked like our W, which would make Σ the lost twin. Some have also suggested it came not straight from any Phoenician form but from Greek Χ, which doesn't seem particularly close to me either visually or phonetically, on the basis that some early writing apparently would sometimes switch Χ, Ξ, and Ψ around with each other, putting one where we're used to seeing another, as if interchanging either the /h/-like aspirating component and the /s/, or the /k/ and the /p/, or both. (This kind of spelling "error" would also be where the "ks" pronunciation for Latin X came from.)


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## berndf

Delvo said:


> My theory for Ψ is to just figure the answer is the one that follows the shortest route from Phoenician, for both sound and visual appearance, which tells me it's from Phoenician "ṣad"


As I said before, the Phoenician Tsadeh is the Greek San, which is in its proper position between Peh>Pi and Qoph>Koppa. Also the Western Greek use of Ψ for the aspirated _k_ would be difficult to explain. I think we need a different theory.


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## rushalaim

Delvo said:


> Ξ is easy enough to explain the existence of. They got the alphabet from the Phoenicians, who had three voiceless sibilant letters already there; the Greeks didn't need to "add" anything. Σ got the plain straightforward sound assignment, which left two extras. One of those ended up as Ξ because if you've got an extra letter available, you might as well find  a use for it, probably for something fairly close to what you were first taught that it was for and also fairly common in your own spoken language. The third was "Ϻ", which fell out of use, presumably because it was redundant (and not distinct enough from "M"). That leaves only Ψ as any trouble to explain. And there isn't a good solid answer available. Trying to sort out some of these details of the ancient Greek alphabet(s) tends to result in writing with a lot of words like "probably" in it. The Greeks just didn't always explain what they were thinking or give us convenient sets of before-&-after examples to work with.
> 
> In a way, the ancient Greeks ended up with more than either the original 22 Phoenician letters or the modern standard 24 Greek ones, because those (originally) 22 evolved somewhat independently in different Greek cities, and a single letter could come to look and/or sound different in two cities, which then created the possibility of any city adopting versions of what had once been the same letter as two separate letters when contact among Greek cities increased later... or even in the same city they could start drawing a single letter in two forms to represent small differences in pronunciation that the original set didn't account for, which would have the same result of yielding two letters where there had been one. Thus they ended up with pairs like ΟΩ (short & long /o/), ΚΧ (plain /k/ & aspirated /kʰ/), ϜΥ (consonant /w/ & vowel /u/; consonant later dropped, but not before the Italians got their hands on it and apparently /w/→/v/→/f/), and ϘΦ (when some Greek cities had done /kʷʰ/→/pʰ/ but others hadn't yet; form associated with older sound later dropped, but not before the Italians got their hands on it as Q). Notice that in each split, one of the resulting pair got bumped to the end of the alphabet, after Τ. That placement in alphabetical order is what happens to letters that were formed by splitting from another letter this way, which tells us that Ψ was such a case, but not what else it might have split from.
> 
> This splitting phenomenon also gave ancient Greek writers at least two more potential sibilant letters to choose from in addition to the four that have already been mentioned here or the three basic Phoenician originals, without telling us clearly which ones came from which Phoenician originals: Ψ, ϡ ("sampi"), and something we don't even have a Unicode code for which looked a bit like Cyrillic И in reverse italics or a V and a Λ smooshed together ("Arcadian (t)san"). The latter two of those, of course, fell out of use along with "Ϻ" by the time a single version of the Greek alphabet was standardized, but the fact that they ever existed at all, at least in certain cities, tells us at least a general story of Greek writers speaking a language with only one voiceless sibilant sound but facing an array of Phoenician-based letters for them, and coming up with more than one idea of what to do with the extras. So the story of Ψ is just the surviving, visible part of a situation that was a bit of a mess from the start.
> 
> My theory for Ψ is to just figure the answer is the one that follows the shortest route from Phoenician, for both sound and visual appearance, which tells me it's from Phoenician "ṣad", which had the form of a long vertical stroke with some zig-zagging attached at the top (compacted into an asterisk-like starburst of three crossed lines at the top in some Greek cities), the same Phoenician source which apparently also yielded "Ϻ" by extending the last line of the original zig-zag. Second place would be šin, which looked like our W, which would make Σ the lost twin. Some have also suggested it came not straight from any Phoenician form but from Greek Χ, which doesn't seem particularly close to me either visually or phonetically, on the basis that some early writing apparently would sometimes switch Χ, Ξ, and Ψ around with each other, putting one where we're used to seeing another, as if interchanging either the /h/-like aspirating component and the /s/, or the /k/ and the /p/, or both. (This kind of spelling "error" would also be where the "ks" pronunciation for Latin X came from.)


Aramaic פ*צ*חא _"deliverance"_ in Septuagint (Pentateuch) must be transliterated like Greek ПА*ϡ*ХА, but Greeks wrote ПА*Σ*ХА (*Σ*AMПI-letter?). Some Greeks used Tsadi-letter like Sampi, some stopped. I assume, Tsadi-letter as a sound was thrown out from Greek alphabet because of those tribes who pronounced Sampi (Tsadi-)-sound disappeared.

<...>

Moderator note: Discussion of letters as numerals is off-topic here. Please contribute to the thread on that topic.


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## Saley

Just to put it more clearly, the major systems of representing aspirated and sigmatic consonants were as follows:



Alphabet typeφχψξSouthern (Crete)_ph__kh__ps__ks_WesternΦΨ_fs_ΧAtticΦΧ_fs__xs_EasternΦΧΨΞ

Small Greek letters in the heading are modern ones. Capital Greek letters are their local archaic equivalents. Combinations of two small Latin letters indicate that a digraph was used; _p_ stands for _pi_, _k_ for _kappa_, _f_ for the letter from φ column, _x_ for the letter from χ column, _h_ for _heta_, and _s_ for _sigma_/_san_ (whichever represented the sound [s] in a given alphabet).

The fact that the Χ and Ψ graphemes had different meanings in different dialects (Χ = West. [kʰs] / East. [kʰ]; Ψ = West. [kʰ] / East. [pʰs]) isn’t unique in and of itself. Many unrelated letters had similar shapes in various regions (compare, for example, Arcadian δ and Ionian ρ; Corinthian ι and Rhodian σ).


fdb said:


> The Greek Ξ graphically continues the Phoenician ṣade, but in the Greek alphabet it occupies the position of samech.


What graphic similarities do you find between Greek _xi_ and Phoenician _ṣade_? Archaic Ξ looks almost identically to _samek_.


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## fdb

Saley said:


> Archaic Ξ looks almost identically to _samek_.



You are right, I was dozing.


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## rushalaim

Aramaic [pa*ts*ha] _"passover"_ Greeks transliterated like [pa*s*ha]. Ancient Greek wrote from right to left like A*XΣ*AΠ. Maybe that's how Greek Ksi-letter formed when began to read from left to right?


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## apmoy70

berndf said:


> ...Also the Western Greek use of Ψ for the aspirated k would be difficult to explain. I think we need a different theory.


I think it's easily explained, they used Ψ for the aspirated kʰ because it was the only extra letter available, since they had already assigned X to [ks]


rushalaim said:


> Aramaic [pa*ts*ha] _"passover"_ Greeks transliterated like [pa*s*ha]. Ancient Greek wrote from right to left like A*XΣ*AΠ. Maybe that's how Greek Ksi-letter formed when began to read from left to right?


The Ancient Greeks wrote from right to left perhaps for a century. 
Initially following the adoption of the Phoenician abjad, they indeed wrote either from right to left, or bi-directionally, from right to left and then from left to write, like the ox in ploughing (cf the writing's name *«βουστροφηδόν» boustrŏpʰēdón* (adv.) --> _in the manner of oxen in ploughing_).
Writing from right to left was abandoned very-very early (7th c. BCE), while the boustrophedon writing lasted roughly a century more (the latest boustrophedon writing is in Crete, a 5th c. BCE insription).


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## berndf

apmoy70 said:


> I think it's easily explained, they used Ψ for the aspirated kʰ because it was the only extra letter available, since they had already assigned X to [ks]


That can easily be explained the other way round. Looks like a chicken and egg situation to me.


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## Delvo

ΑαΒβΓγΔδΕεϜϝΖζΗηΘθϑΙιΚκΛλΜμΝνΞξΟοΠπϘϙΡρΣσςΤτΥυΦφΧχΨψΩω

I'm just putting them all where they'll be visible in search results where it shows the beginning of the post, because of something I just noticed about the way this earlier post looks in that search-results sample:





Delvo said:


> Ξ is easy enough to explain the existence of...


The letter Ξ has a vertical line added in the search-results sample! That makes it look like its Phoenician counterpart, from before that original vertical line was _removed_!


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## Delvo

It did it to the same letter again, but not to any of the others...


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## Saley

Delvo said:


> The letter Ξ has a vertical line added in the search-results sample!


It’s a matter of fonts. This page renders our posts with Verdana, while the search page uses Trebuchet MS. You can find differences, for example, in β, Ι, ι, λ, Μ, ξ as well.


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## Red Arrow

I always assumed the letter psi represented *P*o*s*eidon's trident


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