Alpha
Uses
Greek
In
Ancient Greek, alpha was pronounced and could be either
phoneme long (aː) or short (a). Where there is ambiguity, long and short alpha are sometimes written with a macron and
breve today: italic=no.
-
= italic=no hōrā "a time"
-
= italic=no glôssa "tongue"
In Modern Greek, vowel length has been lost, and all instances of alpha simply represent the open front unrounded vowel .
In the polytonic Greek orthography of Greek, alpha, like other vowel letters, can occur with several diacritic marks: any of three accent symbols (ά, ὰ, ᾶ), and either of two breathing marks (ἁ, ἀ), as well as combinations of these. It can also combine with the iota subscript (ᾳ).
Greek grammar
In the
Attic Greek–
Ionic Greek dialect of Ancient Greek, long alpha fronted to (
eta). In Ionic, the shift took place in all positions. In Attic, the shift did not take place after
epsilon,
iota, and
rho (italic=no; e, i, r). In
Doric Greek and
Aeolic Greek, long alpha is preserved in all positions.
[Herbert Weir Smyth. Greek grammar for colleges. paragraph 30 and note .]
-
Doric, Aeolic, Attic χώρᾱ chṓrā – Ionic χώρη chṓrē, "country"
-
Doric, Aeolic φᾱ́μᾱ phā́mā – Attic, Ionic φήμη phḗmē, "report"
Privative a is the Ancient Greek prefix italic=no or italic=no a-, an-, added to words to negate them. It originates from the Proto-Indo-European *n̥- (syllabic nasal) and is cognate with English un-.
Copulative a is the Greek prefix italic=no or italic=no ha-, a-. It comes from Proto-Indo-European *sm̥.
Mathematics and science
The letter alpha represents various concepts in
physics and
chemistry, including
alpha radiation, angular acceleration,
,
alpha carbon and strength of electromagnetic interaction (as fine-structure constant).
Alpha also stands for thermal expansion coefficient of a compound in physical chemistry. In
ethology, it is used to name the dominant individual in a group of animals. In aerodynamics, the letter is used as a symbol for the angle of attack of an aircraft and the word "alpha" is used as a synonym for this property.
In astronomy, α is often used to designate the brightest star in a constellation.
In mathematics, the letter alpha is used to denote the area underneath a normal curve in statistics to denote significance level
Most occurrences of alpha in science are the lowercase alpha. The uppercase letter alpha is not generally used as a symbol because it tends to be rendered identically to the uppercase Latin A.
The proportionality operator "∝" (in Unicode: U+221D) is sometimes mistaken for alpha.
International Phonetic Alphabet
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the letter ɑ, which looks similar to the lower-case alpha, represents the open back unrounded vowel.
History and symbolism
Origin
The Phoenician alphabet was adopted for Greek in the early 8th century BC, perhaps in
Euboea.
[The date of the earliest inscribed objects; A.W. Johnston, "The alphabet", in N. Stampolidis and V. Karageorghis, eds, Sea Routes from Sidon to Huelva: Interconnections in the Mediterranean 2003:263-76, summarizes the present scholarship on the dating.]
The majority of the letters of the Phoenician alphabet were adopted into Greek with much the same sounds as they had had in Phoenician, but
ʼāleph, the Phoenician letter representing the glottal stop ,
was adopted as representing the vowel ; similarly,
hē and
Ayin are Phoenician consonants that became Greek vowels,
epsilon and
omicron , respectively.
Plutarch
Plutarch, in
Moralia,
[Symposiacs, Book IX, questions II & III On-line text at Adelaide library] presents a discussion on why the letter alpha stands first in the alphabet. Ammonius asks Plutarch what he, being a
, has to say for
Cadmus, the
who reputedly settled in Thebes and introduced the alphabet to Greece, placing
alpha first because it is the Phoenician name for ox—which, unlike
Hesiod,
[Hesiod, in Works and Days (see on Perseus Project ), advises the early Greek farmers, "First of all, get a house, then a woman and third, an ox for the plough."] the Phoenicians considered not the second or third, but the first of all necessities. "Nothing at all," Plutarch replied. He then added that he would rather be assisted by
Lamprias, his own grandfather, than by
Dionysus' grandfather, i.e. Cadmus. For Lamprias had said that the first articulate sound made is "alpha", because it is very plain and simple—the air coming off the mouth does not require any motion of the tongue—and therefore this is the first sound that children make.
According to Plutarch's natural order of attribution of the to the , alpha was connected with the Moon.
Alpha and Omega
As the first letter of the alphabet, Alpha as a
Greek numeral came to represent the number 1.
Therefore, Alpha, both as a symbol and term, is used to refer to the "first", or "primary", or "principal" (most significant) occurrence or status of a thing.
The New Testament has God declaring himself to be the "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." (, KJV, and see also ).
Consequently, the term "alpha" has also come to be used to denote "primary" position in social hierarchy, examples being the concept of dominant "alpha" members in groups of animals.
Unicode
All code points with or
but without (for accented Greek characters, see ):
Notes
