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Alpha Phi Alpha Presidents
Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἄλφα, ''álpha'', or ell, άλφα, álfa) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph , which is the West Semitic word for " ox". Letters that arose from alpha include the Latin letter A and the Cyrillic letter А. Uses Greek In Ancient Greek, alpha was pronounced and could be either phonemically long ( ː or short ( . Where there is ambiguity, long and short alpha are sometimes written with a macron and breve today: Ᾱᾱ, Ᾰᾰ. * ὥρα = ὥρᾱ ''hōrā'' "a time" * γλῶσσα = γλῶσσᾰ ''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 orthography of Greek, alpha, like other vowel letters, can occur with several diacritic marks: any of three accent symbols (), and either of two breathi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Letter (alphabet)
A letter is a segmental symbol A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ... of a Phonemic orthography, phonemic writing system. The inventory of all letters forms an alphabet. Letters broadly correspond to phonemes in the spoken language, spoken form of the language, although there is rarely a consistent and exact correspondence between letters and phonemes. The word ''letter'', borrowed from Old French ''letre'', entered Middle English around 1200 AD, eventually displacing the Old English term (wikt:bookstaff, bookstaff). ''Letter'' is descended from the Latin ''wikt:littera, littera'', which may have descended from the Greek "διφθέρα" (, writing tablet), via Etruscan language, Etruscan. Definition and usage A letter is a type of grapheme, which is a functional u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vowel Length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, for example in: Arabic, Estonian, Finnish, Fijian, Kannada, Malayalam, Japanese, Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ..., Old English phonology#Vowels, Old English, Scottish Gaelic phonology#Vowels, Scottish Gaelic, and Vietnamese phonology#Vowels, Vietnamese. While vowel length alone does not change word meaning in most dialects of English language, English, it is said to do so in a few dialects, such as Australian English, Lunenburg English, New Zealand English, and South African English. It also plays a lesser phone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syllabic Consonant
A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''bottle''. To represent it, the understroke diacritic in the International Phonetic Alphabet is used, . It may be instead represented by an overstroke, if the symbol that it modifies has a descender, such as in . Syllabic consonants in most languages are sonorants, such as nasals and liquids. Very few have syllabic obstruents, such as stops and fricatives in normal words, but English has syllabic fricatives in paralinguistic words like ''shh!'' and ''zzz''. Examples Germanic languages In many varieties of High and Low German, pronouncing syllabic consonants may be considered a shibboleth. In High German and Tweants (a Low Saxon dialect spoken in the Netherlands; more Low Saxon dialects have the syllabic consonant), all word-final syllables in infinite verbs and feminine plural nou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Indo-European Language
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE or its daughter languages, and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from 4500 BC to 2500 BC during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Privative A
An alpha privative or, rarely, privative a (from Latin ', from Ancient Greek ) is the prefix ''a-'' or ''an-'' (before vowels) that is used in Indo-European languages such as Sanskrit and Greek language, Greek and in words borrowed therefrom to express negation or absence, for example the English words of greek origin ''wiktionary:atypical, atypical'', ''wiktionary:anesthetic, anesthetic'', and ''wiktionary:analgesic, analgesic''. It is derived from a Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European syllabic nasal *', the zero Indo-European ablaut, ablaut grade of the negation *', i.e. /n/ used as a vowel. For this reason, it usually appears as ' before vowels (e.g. ''illiteracy, an-alphabetism'', ''anesthesia, an-esthesia'', ''anarchy (word), an-archy''). It shares the same root with the Greek prefix ' or ', in Greek or , that is also privative (e.g. '). It is not to be confused with, among other things, an copulative a, alpha copulative (e.g. ') or the prepositional compound (li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbert Weir Smyth Herbert Weir Smyth (August 8, 1857 – July 16, 1937) was an American classical scholar. His comprehensive grammar of Ancient Greek has become a standard reference on the subject in English, comparable to that of William Watson Goodwin, whom he succeeded as Eliott Professor of Greek Literature at Harvard University. Life He was educated at Swarthmore ( A.B. 1876), Harvard (A.B. 1878), Leipzig, and Göttingen ( Ph.D. 1884). From 1883 to 1885, he was instructor in Greek and Sanskrit at Williams College, and then for two years, he was reader in Greek at Johns Hopkins. From 1887 to 1901, he was |
