“Upsilon”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Upsilon ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|ʌ|p|s|ᵻ|l|ɒ|n|,_|ˈ|j|uː|p|-|,_|ˈ|uː|p|-|,_|ˈ|ʊ|p|-|,_|-|l|ə|n}}; or {{IPAc-en|UK|ʌ|p|ˈ|s|aɪ|l|ən|,_|j|uː|p|-}};{{refn|{{MerriamWebsterDictionary|accessdate=2016-01-22|Upsilon}}}}{{refn|{{OxfordDictionaries.com|accessdate=2016-01-22|Upsilon}}}}{{refn|{{Dictionary.com|accessdate=2016-01-22|Upsilon}}}}^[1] uppercase Υ, lowercase υ; {{lang-el|{{linktext|ύψιλον}}}} ýpsilon {{IPA-el|ˈipsilon|}}) or ypsilon^[2] is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, {{lang-grc|Υʹ|label=none}} has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw .

Etymology

The name of the letter was originally just “υ” (y; also called hy, hence "hyoid", meaning "shaped like the letter υ"), but the name changed to “υ ψιλόν”, (u psilon, meaning 'simple u') to distinguish it from οι, which had come to have the same {{IPA|[y]}} pronunciation.^[3]

Pronunciation

In early Greek it was pronounced like English oo {{IPAblink|u|}}. In Classical Greek, it was pronounced like French u or German ü, i.e., {{IPAblink|y|}} (a sound that is not found in most dialects of English). This was the case at least until the year AD 1030.^[4] In Modern Greek it is pronounced like continental i or English ee, {{IPAblink|i|}}, and in diphthongs, {{IPA|[f]}} or {{IPA|[v]}}. In ancient Greek, it occurred in both long and short versions, but this distinction has been lost in Modern Greek.

As an initial letter in Classical Greek it always carried the rough breathing (equivalent to h) as reflected in the many Greek-derived English words, such as those that begin with hyper- and hypo-. This rough breathing was derived from an older pronunciation that used a sibilant instead; this sibilant was not lost in Latin, giving rise to such cognates as super- (for hyper-) and sub- (for hypo-).

Upsilon participated as the second element in falling diphthongs, which have subsequently developed in various ways: For instance, after alpha or epsilon it is pronounced [f] or [v] in Modern Greek.

Correspondence with Latin Y

The usage of Y in Latin dates back to the first century BC. It was used to transcribe loanwords from Greek, so it was not a native sound of Latin and was usually pronounced /u/ or /i/. The latter pronunciation was the most common in the Classical period and was used mostly by uneducated people. The Roman Emperor Claudius proposed introducing a new letter into the Latin alphabet to transcribe the so-called sonus medius (a short vowel before labial consonants), but in inscriptions, the new letter was sometimes used for Greek upsilon instead.

Four letters of the Latin alphabet arose from it: V and Y and, much later, U and W. In the Cyrillic script, the letters U (У, у) and izhitsa (Ѵ, ѵ) arose from it.

In some languages (most notably German), the name upsilon (Ypsilon in German, ípsilon in Portuguese) is used to refer to the Latin letter Y as well as the Greek letter.

Usage

Similar appearance

Symbolism

Upsilon is known as Pythagoras' letter, or the Samian letter, because Pythagoras used it as an emblem of the path of virtue or vice.^[6] As the Roman writer Persius wrote in Satire III:

Character encodings

These characters are used only as mathematical symbols. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using the normal Greek letters, with markup and formatting to indicate text style.

Notes

1. ^Oxford English Dictionary, {{nowrap|3rd ed.}} "upsilon, n." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2013.
2. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.oed.com/;jsessionid=85EEB47C79A842174EB0F00F807B99AC?authRejection=true&url=%2Fview%2FEntry%2F220165|title=Home : Oxford English Dictionary|author=|date=|website=oed.com}}
3. ^See W. Sidney Allen, Vox Graeca, 3rd ed., Cambridge 1987, p. 69.
4. ^F. Lauritzen, Michael the Grammarian's irony about Hypsilon. A step towards reconstructing Byzantine pronunciation. Byzantinoslavica, 67 (2009)
5. ^Mihalas and McRae (1968), Galactic Astronomy (W. H. Freeman)
6. ^Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham. The reader's handbook of famous names in fiction, allusions, references, proverbs, plots, stories, and poems, [https://books.google.com/books?id=n3kjAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA956&q=%22samian%20letter%22 Vol. 2, p. 956]. Lippincott, 1899.
7. ^{{cite book|first=Persius|title=Satires|url=https://archive.org/stream/juvenalpersiuswi00juveuoft/juvenalpersiuswi00juveuoft_djvu.txt|authorlink=Persius}}
8. ^{{cite book|first=Lactatius|title=The Divine Institutes|pages=Book VI Chapter III|url=http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ante-Nicene_Fathers/Volume_VII/Lactantius/The_Divine_Institutes/Book_VI/Chap._III|authorlink=Lactantius}}
9. ^Unicode Code Charts: [https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0370.pdf Greek and Coptic (Range: 0370-03FF)]