Greek
Both in classical Ancient Greek and in Modern Greek, the letter Ξ represents the sound . In some archaic local variants of the Greek alphabet, this letter was missing. Instead, especially in the dialects of most of the Greek mainland and Euboea, the sound was represented by Χ (which in classical Greek is chi, used for /kʰ/). Because this variant of the Greek alphabet was used in Italy, the Latin alphabet borrowed Χ rather than Ξ as the Latin letter X.
Read more about this topic: Xi (letter)
Famous quotes containing the word greek:
“Here Greek and Roman find themselves
Alive along these crowded shelves;
And Shakespeare treads again his stage,
And Chaucer paints anew his age.”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the particular benefit of twins?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)