Upsilon
Upsilon or ypsilon is the twentieth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw 20px.
Etymology
The name of the letter was originally just υ, but the name changed to υ ψιλόν to distinguish it from οι, which had come to have the same pronunciation.Pronunciation
In early Attic Greek, it was pronounced . In Classical Greek, it was pronounced , at least until 1030. In Modern Greek, it is pronounced ; in the digraphs and, as or ; and in the digraph as. In ancient Greek, it occurred in both long and short versions, but Modern Greek does not have a length distinction.As an initial letter in Classical Greek, it always carried the rough breathing 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- and sub-.
Upsilon participated as the second element in falling diphthongs, which have subsequently developed in various ways.
Correspondence with Latin Y
The use 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 or. 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, but in inscriptions, the new letter was sometimes used for Greek upsilon instead.Four letters of the Latin alphabet arose from it: U, Y and, much later, V and W. In the Cyrillic script, the letters U and izhitsa arose from it.
In some languages, including German and Portuguese, the name upsilon is used to refer to the Latin letter Y as well as the Greek letter. In some other languages, the Y is referred to as a "Greek I", also noting its Greek origin.
Usage
- In particle physics the capital Greek letter ϒ denotes an Upsilon particle. Note that the symbol should always look like in order to avoid confusion with a Latin Y denoting the hypercharge. This may be done either with a font such as FreeSerif or with the dedicated Unicode character U+03D2 ϒ.
- Automobile manufacturer Lancia has a model called the Ypsilon.
- In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the symbol is used to represent a labiodental approximant.
- In astrophysics and physical cosmology, ϒ refers to the mass-to-light ratio.
- In statistics, it is sometimes used instead of v or nu to indicate degrees of freedom.
- In the Persian language, “one upsilon” is used to describe a positive amount close to 0.
Similar appearance
- A similar symbol is used for the astrological sign of Aries.
Symbolism
Lactantius, an early Christian author, refers to this: