Qoppa or Koppa (Ϙ) is a letter that was used in early forms of the Greek alphabet, which lacked such a sound, it was instead used for /k/ before back vowels (Ο, Υ and Ω). As the sound /k/ then had two redundant spellings,citation needed qoppa was eventually replaced by kappa (Κ). Qoppa remained in use as a letter in some Doric regions into the 5th century BC.1
History and use
Like all Greek letters, qoppa was also used as a numeral, and had the value of 90. It has continued to be used in this function into modern times, though its shape has changed over time from a Q-like one ( ) one to a Z-like one ( )
The Qoppa was used as a symbol for the city of Corinth, which had the early spelling of Ϙόρινθος. Qoppa is also the source of the Latin letter Q and the archaic Cyrillic numeral koppa (Ҁ).
In the Unicode computer encoding standard, there are two pairs of codepoints to represent Qoppa: U+03D8/U+03D9 ("Greek Letter Archaic Koppa" and "Greek Small Letter Archaic Koppa", Ϙϙ), intended for representing the epigraphic Q-like glyph, and U+03DE/U+03DF ("Greek Letter Koppa" and "Greek Small Letter Koppa", Ϟϟ), intended for the numeric Z-like glyphs.2
Corinthian stater. Obverse: Pegasus with qoppa beneath, for Corinth. Reverse: Athena wearing Corinthian helmet.
See also
References
- ^ Woodard, Roger D. (1997). Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195105206.
- ^ Note that computer fonts used in browsers may show these codepoints differently.
Further reading
- Powell, Barry B. (1991). Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521371570.
- Threatte, Leslie (1980). The Grammar of Attic Inscriptions. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3110073447.
- Woodard, Roger D. (1997). Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195105206.
External links
|
Digamma
San
Sampi
Stigma
Sho
Heta
)
.png)
