Koppa (letter)

The Koppa or Qoppa (Greek neuter Κόππα, majuscule Ϙ / Ϟ, minuscule ϙ / ϟ ) is a letter that was originally contained in the Greek alphabet and had the phonetic value of / k /. He was eliminated early, but remained as a number of characters after the Milesian principle for 90. Today, the alternative glyph is used ϟ For the numerical characters. From the Greek Koppa the Latin Q comes from.

Origin and use as letter

In the Phoenician language, there were two k- lute, the velar [k] and the uvular ( spoken in the throat ) [q]. The two phonemes were reproduced each with its own character, the Kaph and the Qoph. When the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, they kept the two letters at the kappa and Koppa, although the Greek language had only one phoneme / k /. In the alphabetical order of the Koppa standing in the same place as the Phoenician alphabet in Qoph, namely between Pi and Rho.

As in any language sounded in Greek, the / k / before back vowels such as o and u sounds by coarticulation slightly darker than before front vowels. Because of this slightly throaty allophone of / k / before those same o and u sounds in the sound of the Phoenician / q / remembered you wrote in this context Koppa, while they used Kappa before the other vowels. Corinth wrote, for example, with Koppa as Ϙ όρινθος Qorinthos. Therefore, Corinthian coins bore a Koppa as mint mark of the city.

Because Kappa and Koppa but referred only position -related variants, two letters for a phoneme soon proved to be redundant. As BC the Ionian alphabet of Miletus was introduced in Athens in the year 403, rid you look at the Koppas and replaced it with the Kappa. Due to the supremacy of Athens was the Milesian alphabet to the standard variant of the Greek script, which is why the Koppa in classical and modern Greek is unknown.

Use as Fire signs

In addition to San Bucephalus and the symbol the Qoppa was used as a fire sign for horses. A horse with a baked- on leg Koppa was called κοππατίας or κοππαφόρος. Mention is such a horse, for example, in the comedy The Clouds by Aristophanes.

Use as numerals

Because the Koppa in the system of Greek numerals, which then assigned the letters of the alphabet continuous numerical values ​​, not allowed to replace it remained as a numeral for 90. In Greece, the Greek numerals, similar to the Roman numerals in the West, still widely used for ordinals, so that the Koppa still in use today in this way. But today a special glyph for the number of characters ϟ, the so-called " numerical Koppa " used. This has evolved over time from the Ϙ about the uncial variant Ҁ.

Developments

When the Etruscans took over the Greek alphabet Koppa was still in use and has been taken over in the Old Italic alphabet. According to the Greek practice, the Etruscans used the Q for the k -sound before [ u] ( a o -sound was not in Etruscan ), K before [a] and the product obtained from the Greek gamma C ( knew the Etruscan no voiced consonants ) prior to [E] and [i].

About the Etruscan mediation got the Q in the Latin alphabet. Initially we followed the Etruscan practice, and wrote, for example pequnia for pecunia ( "money" ). Later they went on to write the / k / only with C. The Q remained in the combination QV ( = QU ) for the sound [ k ʷ ], which constituted a separate phoneme in Latin obtained. This could of cui [' kui ] (" who" ) can be distinguished qui [k ʷ i ː ] ("who "). To date, the grapheme QU has received in most written with the Latin alphabet languages ​​for KV or KW.

The Koppa as numerals has been adopted as Koppa ( Ҁ, ҁ ) in the early form of the Cyrillic alphabet and as 𐍁 in the Gothic alphabet. There was no phonetic value, but only the numeric value 90

Display on the computer

In both Unicode glyphs since version 3.2 encoding:

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