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:
“That is a very good question. I don’t know the answer. But can you tell me the name of a classical Greek shoemaker?”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the particular benefit of twins?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“It is an elegant refinement that God learned Greek when he wanted to become a writer—and that he did not learn it better.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)