vessel, with the Phoenician shape of the zeta
Letter The letter ζ represents the
voiced alveolar fricative in
Modern Greek. The sound represented by zeta in Greek before 400 BC is disputed. See
Ancient Greek phonology and
Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching. Most handbooks agree on attributing to it the pronunciation (like
Mazda), but some scholars believe that it was an affricate (like adze). The modern pronunciation was, in all likelihood, established in the Hellenistic age and may have already been a common practice in Classical
Attic; for example, it could count as one or two consonants metrically in Attic drama.
Arguments for • PIE *
zd becomes ζ in Greek (e.g. *
sísdō > ).
Contra: these words are rare and it is therefore more probable that *
zd was absorbed by *
dz (cistin, college>colláiste, Alexandria>Al-Iskandariya, perhaps exeo~>esco, but also C(es)aragusta>Zaragoza, musta3rab>mozárabe; the question is, how can we count the probability from a never complete set of data? Or was it judged more likely on the basis of some physiological experiments, think Ohala? --> than the other way around (which would violate the
sonority hierarchy). • Without there would be an empty space between and in the Greek sound system (), and a voiced affricate would not have a voiceless correspondent.
Contra: a) words with and are rare, and exceptions in phonological and (even more so) phonotactic patterns are in no way uncommon; b) there was in etc.; and c) there was in fact a voiceless correspondent in Archaic Greek ( > Attic,
Boeotian ,
Ionic,
Doric ). •
Persian names with
zd and
z are transcribed with ζ and σ respectively in Classical Greek (e.g.
Artavazda = ~
Zara(n)ka- = . Similarly, the
Philistine city
Ashdod was transcribed as . • Some inscriptions have -ζ- written for a combination -ς + δ- resulting from separate words, e.g. θεοζοτος for θεος δοτος "god-given". • Some
Attic inscriptions have -σζ- for -σδ- or -ζ-, which is thought to parallel -σστ- for -στ- and therefore to imply a pronunciation. • ν disappears before ζ like before σ(σ), στ: e.g. * > , * > , * > .
Contra: ν may have disappeared before /dz/ if one accepts that it had the allophone in that position like /ts/ had the allophone : cf.
Cretan ~ (Hinge). • Verbs beginning with ζ have in the perfect reduplication like the verbs beginning with στ (e.g. = ).
Contra: a) The most prominent example of a verb beginning with στ has in fact σ(σ) also have :
Homer , Ion. . •
Alcman,
Sappho,
Alcaeus and
Theocritus have σδ for
Attic-Ionic ζ.
Contra: The tradition would not have invented this special digraph for these poets if was the normal pronunciation in all Greek. Furthermore, this convention is not found in contemporary inscriptions, and the orthography of the manuscripts and papyri is
Alexandrine rather than historical. Thus, indicates only a different pronunciation from Hellenistic Greek , i.e. either or . • The grammarians
Dionysius Thrax and
Dionysius of Halicarnassus class ζ with the "double" () letters ψ, ξ and analyse it as σ + δ.
Contra: The Roman grammarian
Verrius Flaccus believed in the opposite sequence, δ + σ (in
Velius Longus,
De orthogr. 51), and
Aristotle says that it was a matter of dispute (
Metaph. 993a) (though Aristotle might as well be referring to a pronunciation). It is even possible that the letter sometimes and for some speakers varied in pronunciation depending upon word position, i.e., like the letter X in English, which is (usually) pronounced [z] initially but [gz] or [ks] elsewhere (cf.
Xerxes). • Some Attic transcriptions of Asia Minor toponyms (βυζζαντειον, αζζειον, etc.) show a -ζζ- for ζ; assuming that
Attic value was , it may be an attempt to transcribe a dialectal pronunciation; the reverse cannot be ruled completely, but a -σδ- transcription would have been more likely in this case. This suggests that different dialects had different pronunciations. (For a similar example in the
Slavic languages, cf. Serbo-Croatian
(iz)među, Russian между, Polish
między, and Czech
mezi, "between".)
Arguments for [dz] • The Greek inscriptions almost never write ζ in words like or , so there must have been a difference between this sound and the sound of .
Contra: a few inscriptions do seem to suggest that ζ was pronounced like σδ; furthermore, all words with written σδ are morphologically transparent, and written σδ may simply be echoing the morphology. (Note, for example, that we write "ads" where the morphology is transparent, and "adze" where it is not, even though the pronunciation is the same.) • It seems improbable that Greek would invent a special symbol for the bisegmental combination , which could be represented by σδ without any problems. , on the other hand, would have the same sequence of plosive and sibilant as the double letters of the Ionic alphabet ψ and ξ , thereby avoiding a written plosive at the end of a syllable.
Contra: the use of a special symbol for is no more or no less improbable than the use of ψ for and ξ for , or, for that matter, the later invention ϛ (
stigma) for , which happens to be the voiceless counterpart of . Furthermore, it is not clear that ζ was pronounced when it was originally invented.
Mycenean Greek had a special symbol to denote some sort of affricate or palatal consonant; ζ may have been invented for this sound, which later developed into . (For a parallel development, note that original palatal
Proto-Slavic developed into in
Old Church Slavonic, with similar developments having led to combinations such as зд and жд being quite common in
Russian.) •
Boeotian,
Elean,
Laconian and
Cretan
δδ are more easily explained as a direct development from *
dz than through an intermediary *
zd.
Contra: a) the sound development
dz >
dd is improbable (Mendez Dosuna); b) ν has disappeared before ζ > δδ in Laconian (Aristoph.,
Lys. 171, 990) and Boeotian (Sch. Lond. in Dion. Thrax 493), which suggests that these dialects have had a phase of
metathesis (Teodorsson). • Greek in South Italy has preserved until modern times.
Contra: a) this may be a later development from or under the influence of Italian; b) even if it is derived from an ancient , it may be a dialectal pronunciation. •
Vulgar Latin inscriptions use the Greek letter Z for indigenous affricates (e.g.
zeta =
diaeta), and the Greek ζ is continued by a Romance affricate in the ending > Italian.
-eggiare, French
-oyer. Italian, similarly, has consistently used Z for and (Lat.
prandium > It.
pranzo, "lunch").
Contra: whether the pronunciation of was , or ,
di would probably still have been the closest native Latin sound; furthermore, the inscriptions are centuries later than the time for which is assumed.
Summary • is attested only in the
lyric poetry of the Greek isle of
Lesbos and the
city-state of
Sparta during the
Archaic Age and in
Bucolic poetry from the
Hellenistic Age. Most scholars would take this as an indication that the -pronunciation existed in the dialects of these authors. • The transcriptions from
Persian by
Xenophon and testimony by grammarians support the pronunciation in
Classical Attic. • is attested from c. 350 BC in
Attic inscriptions, and was the probable value in
Koine. • or may have existed in some other dialects in parallel.
Numeral Zeta has the numerical value 7 rather than 6 because the letter
digamma (ϝ, also called '
stigma' as a
Greek numeral) was originally in the sixth position in the alphabet.
Mathematics and science The uppercase zeta is not used, because it is normally identical to Latin
Z. The lower case letter can be used to represent: • The
Riemann zeta function in
mathematics • The
Hurwitz Zeta Function in mathematics • The
Weierstrass zeta-function • The
damping ratio of an oscillating system in engineering and physics • The rotational quantity of angular
jerk in physics • The effective nuclear charge on an electron in quantum chemistry • The
electrokinetic potential in
colloidal systems • The lag angle in
helicopter blade dynamics • Relative
vorticity in the
atmosphere and
ocean • A number whose discrete values (eigenvalues) are the positive roots of transcendental equations, used in the series solutions for transient one-dimensional conduction equations • The heat flux across or through a plane (industrial materials technology) • In physical chemistry equilibrium computations (using lower case Zeta (ζ)), the extent of reaction • The
height of the surface of a fluid layer
ZETA (fusion reactor) (all uppercase) was an early fusion experiment. ==Unicode==