Talk:Phi (letter)

From Academic Kids

The empty set symbol

The letters Φ (obtained by typing &Phi;), φ (&phi;) or <math>{}{}\phi<math> (<math>\phi<<\math>) are not the symbol for the empty set in mathematics, and should not be used as such in Wikipedia.

In Unicode, the empty set symbol ∅ (&#8709;) occupies code point U+2205. But many fonts in use today don't include this character and render it as a small rectangle.

The TeX symbol <math>\emptyset<math> (<math>\emptyset</math>) looks funny and seems to dance above the baseline.

Therefore, I recommend using either Ø (&Oslash;) or {} ({}) to indicate the empty set.

—Herbee

Pronunciation

The article says it's pronouced fee, but every lecturer and school teacher I've ever had (in Physics, Maths and Computer Science) has pronounced it fie. Does anyone know why this is? Is it an English vs. Greek vs. American difference in pronunciation? -- Karl Naylor 14:35, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

I have researched this pronunciation over the last several weeks pretty extensively (because somehow I have an itch that just must be scratched). The references I have found are distributed fairly evenly across three groups: 'fee', 'fie', and 'both'. Generally, those references that claim authority in a scientific or mathematical context generally claim 'fee'. Those references that are authoritative in Greek language studies claim either 'fie' or 'both'. In my college experience (math, physics, computer science), most instructors or professors used 'fee'. However, and curiously, many times the same instructors would pronounce the names of certain Greek association houses as 'fie', as in Phi Beta Kappa. Personally, I prefer 'fie' although in any case, I think the article should mention both pronunciations as being acceptable, depending upon context. -- Jim Richins, 29 June 2004

Everyone I know says fee, except my older brother who says fie, but hes a loser, so dont mind him. Fie as in pi & chi &c., but fee to be cool and know what you're talking about. daesotho 20:25, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"Fee" is the actual Greek pronunciation (written φι, I believe). I've heard it pronounced both ways, but probably more commonly as "fee" in an academic setting. For what it's worth, the American Heritage Dictionary gives both pronunciations. Merriam-Webster gives only "fye". Personally, I say "fee", but to each one's own. Caesura 02:42, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"Fie" is more common in .uk/.au/.nz English (in particular in mathematics, engineering and science done there). Don't remember what they say in .ca. Actually going by national stereotypes, koowoos would pronounce it "Foo" and Canadians "Feh?", but that's another story. Andrew Kepert 05:53, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Transliteration

Does anyone have any idea why it's transliterated into the modern Latin alphabet as "ph"? It's always seemed odd to me, even more odd than other two-letter combinations that make separate sounds, like "sh" and "th" -- in those cases, the mouth/lips/tongue are at least in a similar position to the normal pronunciation of the letters preceding the "h". And especially because we have a letter for this. It's called F. Is there any particular reason why these words/roots are not spelled like "filosofy" and "fobia", or was it just a fluke of language development that became tradition?

Don't know, but if it's a comfort to you, english and french are about the only two languages that do it. There was a lot of treating labiodentals as labials, see Tengwar.

Lee S. Svoboda 22:31, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't really KNOW, but the following, cut-and-pasted from H2G2 [1] (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2451890), seems relevant:

The Early Roman Alphabet

The Latins adopted writing from both the Etruscans and the Western Greeks in about the 5th Century. They had no use for the Z, Θ, Φ and Ψ characters of the Western Greek alphabet, so they dropped them from their alphabet.

The Romans needed a letter to represent the f sound in their language. The Etruscan language didn't have an f sound , and neither did Western Greek. (The Greek Φ was at that time pronounced ph, that is, a p with an h sound after it). They adapted the Etruscan letter F which was pronounced 'w' and gave it the sound 'f'.

They adopted an Etruscan three-lined zig-zag S and then curved it to make the modern curvy S. They used the Gamma < to represent both the Etruscan K sound and the Greek G sound. The early Roman alphabet looked like this:

A B C D E F H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X

There are a few differences from the modern alphabet:

C represented both the hard 'k' sound in 'cat' and the 'g' sound in 'garden'.

I represented both the vowel we call 'i' and the 'y' sound that we get at the start of the word 'yellow'.

V represented both the U sound of 'put' and a consonantal sound which was somewhere between our 'v' and 'w'.

[...]

The Eastern Greek Influence

In the 3rd Century BC, the Greeks led by Alexander the Great conquered all of the Eastern Mediterranean and east as far as India. Over the next few centuries, knowledge also spread out from Greece in all directions and the Romans absorbed a lot of ideas from Greek culture. Greek words started to be used in Latin. There was a need to be able to write down these words. The Romans transliterated most of the letters, making do with such combinations as PH instead of Φ and TH instead of Θ.

But they had no way of writing two particular Greek sounds, so in about 100 AD, the Romans borrowed two letters from the Eastern Greek alphabet. One was Y, which was very much the same as the V they had already got from Western Greek. In Eastern Greek it had retained a long stem while in Western Greek it had lost it. The Eastern Greek pronunciation was by now slightly different as well. It is the slender U sound we get in the German word 'fünf' or the French 'tu'. The other letter the Romans borrowed was the Zeta Z for the z sound. Both the Y and the Z were only used for writing Greek words so the letters were placed at the end of the alphabet, although Z had centuries before been positioned after F.

So by the time the Roman Empire reached its peak, the alphabet looked like this:

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z

Due to the Roman dominance of Europe, the Roman alphabet became the standard alphabet throughout Western Europe, and eventually was spread throughout the Western World.

--Niels Ø 09:57, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)