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Biography
other usespp-semi|small=yesGreek Alphabet|letter=alphaWikisourceEBD1897|A (entry)In English the noun alpha is used as a synonym for "beginning", or "first" (in a series), reflecting its Greek roots. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alpha
Uses
Greek
In Ancient Greek , alpha was pronounced IPAblink|a when short and IPAblink|a? when long. Where there is ambiguity, long and short alpha are sometimes written with a macron and breve today: ??, ??.
wikt:??a#Ancient Greek|??a = ??? hora IPA-el|h???ra?| "a time"
In Modern Greek , vowel length has been lost, and all instances of alpha represent the short IPA-el|a|.
In the polytonic Greek|polytonic orthography of Greek, alpha, like other vowel letters, can occur with several diacritic marks: any of three accent symbols (lang|grc|?, ?, ?), and either of two breathing marks (lang|grc|?, ?), as well as combinations of these. It can also combine with the iota subscript (lang|grc|?).
Greek grammar
In the Attic Greek|Attic - Ionic Greek|Ionic dialect of Ancient Greek, long alpha IPAblink|a? fronted to IPAblink|?? ( eta ). In Ionic, the shift took place in all positions. In Attic, the shift did not take place after epsilon , iota , and rho (e, ?, ?; e, i, r ). In Doric Greek|Doric and Aeolic Greek|Aeolic , long alpha is preserved in all positions. Herbert Weir Smyth . Greek grammar for colleges . http://www.ccel.org/s/smyth/grammar/html/smyth_1b_uni.htm#30 paragraph 30 and http://www.ccel.org/s/smyth/grammar/html/smyth_1b_notes.htm#30D note.
Privative a is the Ancient Greek prefix ?- or ??- a-, an- , added to words to negate them. It originates from the Proto-Indo-European language|Proto-Indo-European * PIE|n?- ( syllabic consonant|syllabic nasal) and is cognate with English un- .
Copulative a is the Greek prefix ?- or ?- ha-, a- . It comes from Proto-Indo-European * PIE|sm& #805; .
Math and science
main|Alpha (disambiguation)The letter alpha represents various concepts in physics and chemistry , including alpha radiation , angular acceleration , alpha particle s, alpha carbon and strength of electromagnetic interaction (as Fine-structure constant ). Alpha also stands for thermal expansion coefficient of a Chemical compound|compound in physical chemistry . It is also commonly used in mathematics in algebra|algebraic solutions representing quantities such as angles. Furthermore, in mathematics, the letter alpha is used to denote the area underneath a Normal distribution|normal curve in statistics to denote statistical significance|significance level cite web|url= http://www.une.edu.au/WebStat/unit_materials/c5_inferential_statistics/what_alpha_level.html|work=Research Methods and Statistics PESS202 Lecture and Commentary Notes|title=Chapter 5: Analysing the Data Part II : Inferential Statistics when proving null hypotheses|null and Alternative hypothesis|alternative hypotheses . In zoology, is used to name the dominant individual in a wolf or dog pack.
The uppercase letter alpha is not generally used as a symbol because it tends to be rendered identically to the uppercase A|Latin A .
International Phonetic Alphabet
In the International Phonetic Alphabet , a letter based on the lower case of alpha represents the open back unrounded vowel .
History and symbolism
Etymology
Alpha was derived from aleph , which in Phoenician language|Phoenician means " ox ". http://www.etymonline.com/index.php? search=alpha alpha on the Online Etymology Dictionary
Plutarch
Plutarch , in Moralia ,Symposiacs, Book IX, questions II & III http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/p/plutarch/symposiacs/chapter9.html#section91 On-line text at Adelaide library presents a discussion on why the letter alpha stands first in the alphabet. Ammonius asks Plutarch what he, being a Boeotia n, has to say for Cadmus , the Phoenicia n who reputedly settled in Thebes (Greece)|Thebes and introduced the alphabet to Greece, placing alpha first because it is the Phoenician name for ox — which, unlike Hesiod ,Hesiod, in Works and Days (see on http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text? doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0132:card=405 Perseus Project), advises the early Greek farmers, "First of all, get a house, then a woman and third, an ox for the plough." the Phoenicians considered not the second or third, but the first of all necessities. "Nothing at all," Plutarch replied. He then added that he would rather be assisted by Lamprias , his own grandfather, than by Dionysus ' grandfather, i.e. Cadmus. For Lamprias had said that the first articulate sound made is "alpha", because it is very plain and simple — the air coming off the mouth does not require any motion of the tongue — and therefore this is the first sound that children make.
According to Plutarch's natural order of attribution of the vowel s to the planet s, alpha was connected with the Moon .
Alpha and Omega
Alpha, both as a symbol and term, is used to refer to or describe a variety of things, including the first or most significant occurrence of something. The New Testament has God declaring himself to be the " Alpha and Omega , the beginning and the end, the first and the last." ( Book of Revelation|Revelation 22:13, KJV, and see also 1:8).
Computer encoding
Uppercase and lowercase Greek alpha are represented in Unicode as U+0391 (?) and U+03B1 (a) respectively. For a table of accented Greek characters, see Greek diacritics#Computer encoding|Greek diacritics: Computer encoding . Other related characters are encoded as follows:
character
LATIN LETTER ALPHA
LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED ALPHA
LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH RETROFLEX HOOK
MODIFIER LETTER SMALL ALPHA
MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED ALPHA
APL FUNCTIONAL SYMBOL ALPHA
APL FUNCTIONAL SYMBOL ALPHA UNDERBAR
MATHEMATICAL BOLD ALPHA
MATHEMATICAL ITALIC ALPHA
MATHEMATICAL BOLD ITALIC ALPHA
MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ALPHA
MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC ALPHA
The List of XML and HTML character entity references#Character entity references in HTML|HTML character entities for uppercase and lowercase alpha are
