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Zeta is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet, not the last, which is omega. The Romans kicked it out of the Western Greek alphabet, and then had to bring it back in along with K and Y when they started using Greek loanwords.


8 posted on 12/16/2017 9:30:25 PM PST by Olog-hai ("No Republican, no matter how liberal, is going to woo a Democratic vote." -- Ronald Reagan, 1960)
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To: Olog-hai
Too late. The Omega Man was a badass.


15 posted on 12/16/2017 10:04:41 PM PST by Rastus
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To: Olog-hai
K was originally part of the Latin alphabet but fell out of use (replaced by C) except for a few abbreviations such as Kal. = calends (the first day of each month).

Zeta was the sixth letter in the Ionic alphabet, which eventually became the standard alphabet, but some early regional alphabets had the letter digamma (which looked like the Roman F and was in the same spot). In the Greek numerical system, zeta equaled 7 (digamma was 6).

With Greek numerals, the first 9 letters were the numbers from 1 to 9, the second 9 stood for 20, 30, etc., and the third 9 stood for the hundreds. That required using three obsolete letters--digamma, qoppa (equivalent to our Q, immediately following pi), and sampi (a sibilant, following omega). The number 111 would be represented with rho-iota-alpha. It makes the Roman numerals seem easy.

42 posted on 12/17/2017 2:09:50 PM PST by Verginius Rufus
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