Talk:Heta

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I copy from el:Συζήτηση:Ελληνικό αλφάβητο

Let me summarize my findings and try to clarify the issue. The english article is inaccurate and in that sense wrong. It should be merged with eta, they are the same letter.
 * heta and eta are the same letter pronounced differently in different dialects ἧτα or ἦτα respectively.
 * there is no distinct letter heta
 * the same letter (H) represented in the beginning and in most dialects h (consonant)
 * in the ionic dialect spiritus asper disappeared, so heta became eta and then H was used to represent the long e (as in the beginning of the word eta)
 * after the ionic alpabet prevailed, H was used for long e
 * but there was still need for the no longer represented h, so a derivative form of heta-H ("half H") appeared for this purpose, which later developed to the diacritic for spiritus asper we use nowadays. I found no special name for it.
 * χητα appears to be a completely wrong transliteration

This article should either change its name or be merged to Eta (letter). Heta and Eta are the same letter pronounced differently. The name of the developed form of heta (half heta) used as a diacritic for spiritus asper is unknown to me, so I propose merge. A page about unicode signs is not a good source, as accurate as it might be, because it deals with the issue from a different perspective.--Archidamus (talk) 22:04, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Yep, I'd support merging. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:14, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * My bold merge attempt was reverted by another editor, on the grounds that these are two separeate letters. Well, maybe yes, but they are ultimately the same historical alphabetic entity, and their histories are inextricably linked so much that you can't really understand the one without the other. In fact, the existing Eta (letter) article did already cover the history of Heta all along - my merger just added a little bit more detail to what was already there. And this Heta (letter) article here is quite dubious: Heta "is[!] the eighth[!?] letter of the Greek alphabet"? It also gives undue emphasis to just the one phase in its history when it was written with the half-H tack shape. Consonantal Heta was the same entity already in those variants of the alphabet where it had the full H glyph shape, or indeed any number of other alternative glyphs. For all these reasons, I still think treating them all together in a single article is the better thing to do. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:21, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

The funny thing is that, even if they are different letters (which I doubt), they share the same name. Heta is namely the form of the word Eta in all dialects which didn't undergo "psilosis" (loss of initial spiritus asper).--Archidamus (talk) 23:34, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Merge. There is no separate letter Heta, and anything that should be said about the left half of H belongs either in the Eta (letter) article or the Spiritus asper article (or both). --Macrakis (talk) 23:36, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Merge to Eta. The only proof so far for the existence of "heta" as a letter on its own right is the Unicode codepoint adopted recently. Unicode is not an authority on language. Unicode is just trying to render two different characters, not two different letters (thus the "h"-eta erroneously transliterated to a non existant "χήτα"), also as per the linguist's homepage that's given as a source. I'd also suggest removing the "Heta" from Template:Greek alphabet and Template:Table Greekletters.-Badseed (talk) 23:44, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, merger reinstated, thanks for the input. I've also now discussed this with User:Grk1011, who reverted me previously, so I guess we can call it consensus. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:57, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Unmerged
On some reflection, I have un-merged this article after all. My main reason is that I now found there is substantially more modern scholarly usage of both the name "Heta" and the tack symbol than I was previously aware of. Most crucially, Jeffery, in her fundamental 1961 book on archaic scripts, seems to be not just talking about the tack glyph, but using it as part of her own analytic vocabulary, i.e. as her own conventional modern label to group together whatever different glyphs are used in the function of denoting /h/ in any of the epichoric alphabets she analyses. Here, her website uses the name "heta" but the symbol Latin h in this function, but in the 1961 book you actually find the Ͱ thingie in this role. For instance, she does tables like the following (partially reproduced here), and then in her following text refers to "H" as "Ͱ2".

Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:35, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Note
[For further use:]

"Μετὰ δὲ τὸ ζ τὸ η, πολλὴν γὰρ συγγένειαν ἔχει πρὸς τὸ α καὶ τὸ ε· καὶ μαρτυρεῖ ὁ παρατατικὸς πῇ μὲν τὸ ἐν τῷ ἐνεστῶτι α εἰς η τρέ- (30) πων, πῇ δὲ τὸ ε εἰς η· ἐπεὶ οὖν συγγένειαν ἔχει μετὰ τοῦ α καὶ ε, εὐλόγως μετ’ αὐτὰ τέτακται. —Διὰ τί τὸ η πρὸ τοῦ τ ψιλοῦται, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἧτα τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ στοιχείου δασύνεται; Ἐπειδὴ παρὰ τοῖς ἀρ- χαίοις ὁ τύπος τοῦ Η ἐν τύπῳ δασείας ἔκειτο, ὥσπερ καὶ νῦν <παρὰ> τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις." (Commentaria in Dionysii Thracis Artem Grammaticam. Scholia Londinensia (partim excerpta ex Heliodoro). In: A. Hilgard, Grammatici Graeci, vol. 1.3. Leipzig: Teubner, 1901. p.486)

"Διὰ τί δὲ πάντων τῶν φωνηέντων ψιλουμένων, μόνου τοῦ υ φυσικὴν δασεῖαν ἔχοντος, τὸ ἧτα δασύνεται; Ὅτι πάλαι τὸ Η χαρακτὴρ ἦν τῆς δασείας· τοῦ Η τοίνυν χαρακτῆρα τῆς δασείας ἔχοντος, εὐλόγως καὶ τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ δασύνεται· καὶ γὰρ ἄτοπον ἦν ἄλλοις χορηγοῦν τὴν πρόσπνευσιν τῆς δασείας αὐτὸ ταύτης στερεῖσθαι." (ibid. p.494)

"Δεῖ δὲ προειδέναι καὶ τοῦτο, ὅτι τὸ παλαιὸν οὐκ ἦν τὰ κδʹ γράμ- ματα, ἀλλὰ ιϛʹ· οὐκ ἦν δὲ τὰ τρία τὰ λεγόμενα διπλᾶ ζ ξ ψ, τὰ τρία δασέα θ φ χ, τὰ δύο μακρὰ η καὶ ω. [...] πάλιν ἂν ἤθελον γράψαι λέξιν ἔχουσαν τὴν ἐκφώνησιν τοῦ θ, ἔγραφον ἀντὶ τοῦ θ τὸ τ καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο ἐτίθεσαν τὸ παρ’ αὐτοῖς τότε σημεῖον τῆς δασείας, ἐνδεικνύμενοι ὅτι τοῦτο τὸ τ οὐκ ἔστι νῦν τ ἀλλὰ θ τῇ ἐκφωνήσει· ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς ἐκφωνήσεως τοῦ φ ἔγρα- φον τὸ π προστιθέντες, ὡς προείρηται, τὸ παρ’ αὐτοῖς σημεῖον τῆς δα- σείας· ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς τοῦ χ ἐκφωνήσεως τὸ κ ἔγραφον τὸ σημεῖον τῆς δα- σείας προστιθέντες. Ἦν δὲ τὸ παλαιὸν σύμβολον τῆς δασείας τὸ παρ’ ἡμῖν νῦν Η· διὸ ὅτε ἐφευρέθη τὰ ὀκτὼ γράμματα, ὧν τὸ ἕν ἐστι καὶ τὸ Η, ἡ τότε δασεῖα ἐτμήθη εἰς δύο κατὰ κάθετον, καὶ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον αὐτῆς μέρος τῆς δασείας ἐστὶ σημεῖον, τὸ δὲ δεύτερον τῆς ψιλῆς" (Commentarius (sub auctore Melampode vel Diomede), in: A. Hilgard, Grammatici Graeci, vol. 1.3. Leipzig: Teubner, 1901, 34f.)

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