Greek numbers and their relationship with letters

We all use the numbers: we count the years that have passed, the money signs, the number of flowers in the bouquet of the jubilee and plates on the festive table. Without them, life is not possible. The ability to count is taught to us from the kindergarten, and even earlier.

Kids learn to count on sticks, then - on simple examples, then the multiplication table goes. Adults easily convert currencies, measures of length and magnitude, counting the family budget, investing in business or hundred on a private plot.

By the way, numbers and numbers are interrelated, but different categories. The figure carries in itself the designation of a number, which, in turn, displays its quantitative reference (or characteristic) and represents a collection of figures.

History of numbers and numbers

Do you know how the figures appeared? Behind such familiar to us from childhood icons is a whole story, impregnated with the spirit of antiquity and ancient trends. If you trace the history of the appearance of figures, you can contemplate the traditions and culture of many peoples who lived long before us.

Our old ancestors, instead of numbers, left nicks in the form of straight incisions and scribbles on solid wood, bones and stones to indicate the amount of food stored, primitive weapons and the like. One notch - one unit, one thousand notches - one thousand units. True, our ancestors knew only a few calculi - "one", "two" and "many."

In their research, the learned men periodically get confused, since the history of the appearance of numbers and numbers is extremely confusing. It is well known that the very first written figures appeared in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. At the same time, cuneiform was used in Mesopotamia, and in ancient Egypt - cursive hieroglyphics. Mesopotamians put badges on special clay tablets, and the Egyptians used papyri for this purpose. It was the Egyptians who borrowed the figures from the ancient Greeks, remaking them in their own way.

Teaching from Greece

What were the Greek figures? In ancient Greece there were two systems of numbers and numbers - Attic and Ionic. Apparently, this is due to the intellectual work of mathematicians and philosophers living on the land of myths and legends and competing with each other in mathematical research.

The attic system is similar to the decimal one, but the figure is dominant in it. The Greek figures represented by the Attic calculus represented a repetition of collective marks and were similar to the Mesopotamian. The number 1 was designated as a line, 2 - two lines, 3 - three lines, 4 - 4 lines respectively. The number 5 was denoted by the first letter of the Greek word "penta", and 10 - the first letter of the word "deka".

Before there as in Greece the Alexandrian epoch came, the Ionic calculus system appeared - Greek numerals, which represented a tandem of the decimal system of numbers and the Babylonian method. The figures were a drawing of lines and letters, but they were quite difficult to use by ordinary people. Such a system was used by the great Archimedes and other famous personalities of the time.

Union of letters and numbers

At the moment, in some cases Ionic numbering is used - with its help it is possible to write numbers only from 1 to 99.999.999, using the Greek alphabet and knowing which letter carries in itself the numerical value of units, tens and hundreds. By the way, such numbers are easy to read in ordinary words. It was the Greeks who became pioneers, from which this method of calculation was adopted by the Arabs, Semites and Slavs.

The Ancient Greek alphabet consisted of 24 letters, 3 more letters were added to them, which were not used for several thousand years. As a result, received 27 letters, which were subsequently divided into 3 groups, each including 9 letters.

The first group consisted of numbers from 1 to 9, while the number 1 was designated by the first letter of the alphabet "alpha", 2 - the second letter "beta", and so on up to the number 9, denoted by the letter "theta."

The second group included Greek numbers from 10 to 90, and the third - from 100 to 900.
Numbers from 1000 and more were designated as follows: the first wrote the corresponding letter from the first group (single digit), then put a comma and wrote letters from the first and second groups. The largest number - 10.000 - was called separately and was designated by the letter "M". After a while, the letter was replaced simply by a dot.

At this point in time, the Greek alphabet includes only twenty letters. Do you need to use, let alone say Greek numbers? Pronunciation is of no small importance. For this you need at least a little knowledge of the alphabet. This article will help you to master it. For convenience, we made two tables, in which not only letters, but also Greek numerals, translating them into Russian and transcription (pronunciation) are given.

Acquaintance with the Greek alphabet

Counting to twenty in Greek

Word users for a note

What do I recommend to active users of Microsoft Office who want to try to translate Greek numbers in Word? The first thing to do is to install the "Word" itself, and then MS Office Proofing Tools SP1. This is necessary for full use of MS Office Word.

You also need to configure the Greek keyboard layout. How to do it? Move the mouse cursor to the keyboard indicator located in the lower right corner of the monitor, and right-click on it. Then in the menu that appears, select the following items: "Settings" -> "Language" -> "Keyboard layout" -> "Greek" -> "Greek Polytonic". If you know enough the standard English layout, then the use of Greek will not be difficult.