Anceint Greek Research assistance for an upcoming story.

[Brytestar]

....that I am SLOWLY piecing together.

It concerns about numbers and how they work in Greek.

Now I heard that both the anceint greeks and romans never developed the concept of zero (and maybe negative numbers) is that true?

Yet in the roman system if a smaller number is before a bigger one like this IV (Four) what is the greek version?

Also when an apostrophe is appiled in let's say the letter Alpha it became a 1. How do the matheimatical operation work? + , - , * and / or was there another system?

[DukeNukem 2417]

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=greek+mythology

Just found this from a Google search....

[smalk]

For the Greek the mathematics were stricly discussed with filosofy - Pitagora, for example.

[Brytestar]

I would like thank everyone for their feedback so far.

[Brytestar]

Now I DO have one more question. However instead of numbers we go back to letters.

The Greek Alphabet only has 22 letters as opposed to 26. Which mean four letters don't exsist in greek. C (could either be kappa a.k.a 'cake' or sigma 'celebrate') that much I got and could make something out of that. However what about J (as in jump) which letter takes over the function of J?

[Propman]

Not wanting to get technical, but it does not exist in modern Greek language (much like its friend "zh" does not exist in English). In contemporary Greek it's transcribed in loanwords as "Τζ" Tau-zeta if you can't see the signs.

There is some evidence that in antiquity zeta was closer to the italian 'dz' and it's not unlikely that in at least some dialects it was used to denote the "dj" sound you're looking for. If you need an acronym, simply go with ζ, Zeta.

(and they said my linguistics degree would be useless)

[Brytestar]

So Zeta = J?

[Propman]

Zeta = Z

But in Ancient Greek it could've been used to write down the "J" sound.

[Brytestar]

hmmm........interesting indeed. This is going to be a challenge but I'd figure I'll give it a shot. Thanks to everyone that assisted me in this endeavor.

[dale coba]

I knew "J" was a later invention, but I hadn't realized how much later.

History

The letter 'j' originated as a swash character, used for the letter 'i' at the end of Roman numerals when following another 'i', as in 'xxiij' instead of 'xxiii' for the Roman numeral representing 23. A distinctive usage emerged in Middle High German.[3] Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478—1550) was the first to explicitly distinguish I and J as representing separate sounds, in his Ɛpistola del Trissino de le lettere nuωvamente aggiunte ne la lingua italiana ("Trissino's epistle about the letters recently added in the Italian language") of 1524.[4] Originally, 'I' and 'J' were different shapes for the same letter, both equally representing /i/, /iː/, and /j/; but Romance languages developed new sounds (from former /j/ and /É¡/) that came to be represented as 'I' and 'J'; therefore, English J, acquired from the French J, has a sound value quite different from /j/ (which represents the initial sound in the English word "yet").

- Dale Coba

[Brytestar]

I want to let everyone know. How my current progress in my research is going. In addition to anicent/modern greek letters (and numbers) I have looked up how the anicent greeks expressed decimals and fractions. Its an interested read to say the least. What I didn't know is this....

Alpha' , Beta' = 1.2 The comma becomes the decimal.

Please correct me on this next part.

,Alpha = 1.000 The period sepearates the thousands.

The fraction bit is also interesting...

The numerator has an overbar...

_____
Theta' = 9/

and the demoninator with a diacritical mark.

iota' ' = /10 a.k.a nine tenths.

I know its looks a bit silly but I still need to learn how to enable greek characters on my keyboard. (If anyone would like to retype my example feel free btw.) Once again I'll welcome any additional feedback.