Katerina Sarri webtopos - beta in Greek alphabet

SHAPE: Consistent shape in most cities of the Western-Eastern greek alphabet groups.

SOUND: The initial ancient greek pronunciation was [b]. The example of the lambs that bleat, written as: BH, BH, BH in comedy texts by Aristophanes and Cratinus is very well known! Today's pronunciation [v] is not at all new: the change started during the 4th-3rd centuries a.e.v. After hellenistic times it was pronounced [b] before a nasal consonant and [v] in all other cases. Later, always [v], while [b] was written with the digramme MΠ. The tendency to move from closed (plosive) consonants e.g.[b, d, g] to the fricatives [v, δ, γ] is persistent in the evolution of greek pronunciation.

NAME: ETYMOLOGY: from northsemitic (phoenician): bêt= house.
NAME: SPELLING: The hellenistic orthography β

τα used the perispomene stress accent.

COMBINATIONS: none
DOUBLED: sometimes double occurrence within a word. Not pronounced as double.

MORE GREEK WORDS STARTING WITH B
•βάλλω=put/throw/attack - ball(istic) •βαρύ=heavy: βαρύτονος-barytone •βάση=base βασικό=basic •βίος=life - bio(logy) •βόμβος=buzz βόμβα= bomb

symbols and their pronunciation in standard-modern and (if different) in erasmic in I.P.A.				examples of words: mod.gre. word - [modern greek pronunciation] SOUND EXAMPLES in MODERN GREEK eng. word - [english pronunciation]
order - greek number LETTER CAPITAL-small	I.P.A. pronunc. standard erasmic	pronounced as in the word... (english or other)	letter name in greek in english
2) β´= 2 B β transliteration: b	[v] consonant voiced labiodental fricative erasmic [b]	vote	βήτα ['vita] beta ['bit] U.S. ['beıt]	βασικό [vasi'ko] basic ['beısık]	βυζάντιoν [vi'zandio n] byzantium latin: [bi'zantium]	Byron (the poet) [b'αırn] Βύρων ['viron]