Xi (letter) Xi (letter) Xi (uppercase Ξ, lowercase ξ; ) is the 14th letter of the Greek alphabet. It is pronounced in Modern Greek, and generally or in English. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 60. Xi was derived from the Phoenician letter samekh . Xi is not to be confused with the letter chi, which gave its form to the Latin letter X. Both in classical Ancient Greek and in Modern Greek, the letter Ξ represents the sound . In some archaic local variants of the Greek alphabet, this letter was missing. Instead, especially in the
Greek alphabet late ninth century BC or early eighth century BC, the Greek alphabet emerged. The period between the use of the two writing systems, during which no Greek texts are attested, is known as the Greek Dark Ages. The Greeks adopted the alphabet from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, one of the closely related scripts used for the West Semitic languages. However, the Phoenician alphabet is limited to consonants. When it was adopted for writing Greek, certain consonants were adapted to express vowels. The use of both vowels and consonants makes Greek the first alphabet in the narrow sense, as distinguished from