San (letter) San (letter) San (Ϻ) was an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. Its shape was similar to modern M, or ϡ, or to a modern Greek Sigma (Σ) turned sideways, and it was used as an alternative to Sigma to denote the sound . Unlike Sigma, whose position in the alphabet is between Rho and Tau, San appeared between Pi and Qoppa in alphabetic order. In addition to denoting this separate archaic character, the name "San" was also used as an alternative name to denote the standard letter Sigma. The existence of the two competing letters Sigma and San is
Greek alphabet the abjads used in Semitic languages, which have letters only for consonants. Greek initially took over all of the 22 letters of Phoenician. Five were reassigned to denote vowel sounds: the glide consonants ("yodh") and ("waw") were used for [i] (Ι, "iota") and [u] (Υ, "upsilon") respectively; the glottal stop consonant ("|aleph") was used for [a] (Α, "alpha"); the pharyngeal ("ʿayin") was turned into [o] (Ο, "omicron"); and the letter for ("he") was turned into [e] (Ε, "epsilon"). A doublet of waw was also borrowed as a consonant for [w] (Ϝ, digamma). In addition, the Phoenician letter for the emphatic