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The Greek alphabet is an Alphabet that has been used to write the Greek Language since about the 9th Century BC . It was the first Alphabet in the narrow sense, that is, a writing system using a separate symbol for each vowel and consonant alike. It is the oldest alphabetic script in use today. The letters are also used to represent Numbers — Greek Numerals —in the same sorts of contexts as Roman Numerals . Besides writing modern Greek, today its letters are used as Symbols In Mathematics And Science , Particle Names in physics, as Names Of Stars , in the names of Fraternities And Sororities , in the Naming Of Supernumerary Tropical Cyclones , and for other purposes. The Greek alphabet originated as a modification of the Phoenician Alphabet and in turn gave rise to the Gothic , Glagolitic , Cyrillic , Coptic , and possibly the Armenian Alphabet s, as well as the Latin Alphabet , as documented in History Of The Alphabet . The Greek alphabet is unrelated to Linear B and the Cypriot Syllabary , earlier writing systems for Greek. Main table The Greek letters and their derivations are as follows (pronunciations transcribed using the International Phonetic Alphabet ): # For details and different transliteration systems see Transliteration Of Greek Into English . Some of the letters had different pronunciations in pre-classical times or in non-Attic dialects. For details, see History Of The Greek Alphabet . Obsolete letters The following letters are not part of the standard Greek alphabet, but were in use in pre-classical times or in certain dialects. The letters digamma, qoppa, and sampi were also used in Greek Numerals . Letter combinations and diphthongs
Ligatures Before the days of printing, Scribes made use of a number of Ligatures to save space, in Greek as in other languages. The ligature for ου — resembling a V above an O — is still sometimes seen. For a modern use of this in the Latin Alphabet , see Ou (letter) History ]] ''Main article: History Of The Greek Alphabet .'' According to legends recounted by Herodotus , the alphabet was first introduced to Greece by a Phoenician named Cadmus , who also figures in other Greek Mythology . Historically, the Greek alphabet emerged several centuries after the the fall of Mycenaean civilisation and consequent extinction of its Linear B script, an early Greek writing system. Linear B is descended from Linear A , which was developed by the Minoans , whose language was unrelated to Greek; consequently the Minoan syllabary did not provide an ideal medium for the transliteration of Greek language sounds. The Greek alphabet we recognize today arose after the illiterate Greek Dark Ages — the period between the downfall of Mycenae (c. 1200 B.C.) and the rise of Ancient Greece , which begins with the appearance of the epics of Homer , around 800 B.C., and the institution of the Ancient Olympic Games in 776 B.C. The most notable change in the Greek alphabet, as an adaptation of the ''), /h/ ('' He ''), /j/ ('' Yodh ''), /`/ ('' Ayin ''), and /w/ ('' Waw ''), respectively. In eastern Greek, which lacked breaths entirely, the letter ''eta'' (from the Semitic aspirate consonant , '' Heth '') was also used for a long e, and eventually the letter ''omega'' was introduced for a long o. Vowels were originally not used in Semitic alphabets, although even in the very old Ugaritic Alphabet '' Matres Lectionis '' were used, i.e. consonant signs were used to denote vowels. Greek also introduced three new consonants, appended to the end of the alphabet as they were developed. These consonants made up for the lack of comparable aspirates in Phoenician. In west Greek, Χ was used for // and Ψ for // — hence the value of our letter x, derived from the Western Greek Alphabet . Over the Middle Ages these aspirates disappeared, so now theta, phi, and chi stand for //, //, and //. The origin of those letters is disputed. The letter san was used at variance with sigma, and by classical times the latter won out, san disappearing from the alphabet. The letters waw (later called digamma) and qoppa disappeared, too, the former only needed for the western dialects and the latter never really needed at all. These lived on in the Ionic Numeral System , however, which consisted of writing a series letters with precise numerical values. Sampi (apparently in a rare local glyph form from Ionia) was introduced at the end — to stand for 900. Thousands were written using a mark at the upper left ('A for 1000, etc). Originally there were several variants of the Greek alphabet, most importantly Western (Chalcidian) and eastern (Ionic) Greek; the former gave rise to the Old Italic Alphabet and thence to the Latin Alphabet . Athens took the Ionic script to be its standard in 403 BC , and shortly thereafter the other versions disappeared. By then Greek was always written left to right, but originally it had been written right to left (with asymmetrical characters flipped), and in-between written either way — or, most likely, '' Boustrophedon '', so that the lines alternate direction. During the hands came to dominate. The letter σ is even written ς at the ends of words, paralleling the use of the Long And Short S at the time. Aristophanes Of Byzantium also introduced the process of accenting Greek letters for easier pronunciation. Because Greek Minuscule s arose at a (much) later date, no historic minuscule actually exists for ''san''. Minuscule forms for the other letters were only used numerically. For number 6, modern Greeks use an old Digraph called stigma (, ) instead of digamma or use στ if it is not available. For 90 they use modern z-shaped qoppa forms: , (Note that some web browser/font combinations will show the other qoppa here). Use of the Greek alphabet for other languages The primary use of the Greek alphabet has always been to write the Greek language and related dialects (including Ancient Macedonian ). However, at various times and in various places, it has also been used to write other languages. Early examples:
In more modern times:
Greek encodings A variety of encodings have been used for Greek online, many of them documented in RFC 1947 "Greek Character Encoding for Electronic Mail Messages". The two principal ones still used today are ISO/IEC 8859-7 and Unicode . ISO 8859-7 supports only Monotonic Orthography ; Unicode supports Polytonic Orthography . Greek in Unicode Unicode supports polytonic orthography well enough for ordinary continuous text in modern and ancient Greek, and even many archaic forms for Epigraphy . With the use of Combining Characters , Unicode also supports Greek Philology and Dialectology and various other specialized requirements. However, most current implementations of Unicode do not support combining characters well, so, though alpha with Macron and Acute can be ''represented'' as U+03B1 U+0304 U+0301, this rarely renders well: . For extended discussion of problematic Greek letter forms in Unicode see Greek Unicode Issues . There are 2 main blocks of Greek characters in Unicode . The first is "Greek and Coptic" (U+0370 to U+03FF). This block is based on ISO 8859-7 and is sufficient to write Modern Greek. There are also some archaic letters and Greek-based technical symbols. This block also supports the Coptic Language . Formerly most Coptic letters shared codepoints with similar-looking Greek letters; but in many scholarly works, both scripts occur, with quite different letter shapes, so as of Unicode 4.1, Coptic and Greek were disunified. Those Coptic letters with no Greek equivalents still remain in this block. To write polytonic Greek, one may use Combining Diacritical Mark s or the precomposed characters in the "Greek Extended" block (U+1F00 to U+1FFF). Greek and Coptic Greek Extended (precomposed polytonic Greek) Combining and letter-free diacritics Combining and spacing (letter-free) Diacritical Mark s pertaining to Greek Language are: Bibliography
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