Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet | ||
---|---|---|
Script type | ||
Time period | c. 800 BC – present Unicode range
|
Greek alphabet | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
History | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Use in other languages | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Related topics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the
, had become standard and it is this version that is still used for Greek writing today.The uppercase and lowercase forms of the 24 letters are:
- Ωω.
The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts.[6] Like Latin and Cyrillic, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter; it developed the letter case distinction between uppercase and lowercase in parallel with Latin during the modern era. Sound values and conventional transcriptions for some of the letters differ between Ancient and Modern Greek usage because the pronunciation of Greek has changed significantly between the 5th century BC and today. Modern and Ancient Greek also use different diacritics, with modern Greek keeping only the stress accent (acute) and the diaeresis.
Apart from its use in writing the Greek language, in both its ancient and its modern forms, the Greek alphabet today also serves as a source of international technical symbols and labels in many domains of mathematics, science, and other fields.
Letters
Sound values
In both Ancient and Modern Greek, the letters of the Greek alphabet have fairly stable and consistent symbol-to-sound mappings, making pronunciation of words largely predictable. Ancient Greek spelling was generally near-phonemic. For a number of letters, sound values differ considerably between Ancient and Modern Greek, because their pronunciation has followed a set of systematic phonological shifts that affected the language in its post-classical stages.[7]
|
- Examples
- Notes
- ^ By around 350 BC, zeta in the Attic dialect had shifted to become a single fricative, [z], as in modern Greek.[18]
- ^
- ^ The letter Λ is almost universally known today as lambda (λάμβδα) except in Modern Greek and in Unicode, where it is lamda (λάμδα), and the most common name for it during the Greek Classical Period (510–323 BC) appears to have been labda (λάβδα), without the μ.[11]
- lunate sigma (uppercase Ϲ, lowercase ϲ), which is used in all positions.[17][21][23] This form of the letter developed during the Hellenistic period (323–31 BC) as a simplification of the older Σ σ/ς variant.[23] Thus, the word stasis can either be written στάσις or ϲτάϲιϲ.[24] In modern, edited Greek texts, the lunate sigma typically appears primarily in older typesetting.[21]
- ^ The letter omega ⟨ω⟩ is normally taught to English speakers as [oʊ], the long o as in English go, in order to more clearly distinguish it from omicron ⟨ο⟩.[25][17] This is not the sound it actually made in classical Attic Greek.[25][17]
Among consonant letters, all letters that denoted voiced plosive consonants (/b, d, g/) and aspirated plosives (/pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/) in Ancient Greek stand for corresponding
Former voiced plosives | Former aspirates | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Letter | Ancient | Modern | Letter | Ancient | Modern | |
Labial | Β β | /b/ | /v/ | Φ φ | /pʰ/ | /f/ |
Dental | Δ δ | / d /
|
/ð/ | Θ θ | /tʰ/ | /θ/ |
Dorsal | Γ γ | /ɡ/ | [ɣ] ~ [ʝ] | Χ χ | /kʰ/ | [x] ~ [ç] |
Among the vowel symbols, Modern Greek sound values reflect the radical simplification of the vowel system of post-classical Greek, merging multiple formerly distinct vowel phonemes into a much smaller number. This leads to several groups of vowel letters denoting identical sounds today. Modern Greek orthography remains true to the historical spellings in most of these cases. As a consequence, the spellings of words in Modern Greek are often not predictable from the pronunciation alone, while the reverse mapping, from spelling to pronunciation, is usually regular and predictable.
The following vowel letters and digraphs are involved in the mergers:
Letter | Ancient | Modern |
---|---|---|
Η η | ɛː | > i |
Ι ι | i(ː) | |
ΕΙ ει | eː | |
Υ υ | u(ː) > y | |
ΟΙ οι | oi > y | |
ΥΙ υι | yː > y | |
Ω ω | ɔː | > o |
Ο ο | o | |
Ε ε | e | > e |
ΑΙ αι | ai |
Modern Greek speakers typically use the same, modern symbol–sound mappings in reading Greek of all historical stages. In other countries, students of Ancient Greek may use a variety of conventional approximations of the historical sound system in pronouncing Ancient Greek.
Digraphs and letter combinations
Several letter combinations have special conventional sound values different from those of their single components. Among them are several
Combination | Pronunciation | Devoiced pronunciation |
---|---|---|
⟨ου⟩ | [u] | – |
⟨αυ⟩ | [av] | [af] |
⟨ευ⟩ | [ev] | [ef] |
⟨ηυ⟩ | [iv] | [if] |
⟨μπ⟩ | [b] or [mb] | – |
⟨ντ⟩ | [d] or [nd] | – |
⟨γκ⟩ and ⟨γγ⟩ | [ɡ] or [ŋɡ] | – |
⟨τζ⟩ | [d͡z] | – |
⟨τσ⟩ | [t͡s] | – |
⟨γ⟩ in ⟨γχ⟩ and ⟨γξ⟩ | [ŋ] | – |
Diacritics
In the
The vowel letters ⟨α, η, ω⟩ carry an additional diacritic in certain words, the so-called iota subscript, which has the shape of a small vertical stroke or a miniature ⟨ι⟩ below the letter. This iota represents the former offglide of what were originally long diphthongs, ⟨ᾱι, ηι, ωι⟩ (i.e. /aːi, ɛːi, ɔːi/), which became monophthongized during antiquity.
Another diacritic used in Greek is the
This system of diacritics was first developed by the scholar
Although it is not a diacritic, the comma has a similar function as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι (ó,ti, "whatever") from ότι (óti, "that").[29]
Romanization
There are many different methods of rendering Greek text or Greek names in the Latin script.[30] The form in which classical Greek names are conventionally rendered in English goes back to the way Greek loanwords were incorporated into Latin in antiquity.[31] In this system, ⟨κ⟩ is replaced with ⟨c⟩, the diphthongs ⟨αι⟩ and ⟨οι⟩ are rendered as ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ (or ⟨æ,œ⟩) respectively; and ⟨ει⟩ and ⟨ου⟩ are simplified to ⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩ respectively.[32] Smooth breathing marks are usually ignored and rough breathing marks are usually rendered as the letter ⟨h⟩.[33] In modern scholarly transliteration of Ancient Greek, ⟨κ⟩ will usually be rendered as ⟨k⟩, and the vowel combinations ⟨αι, οι, ει, ου⟩ as ⟨ai, oi, ei, ou⟩ respectively.[30] The letters ⟨θ⟩ and ⟨φ⟩ are generally rendered as ⟨th⟩ and ⟨ph⟩; ⟨χ⟩ as either ⟨ch⟩ or ⟨kh⟩; and word-initial ⟨ρ⟩ as ⟨rh⟩.[34]
Transcription conventions for Modern Greek[35] differ widely, depending on their purpose, on how close they stay to the conventional letter correspondences of Ancient Greek-based transcription systems, and to what degree they attempt either an exact letter-by-letter transliteration or rather a phonetically based transcription.[35] Standardized formal transcription systems have been defined by the International Organization for Standardization (as ISO 843),[35][36] by the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names,[37] by the Library of Congress,[38] and others.
Letter | Traditional Latin transliteration[34] |
---|---|
Α α | A a |
Β β | B b |
Γ γ | G g |
Δ δ | D d |
Ε ε | E e |
Ζ ζ | Z z |
Η η | Ē ē |
Θ θ | Th th |
Ι ι | I i |
Κ κ | C c, K k |
Λ λ | L l |
Μ μ | M m |
Ν ν | N n |
Ξ ξ | X x |
Ο ο | O o |
Π π | P p |
Ρ ρ | R r, Rh rh |
Σ σ/ς | S s |
Τ τ | T t |
Υ υ | Y y, U u |
Φ φ | Ph ph |
Χ χ | Ch ch, Kh kh |
Ψ ψ | Ps ps |
Ω ω | Ō ō |
History
Origins
During the Mycenaean period, from around the sixteenth century to the twelfth century BC, Linear B was used to write the earliest attested form of the Greek language, known as Mycenaean Greek. This writing system, unrelated to the Greek alphabet, last appeared in the thirteenth century BC. In the late ninth century BC or early eighth century BC, the Greek alphabet emerged.[2] 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, calling it Φοινικήια γράμματα 'Phoenician letters'.[39] 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,[6] as distinguished from the abjads used in Semitic languages, which have letters only for consonants.[40]
Greek initially took over all of the 22 letters of Phoenician. Five were reassigned to denote vowel sounds: the glide consonants /j/ (yodh) and /w/ (waw) were used for [i] (Ι, iota) and [u] (Υ, upsilon) respectively; the glottal stop consonant /ʔ/ (aleph) was used for [a] (Α, alpha); the pharyngeal /ʕ/ (ʿayin) was turned into [o] (Ο, omicron); and the letter for /h/ (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 glottal /ħ/ (heth) was borrowed in two different functions by different dialects of Greek: as a letter for /h/ (Η, heta) by those dialects that had such a sound, and as an additional vowel letter for the long /ɛː/ (Η, eta) by those dialects that lacked the consonant. Eventually, a seventh vowel letter for the long /ɔː/ (Ω, omega) was introduced.
Greek also introduced three new consonant letters for its aspirated plosive sounds and consonant clusters: Φ (
Phoenician | Greek | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
aleph
|
/ʔ/ | Α | alpha | /a/, /aː/ | ||
beth
|
/b/ | Β | beta | /b/ | ||
gimel
|
/ɡ/ | Γ | gamma | /ɡ/ | ||
daleth
|
/ d /
|
Δ | delta | / d /
| ||
he | /h/ | Ε | epsilon | /e/, /eː/[note 1] | ||
waw | /w/ | Ϝ | (digamma) | /w/ | ||
zayin
|
/z/ | Ζ | zeta
|
[zd](?) | ||
heth
|
/ħ/ | Η | eta
|
/h/, /ɛː/ | ||
teth
|
/tˤ/ | Θ | theta | /tʰ/ | ||
yodh
|
/j/ | Ι | iota | /i/, /iː/ | ||
kaph
|
/k/ | Κ | kappa | /k/ | ||
lamedh
|
/ l /
|
Λ | lambda | / l /
| ||
mem
|
/m/ | Μ | mu | /m/ | ||
nun | / n /
|
Ν | nu | / n /
|
Phoenician | Greek | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
samekh | /s/ | Ξ | xi | /ks/ | ||
ʿayin
|
/ʕ/ | Ο | omicron | /o/, /oː/[note 1] | ||
pe | /p/ | Π | pi | /p/ | ||
ṣade
|
/sˤ/ | Ϻ | (san) | /s/ | ||
qoph | /q/ | Ϙ | (koppa) | /k/ | ||
reš | / r /
|
Ρ | rho | / r /
| ||
šin | /ʃ/ | Σ | sigma | /s/ | ||
taw | / t /
|
Τ | tau
|
/ t /
| ||
(waw) | /w/ | Υ | upsilon | /u/, /uː/ | ||
– | Φ | phi | /pʰ/ | |||
– | Χ | chi | /kʰ/ | |||
– | Ψ | psi
|
/ps/ | |||
– | Ω | omega | /ɔː/ |
Three of the original Phoenician letters dropped out of use before the alphabet took its classical shape: the letter Ϻ (), whose sound value /w/ dropped out of the spoken language before or during the classical period.
Greek was originally written predominantly from right to left, just like Phoenician, but scribes could freely alternate between directions. For a time, a writing style with alternating right-to-left and left-to-right lines (called boustrophedon, literally "ox-turning", after the manner of an ox ploughing a field) was common, until in the classical period the left-to-right writing direction became the norm. Individual letter shapes were mirrored depending on the writing direction of the current line.
Archaic variants
There were initially numerous local (epichoric) variants of the Greek alphabet, which differed in the use and non-use of the additional vowel and consonant symbols and several other features. Epichoric alphabets are commonly divided into four major types according to their different treatments of additional consonant letters for the aspirated consonants (/pʰ, kʰ/) and consonant clusters (/ks, ps/) of Greek.[41] These four types are often conventionally labelled as "green", "red", "light blue" and "dark blue" types, based on a colour-coded map in a seminal 19th-century work on the topic, Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Alphabets by Adolf Kirchhoff (1867).[41]
The "green" (or southern) type is the most archaic and closest to the Phoenician.
Phoenician model | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Southern | "green" | — | — | * | — | — | — | — | — | |||||||||||||||||||||
Western | "red" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Eastern | "light blue" | — | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"dark blue" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Classic Ionian | — | — | — | — | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Modern alphabet | Α |
Β |
Γ |
Δ |
Ε |
— | Ζ |
— | Η |
Θ |
Ι |
Κ |
Λ |
Μ |
Ν |
Ξ |
Ο |
Π | — | — | Ρ |
Σ |
Τ |
Υ |
— | Φ |
Χ |
Ψ |
Ω
| |
Sound in Ancient Greek | a | b | g | d | e | w | zd | h | ē | tʰ | i | k | l | m | n | ks | o | p | s | k | r | s | t | u | ks | pʰ | kʰ | ps | ō |
*Upsilon is also derived from waw ().
The classical twenty-four-letter alphabet that is now used to represent the Greek language was originally the local alphabet of Ionia.[44] By the late fifth century BC, it was commonly used by many Athenians.[44] In c. 403 BC, at the suggestion of the archon Eucleides, the Athenian Assembly formally abandoned the Old Attic alphabet and adopted the Ionian alphabet as part of the democratic reforms after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants.[44][45] Because of Eucleides's role in suggesting the idea to adopt the Ionian alphabet, the standard twenty-four-letter Greek alphabet is sometimes known as the "Eucleidean alphabet".[44] Roughly thirty years later, the Eucleidean alphabet was adopted in Boeotia and it may have been adopted a few years previously in Macedonia.[46] By the end of the fourth century BC, it had displaced local alphabets across the Greek-speaking world to become the standard form of the Greek alphabet.[46]
Letter names
When the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, they took over not only the letter shapes and sound values but also the names by which the sequence of the alphabet could be recited and memorized. In Phoenician, each letter name was a word that began with the sound represented by that letter; thus ʾaleph, the word for "ox", was used as the name for the glottal stop /ʔ/, bet, or "house", for the /b/ sound, and so on. When the letters were adopted by the Greeks, most of the Phoenician names were maintained or modified slightly to fit Greek phonology; thus, ʾaleph, bet, gimel became alpha, beta, gamma.
The Greek names of the following letters are more or less straightforward continuations of their Phoenician antecedents. Between Ancient and Modern Greek, they have remained largely unchanged, except that their pronunciation has followed regular sound changes along with other words (for instance, in the name of beta, ancient /b/ regularly changed to modern /v/, and ancient /ɛː/ to modern /i/, resulting in the modern pronunciation vita). The name of lambda is attested in early sources as λάβδα besides λάμβδα;
Letter | Name | Pronunciation | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Greek | Phoenician original | English | Greek (Ancient) | Greek (Modern) | English | |
Α | ἄλφα | aleph | alpha | [alpʰa] | [ˈalfa] | /ˈælfə/ ⓘ |
Β | βῆτα | beth | beta | [bɛːta] | [ˈvita] | /ˈbiːtə/, US: /ˈbeɪtə/ |
Γ | γάμμα | gimel | gamma | [ɡamma] | [ˈɣama] | /ˈɡæmə/ |
Δ | δέλτα | daleth | delta | [delta] | [ˈðelta] | /ˈdɛltə/ |
Η | ἦτα | heth | eta | [hɛːta], [ɛːta] | [ˈita] | /ˈiːtə/, US: /ˈeɪtə/ |
Θ | θῆτα | teth | theta | [tʰɛːta] | [ˈθita] | /ˈθiːtə/, US: /ˈθeɪtə/ ⓘ |
Ι | ἰῶτα | yodh | iota | [iɔːta] | [ˈʝota] | /aɪˈoʊtə/ ⓘ |
Κ | κάππα | kaph | kappa | [kappa] | [ˈkapa] | /ˈkæpə/ ⓘ |
Λ | λάμβδα | lamedh | lambda | [lambda] | [ˈlamða] | /ˈlæmdə/ ⓘ |
Μ | μῦ | mem | mu | [myː] | [mi] | /mjuː/ ⓘ; occasionally US: /muː/ |
Ν | νῦ | nun | nu | [nyː] | [ni] | /njuː/ |
Ρ | ῥῶ | reš | rho | [rɔː] | [ro] | /roʊ/ ⓘ |
Τ | ταῦ | taw | tau | [tau] | [taf] | /taʊ, tɔː/ |
In the cases of the three historical sibilant letters below, the correspondence between Phoenician and Ancient Greek is less clear, with apparent mismatches both in letter names and sound values. The early history of these letters (and the fourth sibilant letter, obsolete san) has been a matter of some debate. Here too, the changes in the pronunciation of the letter names between Ancient and Modern Greek are regular.
Letter | Name | Pronunciation | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Greek | Phoenician original | English | Greek (Ancient) | Greek (Modern) | English | |
Ζ | ζῆτα | zayin | zeta | [zdɛːta] | [ˈzita] | /ˈziːtə/, US: /ˈzeɪtə/ |
Ξ | ξεῖ, ξῖ | samekh | xi | [kseː] | [ksi] | /zaɪ, ksaɪ/ |
Σ | σίγμα | šin | siɡma | [siɡma] | [ˈsiɣma] | /ˈsɪɡmə/ |
In the following group of consonant letters, the older forms of the names in Ancient Greek were spelled with -εῖ, indicating an original pronunciation with -ē. In Modern Greek these names are spelled with -ι.
Letter | Name | Pronunciation | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Greek | English | Greek (Ancient) | Greek (Modern) | English | |
Ξ | ξεῖ, ξῖ | xi | [kseː] | [ksi] | /zaɪ, ksaɪ/ |
Π | πεῖ, πῖ | pi | [peː] | [pi] | /paɪ/ |
Φ | φεῖ, φῖ | phi | [pʰeː] | [fi] | /faɪ/ |
Χ | χεῖ, χῖ | chi | [kʰeː] | [çi] | /kaɪ/ ⓘ |
Ψ | ψεῖ, ψῖ | psi | [pseː] | [psi] | /saɪ/, /psaɪ/ ⓘ |
The following group of vowel letters were originally called simply by their sound values as long vowels: ē, ō, ū, and ɔ. Their modern names contain adjectival qualifiers that were added during the Byzantine period, to distinguish between letters that had become confusable.[11] Thus, the letters ⟨ο⟩ and ⟨ω⟩, pronounced identically by this time, were called o mikron ("small o") and o mega ("big o") respectively.[11] The letter ⟨ε⟩ was called e psilon ("plain e") to distinguish it from the identically pronounced digraph ⟨αι⟩, while, similarly, ⟨υ⟩, which at this time was pronounced [y], was called y psilon ("plain y") to distinguish it from the identically pronounced digraph ⟨οι⟩.[11]
Letter | Name | Pronunciation | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Greek (Ancient) | Greek (Medieval) | Greek (Modern) | English | Greek (Ancient) | Greek (Modern) | English | |
Ε | εἶ | ἐ ψιλόν | ἔψιλον | epsilon | [eː] | [ˈepsilon] | /ˈɛpsɪlɒn/, some UK: /ɛpˈsaɪlən/ |
Ο | οὖ | ὀ μικρόν | ὄμικρον | omicron | [oː] | [ˈomikron] | /ˈɒmɪkrɒn/, traditional UK: /oʊˈmaɪkrɒn/ |
Υ | ὖ | ὐ ψιλόν | ὔψιλον | upsilon | [uː], [yː] | [ˈipsilon] | /juːpˈsaɪlən, ˈʊpsɪlɒn/, also UK: /ʌpˈsaɪlən/, US: /ˈʌpsɪlɒn/ |
Ω | ὦ | ὠ μέγα | ὠμέγα | omega | [ɔː] | [oˈmeɣa] | US: /oʊˈmeɪɡə/, traditional UK: /ˈoʊmɪɡə/ |
Some dialects of the Aegean and
Letter shapes
Like Latin and other alphabetic scripts, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter, without a distinction between uppercase and lowercase. This distinction is an innovation of the modern era, drawing on different lines of development of the letter shapes in earlier handwriting.
The oldest forms of the letters in antiquity are
In the ninth and tenth century, uncial book hands were replaced with a new, more compact writing style, with letter forms partly adapted from the earlier cursive.[49] This minuscule style remained the dominant form of handwritten Greek into the modern era. During the Renaissance, western printers adopted the minuscule letter forms as lowercase printed typefaces, while modeling uppercase letters on the ancient inscriptional forms. The orthographic practice of using the letter case distinction for marking proper names, titles, etc. developed in parallel to the practice in Latin and other western languages.
Inscription | Manuscript | Modern print | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Archaic | Classical | Uncial |
Minuscule | Lowercase | Uppercase |
α | Α | ||||
β | Β | ||||
γ | Γ | ||||
δ | Δ | ||||
ε | Ε | ||||
ζ | Ζ | ||||
η | Η | ||||
θ | Θ | ||||
ι | Ι | ||||
κ | Κ | ||||
λ | Λ | ||||
μ | Μ | ||||
ν | Ν | ||||
ξ | Ξ | ||||
ο | Ο | ||||
π | Π | ||||
ρ | Ρ | ||||
σς | Σ | ||||
τ | Τ | ||||
υ | Υ | ||||
φ | Φ | ||||
χ | Χ | ||||
ψ | Ψ | ||||
ω | Ω |
Derived alphabets
The Greek alphabet was the model for various others:[6]
- The Etruscan alphabet;
- The ancient scripts in Italy, adopted from an archaic form of the Greek alphabet brought to Italy by Greek colonists in the late 8th century BC, via Etruscan;
- The Gothic alphabet, devised in the 4th century AD to write the Gothic language, based on a combination of Greek and Latin uncial models;[50]
- The Glagolitic alphabet, devised in the 9th century AD for writing Old Church Slavonic;
- The Cyrillic script, which replaced the Glagolitic alphabet shortly afterwards.
- The Coptic Alphabet used for writing the Coptic language.
The
Other uses
Use for other languages
Apart from the daughter alphabets listed above, which were adapted from Greek but developed into separate writing systems, the Greek alphabet has also been adopted at various times and in various places to write other languages.[52] For some of them, additional letters were introduced.
Antiquity
- Most of the Carian alphabet had mostly different values and several other characters inherited from pre-Greek local scripts. They were in use c. 800–300 BC until all the Anatolian languages were extinct due to Hellenization.[53][54][55][56][57]
- The original Old Italic alphabetswas the early Greek alphabet with only slight modifications.
- It was used in some Paleo-Balkan languages, including Thracian. For other neighboring languages or dialects, such as Ancient Macedonian, isolated words are preserved in Greek texts, but no continuous texts are preserved.
- The Greco-Iberian alphabet was used for writing the ancient Iberian language in parts of modern Spain.
- Gaulishinscriptions (in modern France) used the Greek alphabet until the Roman conquest
- The .
- The Bactrian language, an Iranian language spoken in what is now Afghanistan, was written in the Greek alphabet during the Kushan Empire (65–250 AD). It adds an extra letter ⟨þ⟩ for the sh sound [ʃ].[58]
- The Coptic alphabet adds eight letters derived from Demotic. It is still used today, mostly in Egypt, to write Coptic, the liturgical language of Egyptian Christians. Letters usually retain an uncial form different from the forms used for Greek today. The alphabet of Old Nubianis an adaptation of Coptic.
Middle Ages
- Coins from the 4th-8th centuries known as mordovkas were used as currency in Eastern Europe by Uralic peoples and were written in Moksha using Greek uncial script.[59]
- An 8th-century
- An Arxyz, the oldest known attestation of an Ossetic language.
- The velar nasalsound.
- Various South Slavic dialects, similar to the modern Bulgarian and Macedonian languages, have been written in Greek script.[62][63][64][65] The modern South Slavic languages now use modified Cyrillic alphabets.
Early modern
- Turkish spoken by Orthodox Christians (Karamanlides) was often written in Greek script, and called Karamanlidika.
- Gheg. Greek spelling is still occasionally used for the local Albanian dialects (Arvanitika) in Greece.
- Turkic language of the northeast Balkans spoken by Orthodox Christians, was apparently written in Greek characters in the late 19th century. In 1957, it was standardized on Cyrillic, and in 1996, a Gagauz alphabet based on Latin characters was adopted (derived from the Turkish alphabet).
- Turkic language, was spoken by a small group of Orthodox Christiansin northern Greece. It is now written in Latin or Cyrillic characters.
- Urum or Greek Tatar, spoken by Orthodox Christians, used the Greek alphabet.
- Judaeo-Spanish or Ladino, a Jewish dialect of Spanish, has occasionally been published in Greek characters in Greece.[67]
- The Italian humanist Giovan Giorgio Trissino tried to add some Greek letters (Ɛ ε, Ꞷ ω) to Italian orthography in 1524.[68]
In mathematics and science
Greek symbols are used as symbols in mathematics, physics and other sciences. Many symbols have traditional uses, such as lower case epsilon (ε) for an arbitrarily small positive number, lower case pi (π) for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, capital sigma (Σ) for summation, and lower case sigma (σ) for standard deviation. Formerly, the Greek letters were used for naming North Atlantic hurricanes if the normal list ran out. This happened only in the 2005 and 2020 hurricane seasons for a total of 15 storms, the last one being Hurricane Iota. However, this practice would be discontinued in 2021, citing the confusion many similar-sounding names caused. In May 2021 the World Health Organization announced that the variants of SARS-CoV-2 of the virus would be named using letters of the Greek alphabet to avoid stigma and simplify communications for non-scientific audiences.[69][70]
Astronomy
Greek letters are used to denote the brighter stars within each of the eighty-eight constellations. In most constellations, the brightest star is designated Alpha and the next brightest Beta etc. For example, the brightest star in the constellation of Centaurus is known as Alpha Centauri. For historical reasons, the Greek designations of some constellations begin with a lower ranked letter.
International Phonetic Alphabet
Several Greek letters are used as phonetic symbols in the
β | beta | U+03B2 | voiced bilabial fricative |
θ | theta | U+03B8 | voiceless dental fricative |
χ | chi | U+03C7 | voiceless uvular fricative |
On the other hand, the following phonetic letters have Unicode representations separate from their Greek alphabetic use, either because their conventional typographic shape is too different from the original, or because they also have secondary uses as regular alphabetic characters in some Latin-based alphabets, including separate Latin uppercase letters distinct from the Greek ones.
Greek letter | Phonetic letter | Uppercase | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
φ | phi | U+03C6 | ɸ | U+0278 | Voiceless bilabial fricative | – |
γ | gamma | U+03B3 | ɣ | U+0263 | Voiced velar fricative | Ɣ U+0194 |
ε | epsilon | U+03B5 | ɛ | U+025B | Open-mid front unrounded vowel | Ɛ U+0190 |
α | alpha | U+03B1 | ɑ | U+0251 | Open back unrounded vowel | Ɑ U+2C6D |
υ | upsilon | U+03C5 | ʊ | U+028A | near-close near-back rounded vowel | Ʊ U+01B1 |
ι | iota | U+03B9 | ɩ | U+0269 | Obsolete for near-close near-front unrounded vowel now ɪ | Ɩ U+0196 |
The symbol in
Use as numerals
Greek letters were also used to write numbers. In the classical Ionian system, the first nine letters of the alphabet stood for the numbers from 1 to 9, the next nine letters stood for the multiples of 10, from 10 to 90, and the next nine letters stood for the multiples of 100, from 100 to 900. For this purpose, in addition to the 24 letters which by that time made up the standard alphabet, three otherwise obsolete letters were retained or revived: digamma ⟨Ϝ⟩ for 6, koppa ⟨Ϙ⟩ for 90, and a rare Ionian letter for [ss], today called sampi ⟨Ͳ⟩, for 900. This system has remained in use in Greek up to the present day, although today it is only employed for limited purposes such as enumerating chapters in a book, similar to the way Roman numerals are used in English. The three extra symbols are today written as ⟨ϛ⟩, ⟨ϟ⟩ and ⟨ϡ⟩ respectively. To mark a letter as a numeral sign, a small stroke called keraia is added to the right of it.
Αʹ αʹ | alpha | 1 |
Βʹ βʹ | beta | 2 |
Γʹ γʹ | gamma | 3 |
Δʹ δʹ | delta | 4 |
Εʹ εʹ | epsilon | 5 |
ϛʹ | stigma ) |
6 |
Ζʹ ζʹ | zeta |
7 |
Ηʹ ηʹ | eta | 8 |
Θʹ θʹ | theta | 9 |
Ιʹ ιʹ | iota | 10 |
Κʹ κʹ | kappa | 20 |
Λʹ λʹ | lambda | 30 |
Μʹ μʹ | mu | 40 |
Νʹ νʹ | nu | 50 |
Ξʹ ξʹ | xi | 60 |
Οʹ οʹ | omicron | 70 |
Πʹ πʹ | pi | 80 |
ϟʹ | koppa | 90 |
Ρʹ ρʹ | rho | 100 |
Σʹ σʹ | sigma | 200 |
Τʹ τʹ | tau |
300 |
Υʹ υʹ | upsilon | 400 |
Φʹ φʹ | phi |
500 |
Χʹ χʹ | chi | 600 |
Ψʹ ψʹ | psi |
700 |
Ωʹ ωʹ | omega | 800 |
ϡʹ | sampi | 900 |
Use by student fraternities and sororities
In North America, many college
Different chapters within the same fraternity are almost always (with a handful of exceptions) designated using Greek letters as serial numbers. The founding chapter of each respective organization is its A chapter. As an organization expands, it establishes a B chapter, a Γ chapter, and so on and so forth. In an organization that expands to more than 24 chapters, the chapter after Ω chapter is AA chapter, followed by AB chapter, etc. Each of these is still a "chapter Letter", albeit a double-digit letter just as 10 through 99 are double-digit numbers. The Roman alphabet has a similar extended form with such double-digit letters when necessary, but it is used for columns in a table or chart rather than chapters of an organization.[citation needed]
Glyph variants
Some letters can occur in variant shapes, mostly inherited from medieval minuscule handwriting. While their use in normal typography of Greek is purely a matter of font styles, some such variants have been given separate encodings in Unicode.
- The symbol ϐ ("curled beta") is a cursive variant form of beta(β). In the French tradition of Ancient Greek typography, β is used word-initially, and ϐ is used word-internally.
- The letter delta has a form resembling a cursive capital letter D; while not encoded as its own form, this form is included as part of the symbol for the drachma (a Δρ digraph) in the Currency Symbols block, at U+20AF (₯).
- The letter epsilon can occur in two equally frequent stylistic variants, either shaped ('lunate epsilon', like a semicircle with a stroke) or (similar to a reversed number 3). The symbol ϵ (U+03F5) is designated specifically for the lunate form, used as a technical symbol.
- The symbol ϑ ("script theta") is a cursive form of theta (θ), frequent in handwriting, and used with a specialized meaning as a technical symbol.
- The symbol ϰ ("kappa symbol") is a cursive form of kappa (κ), used as a technical symbol.
- The symbol ϖ ("variant pi") is an archaic script form of pi (π), also used as a technical symbol.
- The letter rho(ρ) can occur in different stylistic variants, with the descending tail either going straight down or curled to the right. The symbol ϱ (U+03F1) is designated specifically for the curled form, used as a technical symbol.
- The letter lunate sigma", resembling a Latin c) is a medieval stylistic variant that can be used in both environments without the final/non-final distinction.
- The capital letter upsilon (Υ) can occur in different stylistic variants, with the upper strokes either straight like a Latin Y, or slightly curled. The symbol ϒ (U+03D2) is designated specifically for the curled form (), used as a technical symbol, e.g. in physics.
- The letter phican occur in two equally frequent stylistic variants, either shaped as (a circle with a vertical stroke through it) or as (a curled shape open at the top). The symbol ϕ (U+03D5) is designated specifically for the closed form, used as a technical symbol.
- The letter omega has at least three stylistic variants of its capital form. The standard is the "open omega" (Ω), resembling an open partial circle with the opening downward and the ends curled outward. The two other stylistic variants are seen more often in modern typography, resembling a raised and underscored circle (roughly o̲), where the underscore may or may not be touching the circle on a tangent (in the former case it resembles a superscript omicron similar to that found in the numero sign or masculine ordinal indicator; in the latter, it closely resembles some forms of the Latin letter Q). The open omega is always used in symbolic settings and is encoded in Letterlike Symbols (U+2126) as a separate code point for backward compatibility.
Computer encodings
For computer usage, a variety of encodings have been used for Greek online, many of them documented in
The two principal ones still used today are ISO/IEC 8859-7 and Unicode. ISO 8859-7 supports only the monotonic orthography; Unicode supports both the monotonic and polytonic orthographies.
ISO/IEC 8859-7
For the range A0–FF (hex), it follows the Unicode range 370–3CF (see below) except that some symbols, like ©, ½, § etc. are used where Unicode has unused locations. Like all ISO-8859 encodings, it is equal to ASCII for 00–7F (hex).
Greek in Unicode
There are two main blocks of Greek characters in
This block also supports the
To write polytonic Greek, one may use
Greek and Coptic[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) | ||||||||||||||||
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
U+037x | Ͱ
|
ͱ
|
Ͳ
|
ͳ
|
ʹ
|
͵
|
Ͷ
|
ͷ
|
ͺ
|
ͻ
|
ͼ
|
ͽ
|
; | Ϳ
| ||
U+038x | ΄
|
΅
|
Ά
|
·
|
Έ
|
Ή
|
Ί
|
Ό
|
Ύ
|
Ώ
| ||||||
U+039x | ΐ
|
Α
|
Β
|
Γ
|
Δ
|
Ε
|
Ζ
|
Η
|
Θ
|
Ι
|
Κ
|
Λ
|
Μ
|
Ν
|
Ξ
|
Ο
|
U+03Ax | Π | Ρ
|
Σ
|
Τ
|
Υ
|
Φ
|
Χ
|
Ψ
|
Ω
|
Ϊ
|
Ϋ
|
ά
|
έ
|
ή
|
ί
| |
U+03Bx | ΰ
|
α
|
β
|
γ
|
δ
|
ε
|
ζ
|
η
|
θ
|
ι
|
κ
|
λ
|
μ
|
ν
|
ξ
|
ο
|
U+03Cx | π | ρ
|
ς
|
σ
|
τ
|
υ
|
φ
|
χ
|
ψ
|
ω
|
ϊ
|
ϋ
|
ό
|
ύ
|
ώ
|
Ϗ
|
U+03Dx | ϐ
|
ϑ
|
ϒ
|
ϓ
|
ϔ
|
ϕ
|
ϖ | ϗ | Ϙ
|
ϙ
|
Ϛ
|
ϛ
|
Ϝ
|
ϝ
|
Ϟ
|
ϟ
|
U+03Ex | Ϡ
|
ϡ
|
Ϣ
|
ϣ
|
Ϥ
|
ϥ
|
Ϧ
|
ϧ
|
Ϩ
|
ϩ
|
Ϫ
|
ϫ
|
Ϭ
|
ϭ
|
Ϯ
|
ϯ
|
U+03Fx | ϰ
|
ϱ
|
ϲ
|
ϳ
|
ϴ
|
ϵ
|
϶
|
Ϸ
|
ϸ
|
Ϲ
|
Ϻ
|
ϻ
|
ϼ
|
Ͻ
|
Ͼ
|
Ͽ
|
Notes |
Greek Extended[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) | ||||||||||||||||
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
U+1F0x | ἀ
|
ἁ
|
ἂ
|
ἃ
|
ἄ
|
ἅ
|
ἆ
|
ἇ
|
Ἀ
|
Ἁ
|
Ἂ
|
Ἃ
|
Ἄ
|
Ἅ
|
Ἆ
|
Ἇ
|
U+1F1x | ἐ
|
ἑ
|
ἒ
|
ἓ
|
ἔ
|
ἕ
|
Ἐ
|
Ἑ
|
Ἒ
|
Ἓ
|
Ἔ
|
Ἕ
|
||||
U+1F2x | ἠ
|
ἡ
|
ἢ
|
ἣ
|
ἤ
|
ἥ
|
ἦ
|
ἧ
|
Ἠ
|
Ἡ
|
Ἢ
|
Ἣ
|
Ἤ
|
Ἥ
|
Ἦ
|
Ἧ
|
U+1F3x | ἰ
|
ἱ
|
ἲ
|
ἳ
|
ἴ
|
ἵ
|
ἶ
|
ἷ
|
Ἰ
|
Ἱ
|
Ἲ
|
Ἳ
|
Ἴ
|
Ἵ
|
Ἶ
|
Ἷ
|
U+1F4x | ὀ
|
ὁ
|
ὂ
|
ὃ
|
ὄ
|
ὅ
|
Ὀ
|
Ὁ
|
Ὂ
|
Ὃ
|
Ὄ
|
Ὅ
|
||||
U+1F5x | ὐ
|
ὑ
|
ὒ
|
ὓ
|
ὔ
|
ὕ
|
ὖ
|
ὗ
|
Ὑ
|
Ὓ
|
Ὕ
|
Ὗ
| ||||
U+1F6x | ὠ
|
ὡ
|
ὢ
|
ὣ
|
ὤ
|
ὥ
|
ὦ
|
ὧ
|
Ὠ
|
Ὡ
|
Ὢ
|
Ὣ
|
Ὤ
|
Ὥ
|
Ὦ
|
Ὧ
|
U+1F7x | ὰ
|
ά
|
ὲ
|
έ
|
ὴ
|
ή
|
ὶ
|
ί
|
ὸ
|
ό
|
ὺ
|
ύ
|
ὼ
|
ώ
|
||
U+1F8x | ᾀ
|
ᾁ
|
ᾂ
|
ᾃ
|
ᾄ
|
ᾅ
|
ᾆ
|
ᾇ
|
ᾈ
|
ᾉ
|
ᾊ
|
ᾋ
|
ᾌ
|
ᾍ
|
ᾎ
|
ᾏ
|
U+1F9x | ᾐ
|
ᾑ
|
ᾒ
|
ᾓ
|
ᾔ
|
ᾕ
|
ᾖ
|
ᾗ
|
ᾘ
|
ᾙ
|
ᾚ
|
ᾛ
|
ᾜ
|
ᾝ
|
ᾞ
|
ᾟ
|
U+1FAx | ᾠ
|
ᾡ
|
ᾢ
|
ᾣ
|
ᾤ
|
ᾥ
|
ᾦ
|
ᾧ
|
ᾨ
|
ᾩ
|
ᾪ
|
ᾫ
|
ᾬ
|
ᾭ
|
ᾮ
|
ᾯ
|
U+1FBx | ᾰ
|
ᾱ
|
ᾲ
|
ᾳ
|
ᾴ
|
ᾶ
|
ᾷ
|
Ᾰ
|
Ᾱ
|
Ὰ
|
Ά
|
ᾼ
|
᾽
|
ι
|
᾿
| |
U+1FCx | ῀
|
῁
|
ῂ
|
ῃ
|
ῄ
|
ῆ
|
ῇ
|
Ὲ
|
Έ
|
Ὴ
|
Ή
|
ῌ
|
῍
|
῎
|
῏
| |
U+1FDx | ῐ
|
ῑ
|
ῒ
|
ΐ
|
ῖ
|
ῗ
|
Ῐ
|
Ῑ
|
Ὶ
|
Ί
|
῝
|
῞
|
῟
| |||
U+1FEx | ῠ
|
ῡ
|
ῢ
|
ΰ
|
ῤ
|
ῥ
|
ῦ
|
ῧ
|
Ῠ
|
Ῡ
|
Ὺ
|
Ύ
|
Ῥ
|
῭
|
΅
|
`
|
U+1FFx | ῲ
|
ῳ
|
ῴ
|
ῶ
|
ῷ
|
Ὸ
|
Ό
|
Ὼ
|
Ώ
|
ῼ
|
´
|
῾
|
||||
Notes |
Combining and letter-free diacritics
Combining | Spacing | Sample | Description |
---|---|---|---|
U+0300 | U+0060 | ( ̀ ) | "varia / grave accent" |
U+0301 | U+00B4, U+0384 | ( ́ ) | "oxia / tonos / acute accent" |
U+0304 | U+00AF | ( ̄ ) | "macron" |
U+0306 | U+02D8 | ( ̆ ) | "vrachy / breve" |
U+0308 | U+00A8 | ( ̈ ) | "dialytika / diaeresis" |
U+0313 | U+02BC | ( ̓ ) | "psili / comma above" ( spiritus lenis )
|
U+0314 | U+02BD | ( ̔ ) | "dasia / reversed comma above" ( spiritus asper )
|
U+0342 | ( ͂ ) | "perispomeni" (circumflex) | |
U+0343 | ( ̓ ) | " koronis " (= U+0313)
| |
U+0344 | U+0385 | ( ̈́ ) | "dialytika tonos" (deprecated, = U+0308 U+0301) |
U+0345 | U+037A | ( ͅ ) | "ypogegrammeni / iota subscript". |
Encodings with a subset of the Greek alphabet
IBM code pages 437, 860, 861, 862, 863, and 865 contain the letters ΓΘΣΦΩαδεπστφ (plus β as an alternative interpretation for ß).
See also
Notes
- ^ a b Epsilon ⟨ε⟩ and omicron ⟨ο⟩ originally could denote both short and long vowels in pre-classical archaic Greek spelling, just like other vowel letters. They were restricted to the function of short vowel signs in classical Greek, as the long vowels /eː/ and /oː/ came to be spelled instead with the digraphs ⟨ει⟩ and ⟨ου⟩, having phonologically merged with a corresponding pair of former diphthongs /ei/ and /ou/ respectively.
References
- ^ Swiggers 1996.
- ^ a b Johnston 2003, pp. 263–276.
- ^ The date of the earliest inscribed objects; A.W. Johnston, "The alphabet", in N. Stampolidis and V. Karageorghis, eds, Sea Routes from Sidon to Huelva: Interconnections in the Mediterranean 2003:263–76, summarizes the present scholarship on the dating.
- ^ Cook 1987, p. 9.
- ^ The Development of the Greek Alphabet within the Chronology of the ANE (2009), Quote: "Naveh gives four major reasons why it is universally agreed that the Greek alphabet was developed from an early Phoenician alphabet.
1 According to Herodutous "the Phoenicians who came with Cadmus... brought into Hellas the alphabet, which had hitherto been unknown, as I think, to the Greeks."
2 The Greek Letters, alpha, beta, gimmel have no meaning in Greek but the meaning of most of their Semitic equivalents is known. For example, 'aleph' means 'ox', 'bet' means 'house' and 'gimmel' means 'throw stick'.
3 Early Greek letters are very similar and sometimes identical to the West Semitic letters.
4 The letter sequence between the Semitic and Greek alphabets is identical. (Naveh 1982)" - ^ a b c Coulmas 1996.
- ^ Horrocks 2006, pp. 231–250
- ^ Woodard 2008, pp. 15–17
- ^ Holton, Mackridge & Philippaki-Warburton 1998, p. 31
- ^ a b Adams 1987, pp. 6–7
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Keller & Russell 2012, p. 5
- ^ a b c d e Mastronarde 2013, p. 10
- ^ a b c d e Groton 2013, p. 3
- ^ Matthews, Ben (May 2006). "Acquisition of Scottish English Phonology: An Overview". ResearchGate. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
- ^ "Overlay Definition & Meaning". Britannica Dictionary. Retrieved 2023-10-25.
- ^ Hinge 2001, pp. 212–234
- ^ a b c d e f g h Keller & Russell 2012, pp. 5–6
- ^ a b c d e f Mastronarde 2013, p. 11
- ^ "Net Definition & Meaning". Britannica Dictionary. Retrieved 2023-10-25.
- ^ a b c Mastronarde 2013, pp. 11–13
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Mastronarde 2013, p. 12
- ^ a b Nicholas, Nick (2004). "Sigma: final versus non-final". Retrieved 2016-09-29.
- ^ a b Thompson 1912, pp. 108, 144
- ^ Keller & Russell 2012, p. 6
- ^ a b c d Mastronarde 2013, p. 13
- ^ Additionally, the more ancient combination ⟨ωυ⟩ or ⟨ωϋ⟩ can occur in ancient especially in Ionic texts or in personal names.
- ^ Dickey 2007, pp. 92–93.
- ^ Dickey 2007, p. 93.
- ^ Nicolas, Nick. "Greek Unicode Issues: Punctuation Archived 2012-08-06 at archive.today". 2005. Accessed 7 Oct 2014.
- ^ a b Verbrugghe 1999, pp. 499–511.
- ^ Verbrugghe 1999, pp. 499–502.
- ^ Verbrugghe 1999, pp. 499–502, 510–511.
- ^ Verbrugghe 1999, pp. 499–502, 509.
- ^ a b Verbrugghe 1999, pp. 510–511.
- ^ a b c Verbrugghe 1999, pp. 505–507, 510–511.
- ^ ISO (2010). ISO 843:1997 (Conversion of Greek characters into Latin characters).
- ^ UNGEGN Working Group on Romanization Systems (2003). "Greek". Retrieved 2012-07-15.
- ^ "Greek (ALA-LC Romanization Tables)" (PDF). Library of Congress. 2010.
- ^ A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, article by Roger D. Woodward (ed. Egbert J. Bakker, 2010, Wiley-Blackwell).
- ^ Daniels & Bright 1996, p. 4.
- ^ a b Voutiras 2007, p. 270.
- ^ a b c d Woodard 2010, pp. 26–46.
- ^ a b c d Jeffery 1961, p. 66.
- ^ a b c d Threatte 1980, p. 26.
- ^ Horrocks 2010, p. xiix.
- ^ a b Panayotou 2007, p. 407.
- ^ Liddell & Scott 1940, s.v. "λάβδα"
- ISSN 0024-3841.
- ^ a b Thompson 1912, pp. 102–103
- ^ Murdoch 2004, p. 156
- ^ George L. Campbell, Christopher Moseley, The Routledge Handbook of Scripts and Alphabets, pp. 51ff, 96ff
- ^ Macrakis 1996.
- ^ Understanding Relations Between Scripts II by Philip J Boyes & Philippa M Steele. Published in the UK in 2020 by Oxbow Books: "The Carian alphabet resembles the Greek alphabet, though, as in the case of Phrygian, no single Greek variant can be identified as its ancestor", "It is generally assumed that the Lydian alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet, but the exact relationship remains unclear (Melchert 2004)"
- ^ Britannica – Lycian Alphabet "The Lycian alphabet is clearly related to the Greek, but the exact nature of the relationship is uncertain. Several letters appear to be related to symbols of the Cretan and Cyprian writing systems."
- ^ Scriptsource.org – Carian"Visually, the letters bear a close resemblance to Greek letters. Decipherment was initially attempted on the assumption that those letters which looked like Greek represented the same sounds as their closest visual Greek equivalents. However it has since been established that the phonetic values of the two scripts are very different. For example the theta θ symbol represents 'th' in Greek but 'q' in Carian. Carian was generally written from left to right, although Egyptian writers wrote primarily from right to left. It was written without spaces between words."
- ^ Omniglot.com – Carian "The Carian alphabet appears in about 100 pieces of graffiti inscriptions left by Carian mercenaries who served in Egypt. A number of clay tablets, coins and monumental inscriptions have also been found. It was possibly derived from the Phoenician alphabet."
- ^ Ancient Anatolian languages and cultures in contact: some methodological observations by Paola Cotticelli-Kurras & Federico Giusfredi (University of Verona, Italy) "During the Iron ages, with a brand new political balance and cultural scenario, the cultures and languages of Anatolia maintained their position of a bridge between the Aegean and the Syro-Mesopotamian worlds, while the North-West Semitic cultures of the Phoenicians and of the Aramaeans also entered the scene. Assuming the 4th century and the hellenization of Anatolia as the terminus ante quem, the correct perspective of a contact-oriented study of the Ancient Anatolian world needs to take as an object a large net of cultures that evolved and changed over almost 16 centuries of documentary history."
- ^ Sims-Williams 1997.
- ^ Zaikovsky 1929
- ^ J. Blau, "Middle and Old Arabic material for the history of stress in Arabic", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 35:3:476-84 (October 1972) full text
- ^ Ahmad Al-Jallad, The Damascus Psalm Fragment: Middle Arabic and the Legacy of Old Ḥigāzī, in series Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Near East (LAMINE) 2, Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2020; full text; see also Bible translations into Arabic
- ^ Miletich 1920.
- ^ Mazon & Vaillant 1938.
- ^ Kristophson 1974, p. 11.
- ^ Peyfuss 1989.
- ^ Elsie 1991.
- ^ Katja Šmid, "Los problemas del estudio de la lengua sefardí", Verba Hispanica 10:1:113-124 (2002) full text: "Es interesante el hecho que en Bulgaria se imprimieron unas pocas publicaciones en alfabeto cirílico búlgaro y en Grecia en alfabeto griego."
- ^ Trissino, Gian Giorgio (1524). De le lettere nuωvamente aggiunte ne la lingua Italiana – Wikisource (in Italian). Retrieved 20 October 2022.
- ^ "WHO announces simple, easy-to-say labels for SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Interest and Concern". www.who.int. Retrieved 2021-06-01.
- ^ "Covid-19 variants to be given Greek alphabet names to avoid stigma". the Guardian. 2021-05-31. Retrieved 2021-06-01.
- ^ Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Cambridge: University Press. 1999. pp. 176–181.
- ^ For chi and beta, separate codepoints for use in a Latin-script environment were added in Unicode versions 7.0 (2014) and 8.0 (2015) respectively: U+AB53 "Latin small letter chi" (ꭓ) and U+A7B5 "Latin small letter beta" (ꞵ). As of 2017, the International Phonetic Association still lists the original Greek codepoints as the standard representations of the IPA symbols in question [1].
- ^ a b c d Winterer 2010, p. 377.
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-0-486-25133-2.
- Cook, B. F. (1987). Greek inscriptions. University of California Press/British Museum.
- Coulmas, Florian (1996). The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. ISBN 978-0-631-21481-6.
- Daniels, Peter T; Bright, William (1996). The World's Writing Systems. Oxford University Press.
- Dickey, Eleanor (2007). Ancient Greek Scholarship: A Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises, from Their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 93. ISBN 978-0-19-531293-5.
Aristophanes of Byzantium Greek diacritics.
- Elsie, Robert (1991). "Albanian Literature in Greek Script: the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century Orthodox Tradition in Albanian Writing" (PDF). Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. 15 (20): 20–35. S2CID 161805678. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2020-04-28. Retrieved 2011-10-30.
- Groton, Anne H. (2013). From Alpha to Omega: A Beginning Course in Classical Greek. Indianapolis, Indiana: Focus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-58510-473-4.
- Hinge, George (2001). Die Sprache Alkmans: Textgeschichte und Sprachgeschichte (Ph.D.). University of Aarhus.
- Jeffery, Lilian H. (1961). The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece: A Study of the Origin of the Greek Alphabet and Its Development from the Eighth to the Fifth Centuries B. C. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
- Keller, Andrew; Russell, Stephanie (2012). Learn to Read Greek, Part 1. New Haven, Connecticut and London, England: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11589-5.
- Holton, David; Mackridge, Peter; Philippaki-Warburton, Irini (1998). Grammatiki tis ellinikis glossas. Athens: Pataki.
- Horrocks, Geoffrey (2006). Ellinika: istoria tis glossas kai ton omiliton tis. Athens: Estia. [Greek translation of Greek: a history of the language and its speakers, London 1997]
- Horrocks, Geoffrey (2010). "The Greek Alphabet". Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers (2nd ed.). Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-3415-6. Archived from the originalon 2020-08-07. Retrieved 2018-09-29.
- Johnston, A. W. (2003). "The alphabet". In Stampolidis, N.; Karageorghis, V (eds.). Sea Routes from Sidon to Huelva: Interconnections in the Mediterranean 16th – 6th c. B.C. Athens: Museum of Cycladic Art. pp. 263–276.
- Kristophson, Jürgen (1974). "Das Lexicon Tetraglosson des Daniil Moschopolitis". Zeitschrift für Balkanologie. 10: 4–128.
- Liddell, Henry G; Scott, Robert (1940). A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon.
- Macrakis, Stavros M (1996). "Character codes for Greek: Problems and modern solutions". In Macrakis, Michael (ed.). Greek letters: from tablets to pixels. Newcastle: Oak Knoll Press. p. 265.
- ISBN 978-0-520-27571-3.
- Mazon, André; Vaillant, André (1938). L'Evangéliaire de Kulakia, un parler slave de Bas-Vardar. Bibliothèque d'études balkaniques. Vol. 6. Paris: Librairie Droz. – selections from the Gospels in Macedonian.
- Miletich, L. (1920). "Dva bŭlgarski ru̐kopisa s grŭtsko pismo". Bŭlgarski Starini. 6.
- Murdoch, Brian (2004). "Gothic". In Murdoch, Brian; Read, Malcolm (eds.). Early Germanic literature and culture. Woodbridge: Camden House. pp. 149–170. ISBN 9781571131997.
- Panayotou, A. (12 February 2007). "Ionic and Attic". A History of Ancient Greek: From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 405–416. ISBN 978-0-521-83307-3.
- Peyfuss, Max Demeter (1989). Die Druckerei von Moschopolis, 1731–1769: Buchdruck und Heiligenverehrung in Erzbistum Achrida. Wiener Archiv für Geschichte des Slawentums und Osteuropas. Vol. 13. Böhlau Verlag.
- Sims-Williams, Nicholas (1997). "New Findings in Ancient Afghanistan – the Bactrian documents discovered from the Northern Hindu-Kush". Archived from the original on 2007-06-10.
- Swiggers, Pierre (1996). "Transmission of the Phoenician Script to the West". In Daniels; Bright (eds.). The World's Writing Systems. Oxford: University Press. pp. 261–270.
- Stevenson, Jane (2007). "Translation and the spread of the Greek and Latin alphabets in Late Antiquity". In Harald Kittel; et al. (eds.). Translation: an international encyclopedia of translation studies. Vol. 2. Berlin: de Gruyter. pp. 1157–1159.
- Threatte, Leslie (1980). The Grammar of Attic Inscriptions. Vol. I: Phonology. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-007344-7.
- Thompson, Edward M (1912). An introduction to Greek and Latin palaeography. Oxford: Clarendon.
- Verbrugghe, Gerald P. (1999), "Transliteration or Transcription of Greek", The Classical World, 92 (6): 499–511, JSTOR 4352343
- Voutiras, E. (2007). "The Introduction of the Alphabet". In Christidis, Anastasios-Phoivos (ed.). A History of Ancient Greek: From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 266–276. ISBN 978-0-521-83307-3.
- Winterer, Caroline (2010), "Fraternities and sororities", in ISBN 978-0-674-03572-0
- Woodard, Roger D. (2010), "Phoinikeia Grammata: An Alphabet for the Greek Language", in Bakker, Egbert J. (ed.), A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, Oxford, England: Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 978-1-118-78291-0
- Woodard, Roger D. (2008). "Attic Greek". In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.). The ancient languages of Europe. Cambridge: University Press. pp. 14–49. ISBN 9780521684958.
- Zaikovsky, Bogdan (1929). "Mordovkas Problem". Nizhne-Volzhskaya Oblast Ethnological Scientific Society Review (36–2). Saratov: 30–32.
External links
- Greek and Coptic character list in Unicode
- Unicode collation charts—including Greek and Coptic letters, sorted by shape
- Examples of Greek handwriting
- Greek Unicode Issues (Nick Nicholas) at archive.today (archived August 5, 2012)
- Unicode FAQ – Greek Language and Script
- alphabetic test for Greek Unicode range (Alan Wood)
- numeric test for Greek Unicode range
- Classical Greek keyboard, a browser-based tool
- GFS Typefaces, a collection of free fonts by Greek Font Society