Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Qoppa Sampi
1 Main table
1.1 Obsolete letters
2 Letter combinations and diphthongs
3 Ligatures
4 History
5 Use of the Greek alphabet for other languages
6 Greek encodings
6.1 Greek in Unicode
6.1.1 Greek and Coptic
6.1.2 Greek Extended (precomposed
polytonic Greek)
6.1.3 Combining and letter-free
diacritics
7 Bibliography
8 See also
9 External links
10 Special characters
Main table
The Greek letters and their derivations are as follows (pronunciations transcribed using the International
Phonetic Alphabet):
1
Ββ βῆτα Beta [b] [v] Beth b v
[ ] before
Γγ γάμμα Gamma [g] [e ] or [i]; Gimel g gh, g, y
[ ] otherwise
∆δ δέλτα Delta [d] [ð] Daleth d d, dh
Ππ πῖ Pi [p] [p] Pe p p
Σσ
ς σῖγμα Sigma [s] [s] Shin s s
(final)
Ττ ταῦ Tau [t] [t] Taw t t
[u] [uː],
u, y (between
Υυ ὒψιλόν Upsilon later [y] [i] from Waw y, v, f
consonants)
[yː]
Φφ φῖ Phi [p ] [f] ph f
[ç] before
Χχ χῖ Chi [k ] [e ] or [i]; origin disputed ch ch, kh
[x] otherwise (see text)
Ψψ ψῖ Psi [ps] [ps] ps ps
Ω ω ὦμέγα Omega [ ː] [o ] o, ō o
1. 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
2
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.
Corresponding
Letter Name Pronunciation Phoenician Transliteration
letter
Digamma [w] Waw w
3
[b] at the beginning of a word;
µπ - - mp
[mb] otherwise, but often reduced to [b]
[d] at the beginning of a word;
ντ - - nt
[nd] otherwise, but often reduced to [d]
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 History of the Alphabet
Greek alphabet.
Middle Bronze Age 19-15th c. BC
According to legend, the
inventor of the Greek alphabet Proto-Canaanite 14th c. BC
was named Cadmus of Ugaritic 13th c. BC
Phoenician 11th c. BC
Miletus, but this may be only Samaritan 6th c. BC
a myth. Aramaic 9th c. BC
Brāhmī 6th c.
The most notable change in BC
the Greek alphabet, compared Early Greek alphabet. National Hebrew 3rd
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
4
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 Middle ages, the Greek scripts underwent changes paralleling those of the Roman alphabet: while
the old forms were retained as a monumental script, uncial and eventually minuscule 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 minuscules 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 (Ϛ, ϛ) instead of digamma or use στ if it is not available. For 90 they use modern z-
shaped qoppa forms: Ϟ, ϛ (Note that some web browser/font combinations will show the other qoppa here).
Early examples:
Some Narbonese Gaulish inscriptions in southern France use the Greek alphabet (c300 BC).
The Hebrew text of the Bible was written in Greek in Origen's Hexapla.
An 8th century Arabic fragment preserves a text in Greek.
Turkish spoken by Orthodox Christians (Karamanlides) was often written in Greek script, and called
"Karamanlidika".
Tosk Albanian was often written using the Greek alphabet, starting in about 1500 (Elsie, 1991). The
printing press at Moschopolis published several Albanian texts in Greek script during the 18th century.
It was only in 1908 that the Monastir conference standardized a Latin orthography for both Tosk and
Gheg. The Greek-based Arvanitic alphabet is now only used in Greece.
Various South Slavic dialects, similar to the modern Macedonian language, have been preserved in
Greek script. The modern Macedonian language uses a modified Cyrillic alphabet.
Aromanian (Vlach) has been written in Greek characters. There is not yet a standardized orthography
for Aromanian, but it appears that one based on the Romanian orthography will be adopted.
Gagauz, a Turkic language of the northeast Balkans.
Surguch, a Turkic language spoken by a small group of Orthodox Christians in northern Greece.
Urum or Greek Tatar.
The Coptic alphabet is the Greek alphabet augmented with several new letters.
The Old Nubian language of Makuria used the Greek alphabet augmented with three Coptic letters and
three unique letters.
Greek encodings
5
A variety of encodings have been used for Greek online, many of them documented in RFC 1947
(http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1947.txt) "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: α.́
For extended discussion of problematic Greek letter forms in Unicode see Greek Unicode Issues
(http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/unicode.html).
There are 2 main blocks of Greek characters in Unicode. The first is "Greek and Coptic" (U+0370 —
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 marks or the precomposed characters in the
"Greek Extended" block (U+1F00 – U+1FFF).
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 AB C D E F
370 ϛ ϛ ϛϛ ʹ ͵ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ͺ ϛ ϛ ϛ ; ϛ
380 ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ΄ ΅ Ά · ΈΉ Ί ϛ Ό ϛ ΎΏ
390 ΐ ΑΒΓΔΕ ΖΗΘ Ι ΚΛΜΝΞ Ο
3A0 Π Ρ ϛ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ Ψ Ω Ϊ Ϋ ά έ ή ί
3B0 ΰ αβγ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο
3C0 π ρ ς σ τ υ φ χ ψ ω ϊ ϋ ό ύ ώ ϛ
3D0 ϐ ϑ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϕ ϖ ϛ ϛ ϛ Ϛ ϛ Ϝ ϛ Ϟ ϛ
3E0 Ϡ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ
3F0 ϰ ϛ ϛϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ ϛ
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
1F00 ἀἁἂἃἄἅἆἇἈ Ἁ Ἂ Ἃ Ἄ Ἅ Ἆ Ἇ
1F10 ἐ ἑ ἒ ἓ ἔ ἕ ϛ ϛ Ἐ Ἑ Ἒ Ἓ Ἔ Ἕ ϛ ϛ
1F20 ἠ ἡ ἢ ἣ ἤ ἥ ἦ ἧ Ἠ Ἡ Ἢ Ἣ Ἤ Ἥ Ἦ Ἧ
1F30 ἰ ἱ ἲ ἳ ἴ ἵ ἶ ἷ Ἰ Ἱ Ἲ Ἳ Ἴ Ἵ Ἶ Ἷ
6
1F40 ὀ ὁ ὂ ὃ ὄ ὅ ϛ ϛ Ὀ Ὁ Ὂ Ὃ Ὄ Ὅ ϛ ϛ
1F50 ὐ ὑ ὒ ὓ ὔ ὕ ὖ ὗ ϛ Ὑ ϛ Ὓ ϛ Ὕ ϛ Ὗ
1F60 ὠὡὢὣὤὥὦὧὨ Ὡ Ὢ Ὣ Ὤ Ὥ Ὦ Ὧ
1F70 ὰάὲ έ ὴ ή ὶ ί ὸ ό ὺ ύ ὼ ώ ϛ ϛ
1F80 ᾀᾁᾂᾃᾄᾅᾆᾇᾈ ᾉ ᾊ ᾋ ᾌ ᾍ ᾎ ᾏ
1F90 ᾐ ᾑ ᾒ ᾓ ᾔ ᾕ ᾖ ᾗ ᾘᾙᾚᾛᾜᾝᾞᾟ
1FA0 ᾠ ᾡ ᾢ ᾣ ᾤ ᾥ ᾦ ᾧ ᾨ ᾩ ᾪ ᾫ ᾬ ᾭ ᾮ ᾯ
1FB0 ᾰ ᾱ ᾲ ᾳ ᾴ ϛ ᾶ ᾷ Ᾰ Ᾱ Ὰ Ά ᾼ ᾽ ι ᾿
1FC0 ῀ ῁ ῂ ῃ ῄ ϛ ῆ ῇ Ὲ Έ Ὴ Ή ῌ ῍ ῎ ῏
1FD0 ῐ ῑ ῒ ΐ ϛ ϛ ῖ ῗ Ῐ Ῑ Ὶ Ί ϛ ῝ ῞ ῟
1FE0 ῠ ῡ ῢ ΰ ῤ ῥ ῦ ῧ Ῠ Ῡ Ὺ Ύ Ῥ ῭ ΅ `
1FF0 ϛ ϛ ῲ ῳ ῴ ϛ ῶ ῷ Ὸ Ό Ὼ Ώ ῼ ´ ῾ ϛ
Combining and spacing (letter-free) diacritical marks pertaining to Greek language are:
Bibliography
Humez, Alexander and Nicholas, Alpha to omega: the life & times of the Greek alphabet, Godine,
1981, ISBN 087923377X. A popular history, more about Greek roots in English than about the
alphabet itself.
Michael S. Macrakis, ed., Greek letters: from tablets to pixels, proceedings of a conference sponsored
by the Greek Font Society, Oak Knoll Press, 1996, ISBN 1884718272. Includes papers on history,
typography, and character coding by Hermann Zapf, Matthew Carter, Nicolas Barker, John A. Lane,
Kyle McCarter, Jerôme Peignot, Pierre MacKay, Silvio Levy, et al.
Jeffery, Lilian Hamilton, 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, 1961, ISBN
0198140614.
Macrakis, Stavros M., "Character codes for Greek: Problems and modern solutions" in Macrakis, 1996.
Includes discussion of the Greek alphabet used for languages other than Greek. [1]
(http://www.writingsystems.net/systems/greek/languages.htm)
7
Robert Elsie, "Albanian Literature in Greek Script: the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century
Orthodox Tradition in Albanian Writing", Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 15:20 (1991) [2]
(http://www.elsie.de/pub/pdf_articles/A1991AlbLitGreek.pdf).
See also
Ancient Greek phonology Wikimedia Commons has media
Arvanitic alphabet related to:
Greeklish Greek alphabet
Polytonic orthography
Monotonic orthography
List of Greek words with English derivatives
Greek letters used in mathematics
Transliteration of Greek into English
Greek numerals, a system of representing numbers using letters of the Greek alphabet
List of XML and HTML character entity references
External links
The Greek Alphabet (http://greek-language.com/alphabet) A presentation of the Greek letters with
pronunciation for Modern and Classical Greek.
The Greek Script Online Trainer (http://www.theiling.de/schrift/#greek) Shows common errors for
each letter (e.g. υ vs. ν).
Special characters
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet"
Categories: Pages with special characters | Greek letters | Hellenic scripts | Alphabetic writing systems