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Greek alphabet

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Note: This article contains special characters.

The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek


language since about the 9th century BC. It was the first
true alphabet, that is, one with a symbol for each vowel and Greek alphabet
consonant, and is the oldest alphabet in use today. The Α α Alpha Β β Beta
letters are also used to represent numbers—Greek Γ γ Gamma ∆ δ Delta
numerals—in the same sorts of contexts as Roman Ε ε Epsilon Ζ ζ Zeta
numerals. Besides writing modern Greek, today its letters
Η η Eta Θ θ Theta
are used as mathematical symbols, particle names in
physics, as names of stars, in the names of fraternities and Ι ι Iota Κ κ Kappa
sororities, in the naming of supernumerary tropical Λ λ Lambda Μ µ Mu
cyclones, and for other purposes. The Greek alphabet Ν ν Nu Ξ ξ Xi
originated as a modification of the Phoenician alphabet and Ο ο Omicron Π π Pi
in turn gave rise to the Gothic, Armenian, Glagolitic, Ρ ρ Rho Σ σ ς Sigma
Cyrillic, and Coptic alphabets, as well as our own Latin Τ τ Tau Υ υ Upsilon
alphabet, as documented in History of the alphabet. The Φ φ Phi Χ χ Chi
Greek alphabet is unrelated to Linear B and the Cypriot
Ψ ψ Psi Ω ω Omega
syllabary, earlier writing systems for Greek.
obsolete letters
Digamma
Contents San

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):

Name Pronunciation Corresponding Transliteration1


Letter Phoenician
Greek English Ancient Modern letter Ancient Modern
Αα ἄλφα Alpha [a] [aː] [a] 'Aleph a a

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

Εε ἒψιλόν Epsilon [e] [e ] He e e


[zd], later
Ζζ ζῆτα Zeta [z] Zayin z z
[zː]
Ηη ἦτα Eta [ ː] [i] Heth e, ē i

Θθ θῆτα Theta [t ] [θ] Teth th th

Ιι ἰῶτα Iota [i] [iː] [i], [j] Yodh i i


[c] before
Κκ κάππα Kappa [k] [e ] or [i]; Kaph k k
[k] otherwise
Λ λ λάμβδα Lambda [l] [l] Lamedh l l

Μµ μῦ Mu [m] [m] Mem m m

Νν νῦ Nu [n] [n] Nun n n

Ξξ ξῖ Xi [ks] [ks] Samekh x x, ks

Ο ο ὄμικρόν Omicron [o] [o ] 'Ayin o o

Ππ πῖ Pi [p] [p] Pe p p

Ρρ ῥῶ Rho [r], [r ] [ ] Resh r (ῥ: rh) r

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

San [s] Tsade s

Qoppa [q] Qoph q

Sampi [ts] ? Origin disputed –

Letter combinations and diphthongs


Pronunciation Latin
Letters
archaic classical modern transliteration
ᾳ [aː ] [aː] [a] a
αι [a ] [e ] ae
ει [e ] [eː] [i] i
ῃ [ ːi] [ ː] [i] e
οι [o ] [i] oe, i (final)
υι [y ] [i] ui
ῳ [ ː ] [ ː] [o ] o
[av] before vowel or voiced consonant;
αυ [a ] au, av
[af] before voiceless sound
[e v] before vowel or voiced consonant;
ευ [e ] eu, ev
[e f] before voiceless sound
[iv] before vowel or voiced consonant;
ηυ [ ː ] eu
[if] before voiceless sound
[o ]
ου [uː] [u] u, ou
[oː]
[ g] in formal speech (palatalised to [ ] before [e ] or
[i]),
but often reduced to [g] (palatalised to [ ] before [e ] or
γγ* [ g] ng
[i]);
also pronounced [ ] in some contexts (palatalised to [ ]
before [e ])
[g] at the beginning of a word (palatalised to [ ] before
[e ] or [i]);
γκ* [ k] [ g] otherwise (palatalised to [ ] before [e ] or [i]), nc, nk
but often reduced to [g] (palatalised to [ ] before [e ] or
[i])
γξ* [ ks] [ ks] nx, nks
[ ç] before [e ] or [i];
γχ* [ x] nch, nkh
[ x] otherwise

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]

 Some scholars see [ ] (agma) as a phoneme in its own right.

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

to its predecessor, the Archaeological Museum of c. BC


Athens  Syriac 2nd c.
Phoenician alphabet, is the BC
introduction of written  Avestan 3th
vowels, without which Greek — unlike Phoenician — would be c.
 Arabic 4th c.
unintelligible. In fact most alphabets that contain vowels are
 Greek 8th c. BC
derived ultimately from Greek, although there are exceptions  Old Italic 8th
(Hangul, Orkhon script, Ge'ez alphabet, Indic alphabets, and Old c. BC
Hungarian script). The first vowels were alpha, epsilon, iota,  Latin

omicron, and upsilon (copied from waw), modifications of either 7th c.


BC
glides or breathing marks, which were mostly superfluous in  Runes
Greek. In eastern Greek, which lacked breaths entirely, the letter 2nd c.
eta was also used for a long e, and eventually the letter omega was  Gothic 4th c.
introduced for a long o. Vowels were originally not used in  Armenian
405
Semitic alphabets, but even in the very old Ugaritic alphabet
 Glagolitic
matres lectionis were used, i.e. consonant signs were used to 862
denote vowels.  Cyrillic 10th
c.
Greek also introduced three new consonants, appended to the end  Iberian
 Celtiberian
of the alphabet as they were developed. These consonants made
 South Arabian 9th c. BC
up for the lack of aspirates in Phoenician. In west Greek, Χ was  Ge'ez 3rd-4th c.
used for /ks/ and Ψ for /k / — hence the value of our letter x, Meroitic 3rd c. BC
derived from the western Greek alphabet. Over the middle ages Complete genealogy
these aspirates disappeared, so now theta, phi, and chi stand
for /θ/, /f/, and /x/. 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

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).

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:

 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.

In more modern times:

 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).

Greek and Coptic

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

Greek Extended (precomposed polytonic Greek)

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 letter-free diacritics

Combining and spacing (letter-free) diacritical marks pertaining to Greek language are:

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 ( ) "psili / comma above" (spiritus lenis)
U+0314 ( ) "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".

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

 This page was last modified 04:00, 22 January 2006.


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