Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet (Classical Greek: τὰ Ἑλληνικά ɣράμματα [tà Hĕllēniká grámmata]; Modern Greek: το Eλληνικό αλφάβητο [Ellinikó] >]; in Latin, Alphabetum Graecum) consists of twenty-four letters used to write the Greek language. Developed around the IX century BCE. C., from the Phoenician consonantal alphabet, the Greeks adopted the first complete alphabet in history, understanding it as the writing that expresses the individual sounds of the language, that is to say that practically each vowel and each consonant corresponds to a different symbol.

Since the Greek alphabet is the origin of the Latin alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet, all European scripts come from it and share the shape of their letters. Regarding the Latin alphabet, 14 of the 24 Greek letters are homoglyphic in their capital forms (11 with a similar value and 3 with a different value: Η, Ρ, Χ); Of the remaining 10, 5 have a Latin equivalent but a more angular form: Γ, Δ, Λ, Π, Σ and another 5 do not exist in the Latin alphabet: Θ, Ξ, Φ,Ψ,Ω.

Its use continues to this day, both as a native Modern Greek alphabet and as a way of creating technical names for the sciences, especially logic, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology, economics, astronomy and computing.

History

Background: Linear B

Pilos tablet in linear writing B

Before the development of this alphabet, the Greeks used a syllabary for writing, called the linear B system, used in Crete and parts of mainland Greece such as Mycenae or Pylos between the XVI a. C. and XII century B.C. The fragments preserved in Linear B are written in what appears to be a primitive version of the Arcado-Cypriot and Ionic-Attic dialects, a dialect called Mycenaean. Linear B developed from an earlier syllabary, called Linear A, used to write the Minoan language, a language spoken on Crete before the Greek invasion of the island, and does not quite correctly represent the phonetics of the Mycenaean dialect. This and other reasons led to its abandonment and the development of a completely new alphabet.

Archaic Greek Alphabets

Arcaic distribution of the Greek alphabets western, southern and eastern of the attached table.

It is believed that the Greek alphabet derives from a variant of the Phoenician, introduced into Greece by merchants of that nationality. Phoenician, like later Semitic alphabets, did not use signs to record vowels; To overcome this difficulty, which made it incomplete for the transcription of the Greek language, the Greeks adapted some signs used in Phoenician to indicate aspiration to represent the vowels. This contribution can be considered fundamental; the vast majority of the alphabets that include vowel signs derive from the original Greek contribution. In addition to the vowels, Greek added three new letters to the end of the alphabet: fi and ji, to represent aspirated sounds that did not exist in Phoenician, and psi.

Originally there were variants of the Greek alphabet, the most important being the Western (Chalcidic) and the Eastern (Ionian). The western variant originated the Etruscan alphabet and from this comes the Roman alphabet. The writing was often done from right to left, which was how it was done in its Phoenician ancestor, and bustrofedon, which was the alternation of lines from left to right and from right to left, so that it began on the side where it was written. the previous line was finished. Depending on the direction in which it was written, the characters were reversed in the process.

Fellowship
South
Western
East
Ancient sound	a	b	g	d	e	w	zd	h/ē	th	i	k	l	m	n	ks	or	p	s	k	r	s	t	u	ks	ph	kh	ps

Obsolete letters and numbering

Inscription of the Dipilon, one of the oldest known examples of Greek alphabet use, c.740 a. C.

The following letters are not part of the common Greek alphabet, but were in use in ancient times (VII and VI BC) in some dialects.

These letters disappeared from the alphabet; the digamma, which adapted the Phoenician wau, was used only in some western dialects, and disappeared before the classical period; the san, homophone with the sigma, was displaced by the latter; the qoppa, an adaptation of the Phoenician qop whose sound—a uvular explosive—did not exist in Greek.

In the region of Ionia, a numbering system developed in which each letter represented a number. The letters that were no longer used in the alphabet (digamma, san and qoppa) were kept in the numbering system, and to complete the series of hundreds, the letter sampi was also introduced. These letters became obsolete long before the minuscule form of writing was developed; the minuscule forms of digamma, qoppa, san, and sampi are reconstructive inferences from manuscript forms in their use for numbering. Although they respond to very robust hypotheses about the use of the spelling, they are only partially based on historical use; for the numerical value of digamma (6) it was much more common to write the combination στ or the linked form Ϛ (called stigma).

The letters digamma, qoppa, and sampi remained exclusive signs of the Ionic numeral system, with the values indicated in the table.

Classical Greek Alphabet

Athens adopted in the year 403 a. C. the eastern variant, which led to the disappearance of the other existing forms of the alphabet shortly after. By this time, Greek had adopted writing from left to right.

Post-Hellenistic development

After the classical period, the Greek alphabet evolved and the Greek uncial script developed. Greek minuscule was a later style that was used as a library script in Byzantine manuscripts from the IX and X.

The differences between uppercase and lowercase Greek letters are due to the instruments with which they were written. Originally, capital letters were carved with a chisel and hammer on stone or marble, leaving their features uneven; the skates that finish off his features were a practical and aesthetic solution to this problem. For their part, the minuscule arose from handwritten writing, which was done with pens (feathers) or brushes, hence their lines and ornaments.

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  Uncial Codex VaticanusIV)

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  Cursive of a private letter (sixteenth centuryVI)

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  Minuscula Codex Vetustissimus (sixteenth century)X)

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  Centuries comparison of the three styles

Letters

The sounds correspond to the pronunciation of ancient Greek, indicated with the signs used by the International Phonetic Alphabet; under the heading mod. The numerical values correspond to the Ionic numbering system. Note that the name of the letter in Spanish does not necessarily correspond to the sound that the letter had in ancient Greek, something to be expected due to the independent evolution that the two languages have had throughout their history.

Consonants

Allophones and digraphs

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• [,], [c] and [ç] are considered alophones of [people], [k] and [x], respectively, before previous vowels (i.e. [e] and [i]).
• Diagraphs: ← (g) (if this digit precedes the seals [e] or [i], it adopts the sound [),]),. [r], Τσ [.] and Τoch [.].

Vowels

The phenomenon whereby a large number of sounds in modern Greek tend towards the phoneme /i/ is called iotacism. Such evolution had already been completed in Byzantine Greek.

Long vowel diphthongs e [i] (ᾱι, ηι, ωι) became monophthongs (/aː/, /ɛː/, /ɔː/) and were written as ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ.

Case sensitive

An edition of the century XVI of the New Testament (Evangelio de Juan), printed in a Renaissance style by Claude Garamond.

Like Latin and other alphabetic scripts, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter, with no distinction between upper and lower case. This distinction is an innovation of the modern era, which is based on different lines of development of the forms of the letters in the earlier script.

The older forms of the letters are the uppercase versions. In addition to the upright, upright inscription forms (capitals) found in stone carvings or incised pottery, more fluid script styles adapted for handwriting on soft materials also developed during antiquity. This script has been preserved especially from papyrus manuscripts in Egypt since the Hellenistic period. Ancient script developed two distinct styles: uncial script, with carefully drawn rounded capital letters of approximately the same size, used for carefully produced literary and religious manuscripts, and cursive script, used for everyday purposes. The cursive forms came close to the style of lowercase letters, with ascenders and descenders, as well as many connecting lines and ligatures between letters.

In the IX and X, the uncial book hands were replaced by a new, more compact script style, with letterforms adapted in part from earlier italics. This minuscule style remained the dominant form of Greek handwritten in the modern era. During the Renaissance, Western printers adopted the lowercase letterforms, while modeling uppercase letters on ancient inscription forms. The orthographic practice of using case sensitivity to mark proper names, titles, etc., developed in parallel to the practice in Latin and other Western languages.

Registration		Manuscript		Modern printing
Arcaica	Classical	Uncial	Minuscule	Minuscule	Mayuscula
				α	¢Ü
				β	VAL
				γ	Interpreter
				δ	Δ
				ε	Ε
				γ	日本語
				MIL	Η
				θ	Strike
				.	ONE
				κ	Κ
				λ	..
				μ	Oh, my.
				.	.
				roga	
				?	OM
				π	Русский
				ρ
				σς	・
				Δ	Τ
				♫	YES
				φ	≈
				χ	↓
				END
				ω	Ω

Greek alphabet in physics and mathematics

It is common to use the Greek alphabet in physics and mathematics, as well as constants, signs and operations:

• π π =3,14159265358979323846...{displaystyle pi =3,14159265358979323846}
• α α β β ρ ρ {displaystyle alpha ;beta ;rho }
• Русский Русский ・ ・ {displaystyle Pi ;Sigma }

Although it is a simplified Greek alphabet, it is advisable to know the correct penmanship and recognition of this alphabet.

As well as the relative size of each letter and its position with respect to the line:

In May 2021, the World Health Organization announced that variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus would be named using letters of the Greek alphabet. The purpose of this decision was to avoid stigma and simplify communications for non-scientific audiences.

Digital encoding

During the early years of computer writing it was difficult to write the Greek alphabet. Today the most widely used systems are: the ISO-8859-7 character set, which only allows writing monotonic Greek (suitable for modern Greek), and the Unicode system, which allows writing polytonic Greek (suitable for ancient Greek and modern). There are two Unicode character ranges for the Greek alphabet: Greek and Coptic (U+0370 to U+03FF) and Extended Greek (U+1F00 to U+1FFF).