Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet
Script type	Alphabet
Time period	c. 800 BC – present
Direction	left-to-right
Languages	Greek
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Greek alphabet
Child systems	Gothic Glagolitic Cyrillic Coptic Armenian Old Italic Latin Georgian
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Grek (200), ​Greek
Unicode
Unicode alias	Greek
Unicode range	U+0370–U+03FF Greek and Coptic U+1F00–U+1FFF Greek Extended

The Greek alphabet is a writing system that has 24 letters. It is used to write the Greek language. Greek letters are also frequently used in science and mathematics to represent various values or variables.^[1][2] Most letters in the Greek alphabet have an equivalent in the English language.^[3]

The twenty-four letters (each in uppercase and lowercase forms) are:

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, Σ σ or ς, Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, and Ω ω.

The Greek alphabet is thought to be where most European alphabets came from.^[4][5] The alphabet was borrowed from the Phoenician alphabet around the 10th century BC, with many changes to make it fit the Greek language.

Some of the Phoenician letters for sounds not used in Greek were turned into vowels. The Phoenicians wrote their abjad without any vowels, as with Hebrew and Arabic to the present day. Obviously, their peoples knew how to say the words, so that worked well for them. The Greek addition of vowels was better for countries where it might be a second language.

The Greek change made reading easier for trading with other cultures. In general, Indo-European languages did not use consonant-based roots (where the word's central meaning is based on the consonants) like those in Semitic languages such as Phoenician, Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic.

1. ↑ "Greek/Hebrew/Latin-based Symbols in Mathematics". Math Vault. 2020-03-20. Retrieved 2020-10-02.
2. ↑ "Greek alphabet letters & symbols (α,β,γ,δ,ε,...)". www.rapidtables.com. Retrieved 2020-10-02.
3. ↑ "The Greek Alphabet". web.mit.edu. Retrieved 2020-10-02.
4. ↑ Coulmas, Florian 1996. The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-21481-6
5. ↑ Daniels, Peter T. & Bright, William 1996. The World's writing systems. Oxford University Press.