Greek alphabet
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Modèle:SpecialChars Modèle:Infobox WS Modèle:Table Greekletters
The Greek alphabet (Modèle:Lang-el) is an alphabet consisting of 24 letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was the first alphabet in the narrow sense, that is, a writing system using a separate symbol for each vowel and consonant.<ref name="Blackwell">Modèle:Cite book</ref> It is the oldest alphabetic script in continuous use today. The letters were also used to represent Greek numerals, beginning in the 2nd century BC.
The Greek alphabet is descended from the Phoenician alphabet, and unrelated to Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, earlier writing systems for Greek. It has given rise to many other alphabets used in Europe and the Middle East, including the Latin alphabet.<ref name="Blackwell" /> In addition to being used for writing modern Greek, its letters are today used as symbols in mathematics and science, particle names in physics, as names of stars, in the names of fraternities and sororities, in the naming of supernumerary tropical cyclones, and for other purposes.
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History
The Greek alphabet emerged several centuries after the fall of the Mycenaean civilization and consequent abandon of its Linear B script, an early Greek writing system. Linear B is descended from Linear A, which was developed by the Minoans, whose language was probably unrelated to Greek; consequently the Minoan syllabary did not provide an ideal medium for the transliteration of the sounds of the Greek language.
The Greek alphabet we recognize today arose after those illiterate Greek Dark Ages — the period between the downfall of Mycenae (ca. 1200 BC) and the rise of Ancient Greece, which begins with the appearance of the epics of Homer, around 800 BC, and the institution of the Ancient Olympic Games in 776 BC. Its most notable change, as an adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet, is the introduction of vowel letters, without which Greek, unlike Phoenician, would be illegible.<ref name="Blackwell" />
Vowel signs were originally not used in Semitic alphabets. Whereas in the earlier West Semitic family of scripts (Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite etc.) a letter always stood for a consonant in association with an unspecified vowel or no vowel, the Greek alphabet divided the letters into two categories, consonants ("things that sound along") and vowels, where the consonant letters always had to be accompanied by vowels to create a pronounceable unit. Although the old Ugaritic alphabet did develop matres lectionis, i.e. consonant letters were used to denote vowels, they were never employed systematically.
The first vowel letters were Α (alpha), Ε (epsilon), Ι (iota), Ο (omicron), and Υ (upsilon), modifications of Semitic glottal, pharyngeal, or glide consonants that were mostly superfluous in Greek: Modèle:Unicode ('aleph), Modèle:IPA (he), Modèle:IPA (yodh), Modèle:Unicode ([[Ayin|Modèle:IPA]]), and Modèle:IPA (waw), respectively. In eastern Greek, which lacked aspiration entirely, the letter Η (eta), from the Semitic glottal consonant Modèle:IPA (heth) was also used for the long vowel Modèle:IPA, and eventually the letter Ω (omega) was introduced for a long Modèle:IPA.
Greek also introduced three new consonant letters, Φ (phi), Χ (chi) and Ψ (psi), appended to the end of the alphabet as they were developed. These consonants made up for the lack of comparable aspirates in Phoenician. In western Greek, Χ was used for Modèle:IPA and Ψ for Modèle:IPA — hence the value of the Latin letter X, derived from the western Greek alphabet. The origin of these letters is disputed.
The letter Modèle:Unicode (san) was used at variance with Σ (sigma), and by classical times the latter won out, san disappearing from the alphabet. The letters Modèle:Unicode (wau, later called digamma) and Modèle:Unicode (qoppa) also fell into disuse. The former was only needed for the western dialects and the latter was never truly needed at all. These lived on in the Ionic numeral system, however, which consisted of writing a series of letters with precise numerical values. Modèle:Unicode (sampi), apparently in a rare local glyph form from Ionia, was introduced at latter times to stand for 900. Thousands were written using a mark at the upper left ('A for 1000, etc).
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 as numbers. For the number 6, modern Greeks use an old ligature called stigma (Modèle:Polytonic, Modèle:Polytonic) instead of digamma, or ΣΤ/στ if this is not available. For 90 the modern Z-shaped qoppa forms were used: Modèle:Polytonic, Modèle:Polytonic. (Note that some web browser/font combinations will show the other qoppa here.)
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, while the latter is the basis of the present Greek alphabet. Athens originally used the Attic script for official documents such as laws and the works of Homer: this contained only the letters from alpha to upsilon, and used the letter eta for the sound "h" instead of the long "e". In 403 BC Athens adopted the Ionic script as its standard, and shortly thereafter the other versions disappeared.
By then Greek was 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, in the so-called boustrophedon style, where successive lines alternate direction.
In the Hellenistic period, Aristophanes of Byzantium introduced the process of accenting Greek letters for easier pronunciation. During the Middle Ages, the Greek scripts underwent changes paralleling those of the Latin 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 Latin long and short s.
Letter names
Each of the Phoenician letter names was a word that began with the sound represented by that letter; thus 'aleph, the word for “ox,” was adopted for the glottal stop Modèle:Unicode, bet, or “house,” for the Modèle:IPA 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, 'aleph, bet, gimel became alpha, beta, gamma. These borrowed names had no meaning in Greek except as labels for the letters. However, a few signs that were added or modified later by the Greeks do in fact have names with a meaning. For example, o mikron and o mega mean “small o” and “big o”. Similarly, e psilon and u psilon mean “plain e” and “plain u,” respectively.
Main alphabet
Below is a table listing the modern Greek letters, as well as their forms when romanized. The table also provides the equivalent Phoenician letter from which each Greek letter is derived. Pronunciations transcribed using the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Also note that the classical pronunciation given below is the reconstructed pronunciation of Attic in the late 5th and early 4th century (BC). Some of the letters had different pronunciations in pre-classical times or in non-Attic dialects. For details, see History of the Greek alphabet and Ancient Greek phonology. For details on post-classical Ancient Greek pronunciation, see Koine Greek phonology.
- For details and different transliteration systems see Romanization of Greek.
- Used only in the middle of a word.
- Used only in the end of a word.
Obsolete letters
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, stigma, san, sho, qoppa, and sampi were also used in Greek numerals.
| Letter | Corresponding Phoenician letter | Transliteration | Pronunciation | Name | Numeric value | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | Archaic Greek | Later Greek (polytonic) | |||||
| Ϝ ϝ | Image:Phoenician waw.png Waw | w | probably Modèle:IPA | Digamma | Modèle:Polytonic | Modèle:Polytonic | 6 |
| Ϛ ϛ | – | st | Modèle:IPA | Stigma | Modèle:Polytonic | Modèle:Polytonic | 6 |
| Ϻ ϻ | Image:Phoenician sade.png Tsade (position) Image:Phoenician sin.png Shin (name) | s | Modèle:IPA | San | Modèle:Polytonic | Modèle:Polytonic | 90 |
| Ϸ ϸ | Origin disputed, possibly Image:Phoenician sin.png Shin | sh | obviously fricative, but exact value discussed Modèle:IPA is proposed | Sho | Modèle:Polytonic | Modèle:Polytonic | 90 |
| Ϟ ϟ Ϙ ϙ</span> (alternate) | Image:Phoenician qof.png Qoph | q | Modèle:IPA | Qoppa | Modèle:Polytonic | Modèle:Polytonic | 90 |
| Ϡ ϡ | Origin disputed, possibly Image:Phoenician sade.png Tsade | ss | obviously fricative, but exact value discussed Modèle:IPA, Modèle:IPA, Modèle:IPA are proposed | Sampi | Modèle:Polytonic | Modèle:Polytonic | 900 |
- Digamma disappeared from the alphabet because the sound it notated had disappeared from Ionic and most other dialects.
- Stigma first appeared in medieval manuscripts.
- San should be regarded as an early variant of sigma.
- Sho was used in Bactrian language to write Modèle:IPA.
- Qoppa notated an allophone of kappa found before back vowels.[citation needed]
- Sampi notated a geminate fricative that later evolved to Modèle:Polytonic (probably Modèle:IPA) in most dialects, and Modèle:Polytonic (probably Modèle:IPA) in Attic. Its exact value is heavily discussed, but Modèle:IPA is often proposed.
The order of the letters up to the letter Τ follows that in the Phoenician or Hebrew alphabet. The complete sequence including the obsolete letters is as follows:
For those without proper Unicode font, graphical version of this sequence, but with all variants added is provided:
Image:Greek alphabet extended.png
Digraphs and diphthongs
A digraph is a pair of letters used to write one sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters in sequence. The orthography of Greek includes several digraphs, including various pairs of vowel letters that used to be pronounced as diphthongs but have been shortened to monophthongs in pronunciation. Many of these are characteristic developments of modern Greek, but some were already present in Classical Greek. None of them is regarded as a letter of the alphabet.
During the Byzantine period, it became customary to write the silent iota in digraphs as an iota subscript (Modèle:Polytonic).
Diacritics
In the polytonic orthography traditionally used for ancient Greek, vowels can carry diacritics, namely accents and breathings. The accents are the acute accent (´), the grave accent (`), and the circumflex accent (Modèle:Unicode). In Ancient Greek, these accents mark different forms of the pitch accent on a vowel. By the end of the Roman period, pitch accent had evolved into a stress accent, and in later Greek all of these accents marked the stressed vowel. The breathings are the rough breathing (Modèle:Unicode), marking an Modèle:IPA sound at the beginning of a word, and the smooth breathing (Modèle:Unicode), marking the absence of an Modèle:IPA sound at the beginning of a word. The letter rho (ρ), although not a vowel, always carries a rough breathing when it begins a word. Another diacritic used in Greek is the diaeresis, indicating the separate pronunciation of two adjacent vowels.
In 1982, the old system, known as "polytonic", was simplified to become the "monotonic" system, which is now official in Greece. The accents have been reduced to one, the tonos, and the breathings were abolished.
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). In printed 17th-century English works, there sometimes occurs a ligature of Ο with ς (a small sigma inside a capital omicron) for a terminal ος. See also ϗ, Modèle:Polytonic.
Use of the Greek alphabet for other languages
The primary use of the Greek alphabet has always been to write the Greek language. However, at various times and in various places, it has also been used to write other languages.<ref>see S. Macrakis, 1996 for bibliography</ref>
Early examples
- Most of the alphabets of Asia Minor, in use c. 800-300 BC to write languages like Lydian and Phrygian, were the early Greek alphabet with only slight modifications — as were the original Old Italic alphabets.
- 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.
- Some Narbonese Gaulish inscriptions in southern France use the Greek alphabet (c. 300 BC).
- The Hebrew text of the Bible was written in Greek letters in Origen's Hexapla.
- The Bactrian language was written in Greek script under the Kushan Empire (AD 65-250).<ref>New Findings in Ancient Afghanistan — the Bactrian documents discovered from the Northern Hindu-Kush, lecture by Prof. Nicholas Sims-Williams (University of London)</ref>
- The Old Nubian language of Makuria (modern Sudan) used the Greek alphabet until about AD 1400, augmented with three Coptic letters, two letters derived from Meroitic script, and a digraph of two Greek gammas used for ng.
- An 8th century Arabic fragment preserves a text in the Greek alphabet.
- An Old Ossetic inscription of the 10-12c CE found in Arxyz, the oldest known attestation of an Ossetic language.
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.<ref>"Dva balgarski rakopisa s gracko pismo", Balgarski starini 6, 1920; André Mazon and André Vaillant, L'Evangelaire de Kulakia, un parler slave de Bas-Vardar, Bibliothèque d'études baklaniques 6, 1938; Jürgen Kristophson, "Das Lexicon Tetraglosson des Daniil Moschopolitis", Zeitschrift für Balkanologie 9:11; Max Demeter Peyfuss, Die Druckerei von Moschopolis, 1731-1769: Buchdruck und Heiligenverehrung in Erzbistum Achrida, Wiener Archiv für Geschichte des Slawentums und Osteuropas 13, 1989.</ref>
- 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.
Derived alphabets
The Greek alphabet gave rise to various others:<ref name="Blackwell" />
- The Latin alphabet, an offshoot of the archaic western form of the Greek alphabet;
- The Coptic alphabet, an uncial form of the Greek alphabet augmented with several new letters derived from Demotic still used today, mostly in Egypt.
- The Gothic alphabet, devised in Late Antiquity to write the Gothic language;
- The Glagolitic alphabet, devised in the Middle Ages for writing Slavic languages;
- The Cyrillic alphabet, which replaced the Glagolitic alphabet shortly afterwards;
It is also considered a possible ancestor of the Armenian alphabet, and had an influence on the development of the Georgian alphabet.
Greek encodings
A variety of encodings have been used for Greek online, many of them documented in RFC 1947.
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 text rendering engines 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: Modèle:Polytonic.
For extended discussion of problematic Greek letter forms in Unicode see Greek Unicode Issues.
There are 2 main blocks of Greek characters in Unicode. The first is "Greek and Coptic" (U+0370 to 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 alphabet. 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 to U+1FFF).
Greek and Coptic
Greek Extended (precomposed polytonic Greek)
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 | ( Modèle:Polytonic ) | "varia / grave accent" |
| U+0301 | U+00B4, U+0384 | ( Modèle:Polytonic ) | "oxia / tonos / acute accent" |
| U+0304 | U+00AF | ( Modèle:Unicode ) | "macron" |
| U+0306 | U+02D8 | ( Modèle:Unicode ) | "vrachy / breve" |
| U+0308 | U+00A8 | ( Modèle:Unicode ) | "dialytika / diaeresis" |
| U+0313 | ( Modèle:Unicode ) | "psili / comma above" (spiritus lenis) | |
| U+0314 | ( Modèle:Unicode ) | "dasia / reversed comma above" (spiritus asper) | |
| U+0342 | ( Modèle:Unicode ) | "perispomeni" (circumflex) | |
| U+0343 | ( Modèle:Unicode ) | "koronis" (= U+0313) | |
| U+0344 | U+0385 | ( Modèle:Unicode ) | "dialytika tonos" (deprecated, = U+0308 U+0301) |
| U+0345 | U+037A | ( Modèle:Unicode ) | "ypogegrammeni / iota subscript". |
Bibliography
- Modèle:Cite book
- Modèle:Cite journal
- Modèle:Cite book — A popular history, more about Greek roots in English than about the alphabet itself.
- Modèle:Cite book
- Modèle:Cite book — 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.
- Modèle:Cite book
- Modèle:Cite book — Includes discussion of the Greek alphabet used for languages other than Greek.
Notes
See also
- Ancient Greek phonology
- Arvanitic alphabet
- Cumae alphabet
- English pronunciation of Greek letters
- Greek Font Society
- Greek letters used in mathematics, science, and engineering
- Greeklish
- Greek numerals, a system of representing numbers using letters of the Greek alphabet
- List of Greek words with English derivatives
- List of XML and HTML character entity references
- Monotonic orthography
- Phoenician alphabet
- Polytonic orthography
- Romanization of Greek
External links
- Examples of Greek handwriting
- Greek Unicode Issues
- Unicode 5.0 test for Greek Unicode range
- Unicode FAQ - Greek Language and Script
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