Greek alphabet Totally Explained

Everything about Greek Letter totally explained

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four 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's a writing system that uses a separate symbol for each vowel and consonant. 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.

Obsolete letters

The following letters are not part of the standard Greek alphabet, but were in use in pre-classical times in certain dialects. The letters digamma, san, qoppa, and sampi were also used in Greek numerals.

Letter	Corresponding Phoenician letter	Name			Transliteration	Pronunciation	Numeric value
Letter	Corresponding Phoenician letter	English	Early Greek	Later Greek (polytonic)	Transliteration	Pronunciation	Numeric value
Ϝ ϝ Ͷ ͷ (alternate)	Waw	Digamma	ϝαῦ	δίγαμμα	w	[w]	6
Ϻ ϻ	Tsade (position) Sin (name)	San	ϻάν	σάν	s	[s]	90
Ϟ ϟ Ϙ ϙ (alternate)	Qoph	Qoppa	ϙόππα	κόππα	q	[q]	90
Ͳ ͳ Ϡ ϡ (alternate)	Origin disputed, possibly Tsade	Sampi	δίσιγμα	σαμπῖ	ss	probably affricate, but exact value debated; [sː], [ks], [ts] are proposed	900

Digamma disappeared from the alphabet because the sound it notated, the voiced labial-velar approximant [w], had disappeared from the Ionic dialect and most of the others. It remained in use as a numeric sign denoting the number six. In this function, it was later conflated in medieval Greek handwriting with the ligature sign stigma (ϛ), which had a similar shape in its lower case form.

Sampi (also called disigma) notated a geminated affricate that later evolved to -σσ- (probably [sː]) in most dialects, and -ττ- (probably [tː]) in Attic. Its exact value is heavily discussed, but [ts] is often proposed. Its modern name is derived from its shape: (ω)σαν πι = like (the letter) pi. The order of the letters up to Τ follows that in the Phoenician or Hebrew alphabet.

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 (῀). In Ancient Greek, these accents marked 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 (῾), marking an /h/ sound at the beginning of a word, and the smooth breathing (᾽), marking the absence of an /h/ 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 a hiatus.
In 1982, the old spelling 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

Scribes made use of a number of ligatures to save space and time, in Greek as in other languages. Early Greek typefaces such as Claude Garamond's Les Grecs du Roi included a large number of ligatures, but modern typography uses none of them, except occasionally the Ȣ ligature for ου — resembling a V above an O; some modern alphabets based on the Latin alphabet use this as a letter, Ou. 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. Other ligatures include ϗ for καί, (equivalent to an ampersand) and stigma Ϛ for στ, also used as noted above to replace digamma as a numeral.

Digraphs and diphthongs

A digraph is a pair of letters used to write one sound or a combination of sounds that doesn't 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 (ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ).

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.

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.

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.

With additional letters

Several alphabets consist of the Greek alphabet supplemented with a few additional letters:

The Bactrian alphabet adds the letter Sho and was used to write the Bactrian language under the Kushan Empire (AD 65-250).

The Coptic alphabet adds eight letters derived from Demotic. It is still used today, mostly in Egypt, to write the Coptic language. Letters usually retain an uncial form different from the forms used for Greek today (compare with the forms of the Latin letters used in Gaelic script).

The Old Nubian language of Makuria (modern Sudan) adds three Coptic letters, two letters derived from Meroitic script, and a digraph of two Greek gammas used for ng.

In more modern times

Coptic (see above).

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 Bulgarian language and Macedonian language languages, have been written in Greek script. The modern South Slavic languages now use modified Cyrillic alphabets.

Aromanian (Vlach) has been written in Greek characters. There isn't 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:
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

	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
0370	Ͱ	ͱ	Ͳ	ͳ	ʹ	͵	Ͷ	ͷ			ͺ	ͻ	ͼ	ͽ	;
0380					΄	΅	Ά	·	Έ	Ή	Ί		Ό		Ύ	Ώ
0390	ΐ	Α	Β	Γ	Δ	Ε	Ζ	Η	Θ	Ι	Κ	Λ	Μ	Ν	Ξ	Ο
03A0	Π	Ρ		Σ	Τ	Υ	Φ	Χ	Ψ	Ω	Ϊ	Ϋ	ά	έ	ή	ί
03B0	ΰ	α	β	γ	δ	ε	ζ	η	θ	ι	κ	λ	μ	ν	ξ	ο
03C0	π	ρ	ς	σ	τ	υ	φ	χ	ψ	ω	ϊ	ϋ	ό	ύ	ώ	Ϗ
03D0	ϐ	ϑ	ϒ	ϓ	ϔ	ϕ	ϖ	ϗ	Ϙ	ϙ	Ϛ	ϛ	Ϝ	ϝ	Ϟ	ϟ
03E0	Ϡ	ϡ	(Coptic letters here)
03F0	ϰ	ϱ	ϲ	ϳ	ϴ	ϵ	϶	Ϸ	ϸ	Ϲ	Ϻ	ϻ	ϼ	Ͻ	Ͼ	Ͽ

Greek Extended (precomposed polytonic Greek)

	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
1F00	ἀ	ἁ	ἂ	ἃ	ἄ	ἅ	ἆ	ἇ	Ἀ	Ἁ	Ἂ	Ἃ	Ἄ	Ἅ	Ἆ	Ἇ
1F10	ἐ	ἑ	ἒ	ἓ	ἔ	ἕ			Ἐ	Ἑ	Ἒ	Ἓ	Ἔ	Ἕ
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
1F40	ὀ	ὁ	ὂ	ὃ	ὄ	ὅ			Ὀ	Ὁ	Ὂ	Ὃ	Ὄ	Ὅ
1F50	ὐ	ὑ	ὒ	ὓ	ὔ	ὕ	ὖ	ὗ		Ὑ		Ὓ		Ὕ		Ὗ
1F60	ὠ	ὡ	ὢ	ὣ	ὤ	ὥ	ὦ	ὧ	Ὠ	Ὡ	Ὢ	Ὣ	Ὤ	Ὥ	Ὦ	Ὧ
1F70	ὰ	ά	ὲ	έ	ὴ	ή	ὶ	ί	ὸ	ό	ὺ	ύ	ὼ	ώ
1F80	ᾀ	ᾁ	ᾂ	ᾃ	ᾄ	ᾅ	ᾆ	ᾇ	ᾈ	ᾉ	ᾊ	ᾋ	ᾌ	ᾍ	ᾎ	ᾏ
1F90	ᾐ	ᾑ	ᾒ	ᾓ	ᾔ	ᾕ	ᾖ	ᾗ	ᾘ	ᾙ	ᾚ	ᾛ	ᾜ	ᾝ	ᾞ	ᾟ
1FA0	ᾠ	ᾡ	ᾢ	ᾣ	ᾤ	ᾥ	ᾦ	ᾧ	ᾨ	ᾩ	ᾪ	ᾫ	ᾬ	ᾭ	ᾮ	ᾯ
1FB0	ᾰ	ᾱ	ᾲ	ᾳ	ᾴ		ᾶ	ᾷ	Ᾰ	Ᾱ	Ὰ	Ά	ᾼ	᾽	ι	᾿
1FC0	῀	῁	ῂ	ῃ	ῄ		ῆ	ῇ	Ὲ	Έ	Ὴ	Ή	ῌ	῍	῎	῏
1FD0	ῐ	ῑ	ῒ	ΐ			ῖ	ῗ	Ῐ	Ῑ	Ὶ	Ί		῝	῞	῟
1FE0	ῠ	ῡ	ῢ	ΰ	ῤ	ῥ	ῦ	ῧ	Ῠ	Ῡ	Ὺ	Ύ	Ῥ	῭	΅	`
1FF0			ῲ	ῳ	ῴ		ῶ	ῷ	Ὸ	Ό	Ὼ	Ώ	ῼ	´	῾

Combining and letter-free diacritics

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

combining	pacing	ample	escription
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".

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