Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Greek alphabet was developed during the Iron Age, centuries after the loss of Linear B, the syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek until the Late Bronze Age collapse and Greek Dark Age. This article concentrates on the development of the alphabet before the modern codification of the standard Greek alphabet.
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. [2] [3] It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, [4] and is the earliest known alphabetic script to have developed distinct letters for consonants as well as vowels. [5]
As this fortunate development only provided for five or six (depending on dialect) of the twelve Greek vowels, the Greeks eventually created digraphs and other modifications, such as ei, ou, and o—which became omega—or in some cases simply ignored the deficiency, as in long a, i, u. [20] Several varieties of the Greek alphabet developed.
In addition, the red alphabet also introduced letters for the aspirates, Φ = /pʰ/ and Ψ = /kʰ/. Note that the use of Χ in the "red" set corresponds to the letter "X" in Latin, while it differs from the later standard Greek alphabet, where Χ stands for /kʰ/, and Ψ stands for /ps/. Only Φ for /pʰ/ is common to all non-green alphabets.
Ancient epichoric variants of the Greek alphabet from Euboea, Ionia, Athens, and Corinth comparing to modern Greek Greek has been written in the Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels.
The Glagolitic alphabet is believed to have been created by Saints Cyril and Methodius, while the Cyrillic alphabet was created by Clement of Ohrid, their disciple. They feature many letters that appear to have been borrowed from or influenced by Greek and Hebrew. [41]
The orthography of the Greek language ultimately has its roots in the adoption of the Greek alphabet in the 9th century BC. Some time prior to that, one early form of Greek, Mycenaean, was written in Linear B, although there was a lapse of several centuries (the Greek Dark Ages) between the time Mycenaean stopped being written and the time when the Greek alphabet came into use.
The Latin alphabet was derived from Old Italic (originally derived from a form of the Greek alphabet), used for Etruscan and other languages. The origin of the Runic alphabet is disputed: the main theories are that it evolved either from the Latin alphabet itself, some early Old Italic alphabet via the Alpine scripts, or the Greek alphabet ...