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This is a list of letters of the Greek alphabet. The definition of a Greek letter for this list is a character encoded in the Unicode standard that a has script property of "Greek" and the general category of "Letter". An overview of the distribution of Greek letters is given in Greek script in Unicode.
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]
All forms of the Greek alphabet were originally based on the shared inventory of the 22 symbols of the Phoenician alphabet, with the exception of the letter Samekh, whose Greek counterpart Xi (Ξ) was used only in a sub-group of Greek alphabets, and with the common addition of Upsilon (Υ) for the vowel /u, ū/.
The following is a Unicode collation algorithm list of Greek characters and those Greek-derived characters that are sorted alongside them. [2] [3] [4]Most of the characters of the blocks listed above are included, except for the Ancient Greek Numbers, Ancient Symbols and Ancient Greek Musical Notation.
The Greek alphabet was developed by a Greek with first-hand experience of contemporary Phoenician script. After it was established in the Greek mainland, it was exported eastwards to Phrygia, where a similar script was devised.
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 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was so active that forecasters resorted to naming storms with letters from the Greek alphabet for only the second time in history. Turns out, it was the final ...
Letters with no equivalent in the classical Greek alphabet such as heta (Ͱ & ͱ), meanwhile, usually take their nearest English equivalent (in this case, h) but are too uncommon to be listed in formal transliteration schemes. Uncommon Greek letters which have been given formal romanizations include: