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When alphabetic writing began, with the early Greek alphabet, the letter forms were similar but not identical to Phoenician, and vowels were added to the consonant-only Phoenician letters. There were also distinct variants of the writing system in different parts of Greece, primarily in how those Phoenician characters that did not have an exact ...
Phoenician hē had been used as a mater lectionis for both [a] and [e] in addition to [h], but in Greek it was restricted to [e], following the acrophonic principle; its value [a] was instead written with the letter ʼāleph, while Greek [h] was written with ḥeth. All Phoenician letters had been acrophonic, and they remained so in Greek.
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 vowels as well as consonants. [5]
The letter eta (Η, , originally called hēta) had two different functions, both derived from the name of its Phoenician model, hēth: the majority of Greek dialects continued to use it for the consonant /h/, similar to its Phoenician value ([ħ]).
Together with Hebrew aleph, Greek alpha and Latin A, it is descended from Phoenician ʾāleph, from a reconstructed Proto-Canaanite ʾalp "ox". Alif has the highest frequency out of all 28 letters in the Arabic abjad .
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek eta Η, Etruscan, Latin H, and Cyrillic И. While H is a consonant in the Latin alphabet, the Greek and Cyrillic equivalents represent vowel sounds, though the letter was originally a consonant in Greek and this usage later evolved into the rough breathing character. [1]
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Iota (Ι), [1] Latin I and J, Cyrillic І, Coptic iauda (Ⲓ) and Gothic eis. The term yod is often used to refer to the speech sound , a palatal approximant, even in discussions of languages not written in Semitic abjads, as in phonological phenomena such as English "yod-dropping".
Theta (UK: / ˈ θ iː t ə /, US: / ˈ θ eɪ t ə /) uppercase Θ or ϴ; lowercase θ [note 1] or ϑ; Ancient Greek: θῆτα thē̂ta [tʰɛ̂ːta]; Modern: θήτα thī́ta) is the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, derived from the Phoenician letter Teth 𐤈.