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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 systematically write vowels as well as consonants . [ 5 ]
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.
Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used in the Iliad, Odyssey, and Homeric Hymns. It is a literary dialect of Ancient Greek consisting mainly of an archaic form of Ionic , with some Aeolic forms, a few from Arcadocypriot , and a written form influenced by Attic . [ 1 ]
Another feature of Greek writing in books printed today is that when there is a long diphthong ending in /i/, as in ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ (āi, ēi, ōi) /aːi̯ ɛːi̯ ɔːi̯/, the iota is written under the long vowel, as in τύχῃ (túkhēi) "by chance".
Boustrophedon (/ ˌ b uː s t r ə ˈ f iː d ən / [1]) is a style of writing in which alternate lines of writing are reversed, with letters also written in reverse, mirror-style. This is in contrast to modern European languages, where lines always begin on the same side, usually the left.
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Greek is a largely synthetic (inflectional) language. Although the complexity of the inflectional system has been somewhat reduced in comparison to Ancient Greek, there is also a considerable degree of continuity in the morphological system, and Greek still has a somewhat archaic character compared with other Indo-European languages of Europe. [8]
In Ancient Greek, the diaeresis (Greek: διαίρεσις or διαλυτικά, dialytiká, 'distinguishing') – ϊ – appears on the letters ι and υ to show that a pair of vowel letters is pronounced separately, rather than as a diphthong or as a digraph for a simple vowel.