Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet
Ellinikó alfávito "Greek alphabet" in the modern Greek language
Script type	Alphabet
Time period	c. 800 BC – present[1][2]
Direction	Left-to-right
Official script	Greece Cyprus European Union
Languages	Greek
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Greek alphabet
Child systems	Anatolian Armenian Coptic Cyrillic Georgian Glagolitic Gothic Old Italic (most notably Etruscan) and thus Latin and Runic
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Grek (200), ​Greek
Unicode
Unicode alias	Greek
Unicode range	U+0370–U+03FF Greek and Coptic U+1F00–U+1FFF Greek Extended

Greek alphabet
Αα Alpha Νν Nu Ββ Beta Ξξ Xi Γγ Gamma Οο Omicron Δδ Delta Ππ Pi Εε Epsilon Ρρ Rho Ζζ Zeta Σσς Sigma Ηη Eta Ττ Tau Θθ Theta Υυ Upsilon Ιι Iota Φφ Phi Κκ Kappa Χχ Chi Λλ Lambda Ψψ Psi Μμ Mu Ωω Omega
History
Archaic local variants Ϝ Digamma Ͱ Heta Ϻ San Ϙ Koppa Ͷ Tsan Digamma Ͳ Sampi
Diacritics and other symbols
Diacritics ά ὰ ᾶ ἀ ἁ ᾱ ᾰ ϊ ᾳ σ̌ Ligatures ϗ ϛ Numerals (Attic) ϛ (6) ϟ (90) ϡ (900)
Related topics
Use as scientific symbols Orthography Romanization Cyrillization
Category
v t e

The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC.^[3][4] It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet,^[5] and is the earliest known alphabetic script to have developed distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants.^[6] In Archaic and early Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in many local variants, but, by the end of the 4th century BC, the Ionic-based Euclidean alphabet, with 24 letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard throughout the Greek-speaking world^[7] and is the version that is still used for Greek writing today.^[8]

The uppercase and lowercase forms of the 24 letters are:

Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ/ς, Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, Ω ω.

The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of several scripts, such as the Latin, Gothic, Coptic, and Cyrillic scripts.^[9] Throughout antiquity, Greek had only a single uppercase form of each letter. It was written without diacritics and with little punctuation.^[10] By the 9th century, Byzantine scribes had begun to employ the lowercase form, which they derived from the cursive styles of the uppercase letters.^[11] Sound values and conventional transcriptions for some of the letters differ between Ancient and Modern Greek usage because the pronunciation of Greek has changed significantly between the 5th century BC and today. Additionally, Modern and Ancient Greek now use different diacritics, with ancient Greek using the polytonic orthography and modern Greek keeping only the stress accent (acute) and the diaeresis.

Apart from its use in writing the Greek language, in both its ancient and its modern forms, the Greek alphabet today also serves as a source of international technical symbols and labels in many domains of mathematics, science, and other fields.