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Greek alphabet=الأبجدية
اليونانية
WIKIPEDIA
The Greek alphabet emerged in the late 9th century BC or early 8th
century BC
[12]
Another, unrelated writing system,
Linear
B, had been in use to write the Greek language during the earlier
Mycenean
period, but the two systems are separated from each other by a hiatus
of several centuries, the so-called
Greek
Dark Ages. The Greeks adopted the alphabet from the earlier
Phoenician
alphabet, a member of the family of closely related
West
Semitic scripts. The most notable change made in adapting the
Phoenician system to Greek was the introduction of vowel letters.
According to a definition used by some modern authors, this feature
makes Greek the first "alphabet" in the narrow sense,
[3]
as distinguished from the purely consonantal alphabets of the Semitic
type, which according to this terminology are called "abjads".
[13]
Greek initially took over all of the 22 letters of Phoenician.
Five of them were reassigned to denote vowel sounds: the glide
consonants /j/ (
yodh)
and /w/ (
waw)
were used for [i] (Ι,
iota)
and [u] (Υ,
upsilon)
respectively; the
glottal
stop consonant /ʔ/ (
'aleph)
was used for [a] (Α,
alpha);
the
pharyngeal
/ʕ/ (
ʿayin)
was turned into [o] (Ο,
omicron);
and the letter for /h/ (
he)
was turned into [e] (Ε,
epsilon).
A doublet of waw was also borrowed as a consonant for [w] (Ϝ,
digamma). In
addition, the Phoenician letter for the emphatic glottal /ħ/ (
heth)
was borrowed in two different functions by different dialects of
Greek: as a letter for /h/ (Η,
heta)
by those dialects that had such a sound, and as an additional vowel
letter for the long /ɛː/ (Η,
eta)
by those dialects that lacked the consonant. Eventually, a seventh
vowel letter for the long /ɔː/ (Ω,
omega)
was introduced.
Greek also introduced three new consonant letters for its
aspirated plosive sounds and consonant clusters: Φ (
phi)
for /pʰ/, Χ (
chi)
for /kʰ/ and Ψ (
psi)
for /ps/. In western Greek variants, Χ was instead used for /ks/ and
Ψ for /kʰ/ The origin of these letters is a matter of some debate.
The
Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write
the
Greek
language since the 8th century BC.
[2]
It was derived from the earlier
Phoenician
alphabet, and was in turn the ancestor of numerous other European
and Middle Eastern scripts, including
Cyrillic
and
Latin.
[3]
Apart from its use in writing the Greek language, both in its ancient
and its modern forms, the Greek alphabet today also serves as a
source of
technical
symbols and labels in many domains of mathematics, science and
other fields.
In its classical
and modern form, the alphabet has 24 letters, ordered from
alpha
to
omega. Like Latin
and Cyrillic, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter;
it developed the
distinction
between upper case and lower case in parallel with Latin during
the modern era. (The letter
sigma
⟨Σ⟩ has two different lowercase forms, ⟨σ⟩ and ⟨ς⟩,
with ⟨ς⟩ being used in word-final position
[4]
and ⟨σ⟩ elsewhere.)
Sound values and conventional transcriptions for some of the
letters differ between
Ancient
Greek and
Modern
Greek usage, owing to phonological changes in the language.
In traditional ("polytonic") Greek orthography, vowel
letters can be combined with several
diacritics,
including accent marks, so-called "breathing" marks, and
the
iota
subscript. In common present-day usage for Modern Greek since the
1980s, this system has been simplified to a so-called "monotonic"
convention.
Derived alphabets
The earliest Etruscan
abecedarium,
from Marsiliana d'Albegna, still almost identical with contemporary
archaic Greek alphabets
The Greek alphabet
was the model for various others:
[3]
-
-
-
- The Cyrillic
script, which replaced the Glagolitic alphabet shortly
afterwards
It is also considered a possible
ancestor of the
Armenian
alphabet, which in turn influenced the development of the
Georgian
alphabet.
[17]
An 8th-century Arabic
fragment preserves a text in the Greek alphabet.
Etymology
The English word
alphabet came into
Middle English from the
Late Latin word
alphabetum, which in turn originated in the
Greek ἀλφάβητος (
alphabētos), from
alpha and
beta, the first two letters of the
Greek alphabet.
[4] Alpha and
beta in turn came from the first two letters of the
Phoenician alphabet, and originally meant
ox and
house respectively.
History of the Greek language
(see also: Greek alphabet)
Proto-Greek (c. 3000–1600 BC)
|
Mycenaean (c. 1600–1100 BC)
|
Ancient Greek (c. 800–330 BC) Dialects: Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, Attic-Ionic, Doric, Locrian, Pamphylian, Homeric Greek, Macedonian
|
Koine Greek (c. 330 BC–330)
|
Medieval Greek (330–1453)
|
Modern Greek (from 1453) Dialects: Calabrian, Cappadocian, Cheimarriotika, Cretan, Cypriot, Demotic, Griko, Katharevousa, Pontic, Tsakonian, Maniot, Yevanic
*Dates (beginning with Ancient Greek) from Wallace, D. B. (1996). Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. p. 12. ISBN 0310218950. |
