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Greek alphabet

Origin

The Greek alphabet has been in continuous use for the past 2,750 years or so since about 750 BC. It was developed from the Canaanite/Phoenician alphabet and the order and names of the letters are derived from Phoenician. The original Canaanite meanings of the letter names was lost when the alphabet was adapted for Greek. For example, alpha comes for the Canaanite aleph (ox) and beta from beth (house).

At first, there were a number of different versions of the alphabet used in various different Greek cities. These local alphabets, known as epichoric, can be divided into three groups: green, blue and red. The blue group developed into the modern Greek alphabet, while the red group developed into the Etruscan alphabet, other alphabets of ancient Italy and eventually the Latin alphabet.

By the early 4th century BC, the epichoric alphabets were replaced by the eastern Ionic alphabet. The capital letters of the modern Greek alphabet are almost identical to those of the Ionic alphabet. The minuscule or lower case letters first appeared sometime after 800 AD and developed from the Byzantine minuscule script, which developed from cursive writing.

Notable features

Originally written horizontal lines either from right to left or alternating from right to left and left to right (boustophedon). Around 500 BC the direction of writing changed to horizontal lines running from left to right.
Diacritics to represent stress and breathings were added to the alphabet in around 200 BC. In 1982 the diacritics representing breathings, which were not widely used after 1976, were officially abolished by presidential decree.
The letter sigma has a special form which is used when it appears at the end of a word.
Used to write
Greek , an Indo-European language spoken by about 12 million people in Greece, Cyprus and many other countries, including Albania, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bulgaria, Canada, Djibouti, Egypt, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Jordan and Kazakhstan.