Greek alphabet

Template:Short description Template:Pp-semi-indef Template:Pp-move Template:Infobox writing system Template:Greek Alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as well as consonants. 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 and is the version that is still used for Greek writing today.Template:Sfn

The uppercase and lowercase forms of the 24 letters are:

Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang.

The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of several scripts, such as the Latin, Gothic, Coptic, and Cyrillic scripts.Template:Sfn Throughout antiquity, Greek had only a single uppercase form of each letter. It was written without diacritics and with little punctuation.Template:Sfn By the 9th century, Byzantine scribes had begun to employ the lowercase form, which they derived from the cursive styles of the uppercase letters. 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 the present. 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.

Letters

Sound values

Template:MainTemplate:Further In both Ancient and Modern Greek, the letters of the Greek alphabet have fairly stable and consistent symbol-to-sound mappings, making pronunciation of words largely predictable. Ancient Greek spelling was generally near-phonemic. For a number of letters, sound values differ considerably between Ancient and Modern Greek, because their pronunciation has followed a set of systematic phonological shifts that affected the language in its post-classical stages.

Letter Name Ancient pronunciation Modern pronunciation Template:Smaller Template:Smaller Template:Smaller Template:Smaller Template:Lang alpha, Template:Wikt-lang Short: Template:IPAblink Long: Template:IPAblink Short: similar to a as in English hat Long: a as in English father Template:IPAblink a as in American English father, but short Template:Lang beta, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink b as in English better Template:IPAblink v as in English vote Template:Lang gamma, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink Template:IPAblink when used before Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, and possibly Template:Lang g as in English get, ng as in English sing when used before Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, and possibly Template:Lang Template:IPAblink before Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink; Template:IPAblink before Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink; Template:IPAblink ~ Template:IPAblink g as in Spanish lago; Similar to y as in English yellow; ng as in English long; ñ as in Spanish año Template:Lang delta, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink d as in English delete Template:IPAblink th as in English then Template:Lang epsilon, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink ea as in Scottish English great é as in French été Similar to ay as in English overlay, but without pronouncing y. Template:Lang zeta, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPA, or possibly Template:IPAblink sd as in English wisdom, or possibly dz as in English adzeTemplate:Refn Template:IPAblink z as in English zoo Template:Lang eta, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink e as in English net, but long ai as in English fairy ê as in French tête Template:IPAblink i as in English machine, but short Template:Lang theta, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink t as in English topTemplate:Refn Template:IPAblink th as in English thin Template:Lang iota, Template:Wikt-lang Short: Template:IPAblink Long: Template:IPAblink Short: i as in French vite, Long: i as in English machine Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink i as in English machine, but short Template:Lang kappa, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink k as in English, but completely unaspirated as in asking Template:IPAblink before Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink; Template:IPAblink before Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink k as in English make; q as in French qui Template:Lang lambda, lamda, labda, Template:Wikt-langTemplate:Refn Template:IPAblink l as in English lantern Template:Lang mu, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink m as in English music Template:Lang nu, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink n as in English net Template:Lang xi, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPA x as in English fox Template:Lang omicron, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink o as in German Template:Lang, similar to British English call ô as in French tôt Template:Lang pi, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink Unaspirated p as in English spot Template:Lang rho, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink ~ Template:IPAblink rr as in Spanish Template:Lang; r as in Spanish Template:Lang Template:LangTemplate:Refn sigma, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink Template:IPAblink before Template:Lang, Template:Lang, or Template:Lang s as in English soft s as in English muse when used before Template:Lang, Template:Lang, or Template:Lang Template:Lang tau, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink Unaspirated t as in English stoke Template:Lang upsilon, Template:Wikt-lang Short: Template:IPAblink Long: Template:IPAblink Short: u as in French lune, ü as in German Brüder Long: u as in French ruse Template:IPAblink i as in English machine, but short Template:Lang phi, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink p as in English potTemplate:Refn Template:IPAblink f as in English five Template:Lang chi, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink c as in English catTemplate:Refn Template:IPAblink before Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink; Template:IPAblink before Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink ch as in Scottish loch; h as in English hue Template:Lang psi, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPA ps as in English lapse Template:Lang omega, Template:Wikt-lang Template:IPAblink aw as in English sawTemplate:Refn Template:IPAblink o as in German Template:Lang, similar to British English call

Examples

Notes

Among consonant letters, all letters that denoted voiced plosive consonants (Template:IPA) and aspirated plosives (Template:IPA) in Ancient Greek stand for corresponding fricative sounds in Modern Greek. The correspondences are as follows:

	Former voiced plosives			Former aspirates
	Letter	Ancient	Modern	Letter	Ancient	Modern
Labial	Template:Lang	Template:IPAslink	Template:IPAslink	Template:Lang	Template:IPAslink	Template:IPAslink
Dental	Template:Lang	Template:IPAslink	Template:IPAslink	Template:Lang	Template:IPAslink	Template:IPAslink
Dorsal	Template:Lang	Template:IPAslink	Template:IPAblink ~ Template:IPAblink	Template:Lang	Template:IPAslink	Template:IPAblink ~ Template:IPAblink

Among the vowel symbols, Modern Greek sound values reflect the radical simplification of the vowel system of post-classical Greek, merging multiple formerly distinct vowel phonemes into a much smaller number. This leads to several groups of vowel letters denoting identical sounds today. Modern Greek orthography remains true to the historical spellings in most of these cases. As a consequence, the spellings of words in Modern Greek are often not predictable from the pronunciation alone, while the reverse mapping, from spelling to pronunciation, is usually regular and predictable.

The following vowel letters and digraphs are involved in the mergers:

Letter	Ancient	Modern
Template:Lang	Template:IPA link	> Template:IPA link
Template:Lang	Template:IPA link(Template:IPA)
Template:Lang	Template:IPA
Template:Lang	Template:IPA link(Template:IPA) > Template:IPA link
Template:Lang	Template:IPA > Template:IPA link
Template:Lang	Template:IPA > Template:IPA link
Template:Lang	Template:IPA link	> Template:IPA link
Template:Lang	Template:IPA link
Template:Lang	Template:IPA link	> Template:IPA link
Template:Lang	Template:IPA

Modern Greek speakers typically use the same, modern symbol–sound mappings in reading Greek of all historical stages. In other countries, students of Ancient Greek may use a variety of conventional approximations of the historical sound system in pronouncing Ancient Greek.

Digraphs and letter combinations

Several letter combinations have special conventional sound values different from those of their single components. Among them are several digraphs of vowel letters that formerly represented diphthongs but are now monophthongized. In addition to the four mentioned above (Template:Angbr, pronounced Template:IPA and Template:Angbr, pronounced Template:IPA), there is also Template:Angbr, and Template:Angbr, pronounced Template:IPA. The Ancient Greek diphthongs Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr are pronounced Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA in Modern Greek. In some environments, they are devoiced to Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA. The Modern Greek consonant combinations Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr stand for Template:IPA and Template:IPA (or Template:IPA and Template:IPA); Template:Angbr stands for Template:IPA and Template:Angbr stands for Template:IPA. In addition, both in Ancient and Modern Greek, the letter Template:Angbr, before another velar consonant, stands for the velar nasal Template:IPA; thus Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr are pronounced like English Template:Angbr like in the word finger (not like in the word thing). In analogy to Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr is also used to stand for Template:IPA before vowels Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA, and Template:IPA before Template:IPA and Template:IPA. There are also the combinations Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr.

Combination	Pronunciation	Devoiced pronunciation
Template:Angbr	Template:IPAblink	–
Template:Angbr	Template:IPA	Template:IPA
Template:Angbr	Template:IPA	Template:IPA
Template:Angbr	Template:IPA	Template:IPA
Template:Angbr	Template:IPA or Template:IPA	–
Template:Angbr	Template:IPA or Template:IPA	–
Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr	Template:IPA, [ɟ] or [ŋɡ], [ŋɟ]	–
Template:Angbr	Template:IPAblink	–
Template:Angbr	Template:IPAblink	–
Template:Angbr in Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr	Template:IPAblink	–

Diacritics

Template:Main Template:Multiple image In the polytonic orthography traditionally used for ancient Greek and katharevousa, the stressed vowel of each word carries one of three accent marks: either the acute accent (Template:Big), the grave accent (Template:Big), or the circumflex accent (Template:Big or Template:Big). These signs were originally designed to mark different forms of the phonological pitch accent in Ancient Greek. By the time their use became conventional and obligatory in Greek writing, in late antiquity, pitch accent was evolving into a single stress accent, and thus the three signs have not corresponded to a phonological distinction in actual speech ever since. In addition to the accent marks, every word-initial vowel must carry either of two so-called "breathing marks": the rough breathing (Template:Big), marking an Template:IPA sound at the beginning of a word, or the smooth breathing (Template:Big), marking its absence. The letter rho (ρ), although not a vowel, also carries rough breathing in a word-initial position. If a rho was geminated within a word, the first Template:Lang always had the smooth breathing and the second the rough breathing (Template:Lang) leading to the transliteration Template:Tlit.

The vowel letters Template:Angbr carry an additional diacritic in certain words, the so-called iota subscript, which has the shape of a small vertical stroke or a miniature Template:Angbr below the letter. This iota represents the former offglide of what were originally long diphthongs, Template:Angbr (i.e. Template:IPA), which became monophthongized during antiquity.

Use of diaeresis in the word Template:Tlit indicating a vowel hiatus. The acute accent is absent in the upper case.

Another diacritic used in Greek is the diaeresis (Template:Big), indicating a hiatus.

This system of diacritics was first developed by the scholar Aristophanes of Byzantium (Template:Circa), who worked at the Musaeum in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC.Template:Sfn Aristophanes of Byzantium also was the first to divide poems into lines, rather than writing them like prose, and also introduced a series of signs for textual criticism.Template:Sfn In 1982, a new, simplified orthography, known as "monotonic", was adopted for official use in Modern Greek by the Greek state. It uses only a single accent mark, the acute (also known in this context as Template:Tlit, i.e. simply 'accent'), marking the stressed syllable of polysyllabic words, and occasionally the diaeresis to distinguish diphthongal from digraph readings in pairs of vowel letters, making this monotonic system very similar to the accent mark system used in Spanish. The polytonic system is still conventionally used for writing Ancient Greek, while in some book printing and generally in the usage of conservative writers it can still also be found in use for Modern Greek.

Although it is not a diacritic, the comma has a similar function as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing Template:Wikt-lang (Template:Tlit, 'whatever') from Template:Wikt-lang (Template:Tlit, 'that').

Romanization

Template:Main There are many different methods of rendering Greek text or Greek names in the Latin script.Template:Sfn The form in which classical Greek names are conventionally rendered in English goes back to the way Greek loanwords were incorporated into Latin in antiquity.Template:Sfn In this system, Template:Angbr is replaced with Template:Angbr, the diphthongs Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr are rendered as Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr (or Template:Angbr); and Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr are simplified to Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr.Template:Sfn Smooth breathing marks are usually ignored and rough breathing marks are usually rendered as the letter Template:Angbr.Template:Sfn In modern scholarly transliteration of Ancient Greek, Template:Angbr will usually be rendered as Template:Angbr, and the vowel combinations Template:Angbr as Template:Angbr.Template:Sfn The letters Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr are generally rendered as Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr; Template:Angbr as either Template:Angbr or Template:Angbr; and word-initial Template:Angbr as Template:Angbr.Template:Sfn

Transcription conventions for Modern GreekTemplate:Sfn differ widely, depending on their purpose, on how close they stay to the conventional letter correspondences of Ancient Greek-based transcription systems, and to what degree they attempt either an exact letter-by-letter transliteration or rather a phonetically based transcription.Template:Sfn Standardized formal transcription systems have been defined by the International Organization for Standardization (as ISO 843),Template:Sfn by the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, by the Library of Congress, and others.

Letter	Traditional Latin transliterationTemplate:Sfn
Template:Lang	A a
Template:Lang	B b
Template:Lang	G g
Template:Lang	D d
Template:Lang	E e
Template:Lang	Z z
Template:Lang	Ē ē
Template:Lang	Th th
Template:Lang	I i
Template:Lang	C c, K k
Template:Lang	L l
Template:Lang	M m
Template:Lang	N n
Template:Lang	X x
Template:Lang	O o
Template:Lang	P p
Template:Lang	R r, Rh rh
Template:Lang/ς	S s
Template:Lang	T t
Template:Lang	Y y, U u
Template:Lang	Ph ph
Template:Lang	Ch ch, Kh kh
Template:Lang	Ps ps
Template:Lang	Ō ō

History

Origins

Dipylon inscription, one of the oldest preserved inscriptions in the Greek alphabet, Template:Circa

During the Mycenaean period, between roughly the 16th and 12th centuries BC, a script called Linear B was used to write the earliest attested form of the Greek language, known as Mycenaean Greek. This writing system, unrelated to the Greek alphabet, last appeared in the 13th century BC.Template:Sfn Inscription written in the Greek alphabet begin to emerge from the 8th century BC onward. While early samples of the Greek alphabet date from at least 775 BC, the oldest known substantial and comprehensible Greek inscriptions, such as those on the Dipylon vase, the cup of Nestor and cup of Acesander, date from Template:Circa/30 BC. It is accepted that the introduction of the alphabet occurred some time prior to these inscriptions. While earlier dates have been proposed, the Greek alphabet is commonly held to have originated some time in the late 9th or early 8th century BC, conventionally around 800 BC.

Surviving fragments of the Nestor's cup inscription juxtaposed with the proposed restoration, Template:Circa

The period between the use of the two writing systems, Linear B and the Greek alphabet, during which no Greek texts are attested, is known as the Greek Dark Ages.Template:Sfn The Greeks adopted the alphabet from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, one of the closely related scripts used for the West Semitic languages, calling it Template:Lang 'Phoenician letters'. However, the Phoenician alphabet was limited to consonants. When it was adopted for writing Greek, certain consonants were adapted in order to express vowels. The use of both vowels and consonants makes Greek the first alphabet in the narrow sense, as distinguished from the abjads used in Semitic languages, which have letters only for consonants.Template:Sfn

Early Greek alphabet on pottery in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens

Greek initially took over all of the 22 letters of Phoenician. Five were reassigned to denote vowel sounds: the glide consonants Template:IPA (yodh) and Template:IPA (waw) were used for [i] (Ι, iota) and [u] (Υ, upsilon); the glottal stop consonant Template:IPA (aleph) was used for [a] (Α, alpha); the pharyngeal Template:IPA (ʿayin) was turned into [o] (Ο, omicron); and the letter for Template:IPA (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 Template:IPA (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 Template:IPA (Η, eta) by those dialects that lacked the consonant. Eventually, a seventh vowel letter for the long Template:IPA (Ω, omega) was introduced. Greek also introduced three new consonant letters for its aspirated plosive sounds and consonant clusters: Φ (phi) for Template:IPA, Χ (chi) for Template:IPA and Ψ (psi) for Template:IPA. In western Greek variants, Χ was instead used for Template:IPA and Ψ for Template:IPA. The origin of these letters is a matter of some debate.

Phoenician			Greek
	aleph	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Α	alpha	Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink
	beth	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Β	beta	Template:IPAslink
	gimel	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Γ	gamma	Template:IPAslink
	daleth	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Δ	delta	Template:IPAslink
	he	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Ε	epsilon	Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink
	waw	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Ϝ	(digamma)	Template:IPAslink
	zayin	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Ζ	zeta	[zd](?)
	heth	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Η	eta	Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink
	teth	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Θ	theta	Template:IPAslink
	yodh	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Ι	iota	Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink
	kaph	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Κ	kappa	Template:IPAslink
	lamedh	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Λ	lambda	Template:IPAslink
	mem	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Μ	mu	Template:IPAslink
	nun	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Ν	nu	Template:IPAslink

Phoenician			Greek
	samekh	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Ξ	xi	Template:IPA
	ʿayin	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Ο	omicron	Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink
	pe	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Π	pi	Template:IPAslink
	ṣade	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Ϻ	(san)	Template:IPAslink
	qoph	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Ϙ	(koppa)	Template:IPAslink
	reš	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Ρ	rho	Template:IPAslink
	šin	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Σ	sigma	Template:IPAslink
	taw	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Τ	tau	Template:IPAslink
	(waw)	Template:IPAslink	Template:GrGl	Υ	upsilon	Template:IPAslink, Template:IPAslink
–			Template:GrGl	Φ	phi	Template:IPAslink
–			Template:GrGl	Χ	chi	Template:IPAslink
–			Template:GrGl	Ψ	psi	Template:IPA
–			Template:GrGl	Ω	omega	Template:IPAslink

Three of the original Phoenician letters dropped out of use before the alphabet took its classical shape: the letter Ϻ (san), which had been in competition with Σ (sigma) denoting the same phoneme /s/; the letter Ϙ (qoppa), which was redundant with Κ (kappa) for /k/, and Ϝ (digamma), whose sound value /w/ dropped out of the spoken language before or during the classical period.

Greek was originally written predominantly from right to left, just like Phoenician, but scribes could freely alternate between directions. For a time, a writing style with alternating right-to-left and left-to-right lines (called boustrophedon, literally 'ox-turning', after the manner of an ox ploughing a field) was common, until in the classical period the left-to-right writing direction became the norm. Individual letter shapes were mirrored depending on the writing direction of the current line.

Archaic variants

Distribution of "green", "red" and "blue" alphabet types, after Kirchhoff

There were initially numerous local (epichoric) variants of the Greek alphabet, which differed in the use and non-use of the additional vowel and consonant symbols and several other features. Epichoric alphabets are commonly divided into four major types according to their different treatments of additional consonant letters for the aspirated consonants (/pʰ, kʰ/) and consonant clusters (/ks, ps/) of Greek.Template:Sfn These four types are often conventionally labelled as "green", "red", "light blue" and "dark blue" types, based on a colour-coded map in a seminal 19th-century work on the topic, Template:Lang by Adolf Kirchhoff (1867).Template:Sfn

The "green" (or southern) type is the most archaic and closest to the Phoenician.Template:Sfn The "red" (or western) type is the one that was later transmitted to the West and became the ancestor of the Latin alphabet, and bears some crucial features characteristic of that later development.Template:Sfn The "blue" (or eastern) type is the one from which the later standard Greek alphabet emerged.Template:Sfn Athens used a local form of the "light blue" alphabet type until the end of the 5th century BC, which lacked the letters Ξ and Ψ as well as the vowel symbols Η and Ω.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In the Old Attic alphabet, Template:Lang stood for Template:IPA and Template:Lang for Template:IPA. Template:Lang was used for all three sounds Template:IPA (correspondinɡ to classical Template:Lang), and Template:Lang was used for all of Template:IPA (corresponding to classical Template:Lang).Template:Sfn The letter Template:Lang (heta) was used for the consonant Template:IPA.Template:Sfn Some variant local letter forms were also characteristic of Athenian writing, some of which were shared with the neighboring (but otherwise "red") alphabet of Euboia: a form of Template:Lang that resembled a Latin L (Template:GrGl) and a form of Template:Wikt-lang that resembled a Latin S (Template:GrGl).Template:Sfn

Phoenician model
Southern	"green"	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	—	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	—	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl*	—	—	—	—	—
Western	"red"																									Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl
Eastern	"light blue"																									—		Template:GrGl
	"dark blue"																Template:GrGl												Template:GrGl
Classic Ionian							—		—	Template:GrGl										—	—									Template:GrGl
Modern alphabet		Α	Β	Γ	Δ	Ε	—	Ζ	—	Η	Θ	Ι	Κ	Λ	Μ	Ν	Ξ	Ο	Π	—	—	Ρ	Σ	Τ	Υ	—	Φ	Χ	Ψ	Ω
Sound in Ancient Greek		a	b	g	d	e	w	zd	h	ē	tʰ	i	k	l	m	n	ks	o	p	s	k	r	s	t	u	ks	pʰ	kʰ	ps	ō

*Upsilon is also derived from waw ().

The classical twenty-four-letter alphabet that is now used to represent the Greek language was originally the local alphabet of Ionia.Template:Sfn By the late 5th century BC, it was commonly used by many Athenians.Template:Sfn In Template:Circa 403 BC, at the suggestion of the archon Eucleides, the Athenian Assembly formally abandoned the Old Attic alphabet and adopted the Ionian alphabet as part of the democratic reforms after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Because of Eucleides's role in suggesting the idea to adopt the Ionian alphabet, the standard twenty-four-letter Greek alphabet is sometimes known as the "Eucleidean alphabet".Template:Sfn Roughly thirty years later, the Eucleidean alphabet was adopted in Boeotia and it may have been adopted a few years previously in Macedonia.Template:Sfn By the end of the 4th century  BC, it had displaced local alphabets across the Greek-speaking world to become the standard form of the Greek alphabet.Template:Sfn

Letter names

When the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, they took over not only the letter shapes and sound values but also the names by which the sequence of the alphabet could be recited and memorized. In Phoenician, each letter name was a word that began with the sound represented by that letter; thus ʾaleph, the word for "ox", was used as the name for the glottal stop Template:IPA, bet, or "house", for the Template:IPA sound, and so on. When the letters were adopted by the Greeks, most of the Phoenician names were maintained or modified slightly to fit Greek phonology; thus, ʾaleph, bet, gimel became alpha, beta, gamma.

The Greek names of the following letters are more or less straightforward continuations of their Phoenician antecedents. Between Ancient and Modern Greek, they have remained largely unchanged, except that their pronunciation has followed regular sound changes along with other words (for instance, in the name of beta, ancient /b/ regularly changed to modern /v/, and ancient /ɛː/ to modern /i/, resulting in the modern pronunciation vita). The name of lambda is attested in early sources as Template:Lang besides Template:Lang; in Modern Greek the spelling is often Template:Lang, reflecting pronunciation. Similarly, iota is sometimes spelled Template:Lang in Modern Greek (Template:IPA is conventionally transcribed Template:Angle brackets word-initially and intervocalically before back vowels and Template:IPA). In the tables below, the Greek names of all letters are given in their traditional polytonic spelling; in modern practice, like with all other words, they are usually spelled in the simplified monotonic system. Template:Listen

Letter	Name			Pronunciation
	Greek	Phoenician original	English	Greek (Ancient)	Greek (Modern)	English
Α	Template:Lang	aleph	alpha	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en
Β	Template:Lang	beth	beta	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en, Template:IPAc-en
Γ	Template:Lang	gimel	gamma	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en
Δ	Template:Lang	daleth	delta	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en
Η	Template:Lang	heth	eta	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en, Template:IPAc-en
Θ	Template:Lang	teth	theta	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en, Template:IPAc-en
Ι	Template:Lang	yodh	iota	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en
Κ	Template:Lang	kaph	kappa	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en
Λ	Template:Lang	lamedh	lambda	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en
Μ	Template:Lang	mem	mu	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en; occasionally Template:IPAc-en
Ν	Template:Lang	nun	nu	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en
Ρ	Template:Lang	reš	rho	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en
Τ	Template:Lang	taw	tau	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en

In the cases of the three historical sibilant letters below, the correspondence between Phoenician and Ancient Greek is less clear, with apparent mismatches both in letter names and sound values. The early history of these letters (and the fourth sibilant letter, obsolete san) has been a matter of some debate. Here too, the changes in the pronunciation of the letter names between Ancient and Modern Greek are regular.

Letter	Name			Pronunciation
	Greek	Phoenician original	English	Greek (Ancient)	Greek (Modern)	English
Ζ	Template:Lang	zayin	zeta	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en, Template:IPAc-en
Ξ	Template:Lang	samekh	xi	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en
Σ	Template:Lang	šin	siɡma	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en

In the following group of consonant letters, the older forms of the names in Ancient Greek were spelled with Template:Lang, indicating an original pronunciation with -ē. In Modern Greek these names are spelled with Template:Lang.

Letter	Name		Pronunciation
	Greek	English	Greek (Ancient)	Greek (Modern)	English
Ξ	Template:Lang, Template:Lang	xi	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en
Π	Template:Lang, Template:Lang	pi	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en
Φ	Template:Lang, Template:Lang	phi	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en
Χ	Template:Lang, Template:Lang	chi	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en
Ψ	Template:Lang, Template:Lang	psi	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en, Template:IPAc-en

The following group of vowel letters were originally called simply by their sound values as long vowels: ē, ō, ū, and Template:IPA. Their modern names contain adjectival qualifiers that were added during the Byzantine period, to distinguish between letters that had become confusable. Thus, the letters Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, pronounced identically by this time, were called o mikron ("small o") and o mega ("big o"). The letter Template:Angbr was called e psilon ("plain e") to distinguish it from the identically pronounced digraph Template:Angbr, while, similarly, Template:Angbr, which at this time was pronounced Template:IPAblink, was called y psilon ("plain y") to distinguish it from the identically pronounced digraph Template:Angbr.

Letter	Name				Pronunciation
	Greek (Ancient)	Greek (Medieval)	Greek (Modern)	English	Greek (Ancient)	Greek (Modern)	English
Ε	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	epsilon	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en, some Template:IPAc-en
Ο	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	omicron	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en, traditional Template:IPAc-en
Υ	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	upsilon	Template:IPA, Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en, also Template:IPAc-en, Template:IPAc-en
Ω	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	omega	Template:IPA	Template:IPA	Template:IPAc-en, traditional Template:IPAc-en

Some dialects of the Aegean and Cypriot have retained long consonants and pronounce Template:IPA and Template:IPA; also, Template:Lang has come to be pronounced Template:IPA in Cypriot.

Letter shapes

A 16th-century edition of the New Testament (Gospel of John), printed in a renaissance typeface by Claude Garamond

Theocritus Idyll 1, lines 12–14, in script with abbreviations and ligatures from a caption in an illustrated edition of Theocritus. Lodewijk Caspar Valckenaer: Carmina bucolica, Leiden 1779.

Like Latin and other alphabetic scripts, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter, without a distinction between uppercase and lowercase. This distinction is an innovation of the modern era, drawing on different lines of development of the letter shapes in earlier handwriting.

The oldest forms of the letters in antiquity are majuscule forms. Besides the upright, straight inscriptional forms (capitals) found in stone carvings or incised pottery, more fluent writing styles adapted for handwriting on soft materials were also developed during antiquity. Such handwriting has been preserved especially from papyrus manuscripts in Egypt since the Hellenistic period. Ancient handwriting developed two distinct styles: uncial writing, with carefully drawn, rounded block letters of about equal size, used as a book hand for carefully produced literary and religious manuscripts, and cursive writing, used for everyday purposes. The cursive forms approached the style of lowercase letter forms, with ascenders and descenders, as well as many connecting lines and ligatures between letters.

In the 9th and 10th centuries, uncial book hands were replaced with a new, more compact writing style, with letter forms partly adapted from the earlier cursive. This minuscule style remained the dominant form of handwritten Greek into the modern era. During the Renaissance, western printers adopted the minuscule letter forms as lowercase printed typefaces, while modeling uppercase letters on the ancient inscriptional forms. The orthographic practice of using the letter case distinction for marking proper names, titles, etc. developed in parallel to the practice in Latin and other western languages.

Inscription		Manuscript		Modern print
Archaic	Classical	Uncial	Minuscule	Lowercase	Uppercase
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		α	Α
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		β	Β
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		γ	Γ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		δ	Δ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		ε	Ε
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		ζ	Ζ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		η	Η
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		θ	Θ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		ι	Ι
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		κ	Κ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		λ	Λ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		μ	Μ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		ν	Ν
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		ξ	Ξ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		ο	Ο
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		π	Π
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		ρ	Ρ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		σς	Σ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		τ	Τ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		υ	Υ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		φ	Φ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		χ	Χ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		ψ	Ψ
Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl	Template:GrGl		ω	Ω

Derived alphabets

The earliest Etruscan abecedarium, from Marsiliana d'Albegna, still almost identical with contemporaneous archaic Greek alphabets

A page from the Template:Lang, a 6th-century Bible manuscript in Gothic

The Greek alphabet was the model for various others:Template:Sfn

• Most of the Iron Age alphabets of Asia Minor were adopted around the same time, as the early Greek alphabet was adopted from the Phoenician. The Lydian and Carian alphabets are generally believed to derive from the Greek alphabet, although it is not clear which variant is the direct ancestor. While some of these alphabets such as Phrygian had slight differences from the Greek counterpart, some like Carian alphabet had mostly different values and several other characters inherited from pre-Greek local scripts. They were in use Template:Circa–300 BC until all the Anatolian languages were extinct due to Hellenization.
• The Latin alphabet, together with various other ancient scripts in Italy, adopted from an archaic form of the Greek alphabet brought to Italy by Greek colonists in the late 8th century BC, via Etruscan;
• The Gothic alphabet, devised in the 4th century to write the Gothic language, based on a combination of Greek and Latin uncial models;
• The Glagolitic alphabet, devised in the 9th century for writing Old Church Slavonic;
• The Cyrillic script, which replaced the Glagolitic alphabet shortly afterwards.
• The Coptic alphabet adds eight letters derived from Demotic. It is still used today, mostly in Egypt, to write Coptic, the liturgical language of Egyptian Christians. Letters usually retain an uncial form different from the forms used for Greek today. The alphabet of Old Nubian is an adaptation of Coptic.

The Armenian and Georgian alphabets are almost certainly modeled on the Greek alphabet, but their graphic forms are quite different.

Other uses

Use for other languages

Apart from the daughter alphabets listed above, which were adapted from Greek but developed into separate writing systems, the Greek alphabet has also been adopted at various times and in various places to write other languages.Template:Sfn For some of them, additional letters were introduced.

Antiquity

• It was used in some Paleo-Balkan languages, including Thracian. For other neighboring languages or dialects, such as Ancient Macedonian, isolated words are preserved in Greek texts, but no continuous texts are preserved.
• Gaulish inscriptions (in modern France) used the Greek alphabet until the Roman conquest
• The Bactrian language, an Iranian language spoken in what is now Afghanistan, was written in the Greek alphabet during the Kushan Empire (65–250 AD). It adds an extra letter Template:Angbr for the sh sound Template:IPAblink.Template:Sfn
• Derived from Indo-Greek coinage, the coins of Nahapana and Chastana of the Western Satraps featured an Indo-Aryan language legend written in Greek or pseudo-Greek letters. The subsequent rulers' coins had the Greek script degrade to a mere ornament that no longer represented any legible legend.

Middle Ages

• Coins from the 4th-8th centuries known as mordovkas were used as currency in Eastern Europe by Uralic peoples and were written in Moksha using Greek uncial script.
• An 8th-century Arabic fragment preserves a text in the Greek alphabet, as does a 9th- or 10th-century psalm translation fragment.
• An Old Ossetic inscription of the 10th–12th centuries found in Arxyz, the oldest known attestation of an Ossetic language.
• The Old Nubian language of Makuria (modern Sudan) adds three Coptic letters, two letters derived from Meroitic script, and a digraph of two Greek gammas used for the velar nasal sound.
• Various South Slavic dialects, similar to the modern Bulgarian and Macedonian languages, have been written in Greek script.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn The modern South Slavic languages now use modified Cyrillic alphabets.

Early modern

18th-century title page of a book printed in Karamanli Turkish

• Turkish spoken by Orthodox Christians (Karamanlides) was often written in Greek script, and called Karamanlidika.
• Tosk Albanian was often written using the Greek alphabet, starting in about 1500.Template:Sfn The printing press at Moschopolis published several Albanian texts in Greek script during the 18th century. It was only in 1908 that the Monastir conference standardized a Latin orthography for both Tosk and Gheg. Greek spelling is still occasionally used for the local Albanian dialects (Arvanitika) in Greece.
• Gagauz, a Turkic language of the northeast Balkans spoken by Orthodox Christians, was apparently written in Greek characters in the late 19th century. In 1957, it was standardized on Cyrillic, and in 1996, a Gagauz alphabet based on Latin characters was adopted (derived from the Turkish alphabet).
• Surguch, a Turkic language, was spoken by a small group of Orthodox Christians in northern Greece. It is now written in Latin or Cyrillic characters.
• Urum or Greek Tatar, spoken by Orthodox Christians, used the Greek alphabet.
• Judaeo-Spanish or Ladino, a Jewish dialect of Spanish, has occasionally been published in Greek characters in Greece.
• The Italian humanist Giovan Giorgio Trissino tried to add some Greek letters (Ɛ ε, Ꞷ ω) to Italian orthography in 1524.

In mathematics and science

Template:Main Greek symbols are used as symbols in mathematics, physics and other sciences. Many symbols have traditional uses, such as lower case epsilon (ε) for an arbitrarily small positive number, lower case pi (π) for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, capital sigma (Σ) for summation, and lower case sigma (σ) for standard deviation. For many years the Greek alphabet was used by the World Meteorological Organization for naming North Atlantic hurricanes if a season was so active that it exhausted the regular list of storm names. This happened during the 2005 season (when Alpha through Zeta were used), and the 2020 season (when Alpha through Iota were used), after which the practice was discontinued. In May 2021 the World Health Organization announced that the variants of SARS-CoV-2 of the virus would be named using letters of the Greek alphabet to avoid stigma and simplify communications for non-scientific audiences.

Astronomy

Template:Main Greek letters are used to denote the brighter stars within each of the eighty-eight constellations. In most constellations, the brightest star is designated Alpha and the next brightest Beta etc. For example, the brightest star in the constellation of Centaurus is known as Alpha Centauri. For historical reasons, the Greek designations of some constellations begin with a lower ranked letter.

International Phonetic Alphabet

Several Greek letters are used as phonetic symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Several of them denote fricative consonants; the rest stand for variants of vowel sounds. The glyph shapes used for these letters in specialized phonetic fonts is sometimes slightly different from the conventional shapes in Greek typography proper, with glyphs typically being more upright and using serifs, to make them conform more with the typographical character of other, Latin-based letters in the phonetic alphabet. Nevertheless, in the Unicode encoding standard, the following three phonetic symbols are considered the same characters as the corresponding Greek letters proper:

Template:IPA	beta	U+03B2	voiced bilabial fricative
Template:IPA	theta	U+03B8	voiceless dental fricative
Template:IPA	chi	U+03C7	voiceless uvular fricative

On the other hand, the following phonetic letters have Unicode representations separate from their Greek alphabetic use, either because their conventional typographic shape is too different from the original, or because they also have secondary uses as regular alphabetic characters in some Latin-based alphabets, including separate Latin uppercase letters distinct from the Greek ones.

Greek letter			Phonetic letter			Uppercase
φ	phi	U+03C6	Template:IPA	U+0278	Voiceless bilabial fricative	–
γ	gamma	U+03B3	Template:IPA	U+0263	Voiced velar fricative	Ɣ U+0194
ε	epsilon	U+03B5	Template:IPA	U+025B	Open-mid front unrounded vowel	Ɛ U+0190
α	alpha	U+03B1	Template:IPA	U+0251	Open back unrounded vowel	Ɑ U+2C6D
υ	upsilon	U+03C5	Template:IPA	U+028A	near-close near-back rounded vowel	Ʊ U+01B1
ι	iota	U+03B9	Template:IPA	U+0269	Obsolete for near-close near-front unrounded vowel now ɪ	Ɩ U+0196

The symbol in Americanist phonetic notation for the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is the Greek letter lambda Template:Angbr, but Template:Angbr IPA in the IPA. The IPA symbol for the palatal lateral approximant is Template:Angbr IPA, which looks similar to lambda, but is actually an inverted lowercase y.

Use as numerals

Template:Main Greek letters were also used to write numbers. In the classical Ionian system, the first nine letters of the alphabet stood for the numbers from 1 to 9, the next nine letters stood for the multiples of 10, from 10 to 90, and the next nine letters stood for the multiples of 100, from 100 to 900. For this purpose, in addition to the 24 letters which by that time made up the standard alphabet, three otherwise obsolete letters were retained or revived: digamma Template:Angbr for 6, koppa Template:Angbr for 90, and a rare Ionian letter for [ss], today called sampi Template:Angbr, for 900. This system has remained in use in Greek up to the present day, although today it is only employed for limited purposes such as enumerating chapters in a book, similar to the way Roman numerals are used in English. The three extra symbols are today written as Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr. To mark a letter as a numeral sign, a small stroke called keraia is added to the right of it.

Αʹ αʹ	alpha	1
Βʹ βʹ	beta	2
Γʹ γʹ	gamma	3
Δʹ δʹ	delta	4
Εʹ εʹ	epsilon	5
ϛʹ	digamma (stigma)	6
Ζʹ ζʹ	zeta	7
Ηʹ ηʹ	eta	8
Θʹ θʹ	theta	9

Ιʹ ιʹ	iota	10
Κʹ κʹ	kappa	20
Λʹ λʹ	lambda	30
Μʹ μʹ	mu	40
Νʹ νʹ	nu	50
Ξʹ ξʹ	xi	60
Οʹ οʹ	omicron	70
Πʹ πʹ	pi	80
ϟʹ	koppa	90

Ρʹ ρʹ	rho	100
Σʹ σʹ	sigma	200
Τʹ τʹ	tau	300
Υʹ υʹ	upsilon	400
Φʹ φʹ	phi	500
Χʹ χʹ	chi	600
Ψʹ ψʹ	psi	700
Ωʹ ωʹ	omega	800
ϡʹ	sampi	900

Use by student fraternities and sororities

In North America, many college fraternities and sororities are named with combinations of Greek letters, and are hence also known as "Greek letter organizations".Template:Sfn This naming tradition was initiated by the foundation of the Phi Beta Kappa society at the College of William and Mary in 1776.Template:Sfn The name of this fraternal organization is an acronym for the ancient Greek phrase Template:Lang (Template:Transliteration), which means "Love of wisdom, the guide of life" and serves as the organization's motto.Template:Sfn Sometimes early fraternal organizations were known by their Greek letter names because the mottos that these names stood for were secret and revealed only to members of the fraternity.Template:Sfn

Different chapters within the same fraternity are almost always (with a handful of exceptions) designated using Greek letters as serial numbers. The founding chapter of each organization is its A chapter. As an organization expands, it establishes a B chapter, a Γ chapter, and so on and so forth. In an organization that expands to more than 24 chapters, the chapter after Ω chapter is AA chapter, followed by AB chapter, etc. Each of these is still a "chapter Letter", albeit a double-digit letter just as 10 through 99 are double-digit numbers. The Roman alphabet has a similar extended form with such double-digit letters when necessary, but it is used for columns in a table or chart rather than chapters of an organization.

Glyph variants

Some letters can occur in variant shapes, mostly inherited from medieval minuscule handwriting. While their use in normal typography of Greek is purely a matter of font styles, some such variants have been given separate encodings in Unicode.

• The symbol Template:Not a typo ("curled beta") is a cursive variant form of beta (β). In the French tradition of Ancient Greek typography, β is used word-initially, and Template:Not a typo is used word-internally.
• The letter delta has a form resembling a cursive capital letter D; while not encoded as its own form, this form is included as part of the symbol for the drachma (a Δρ digraph) in the Currency Symbols block, at U+20AF (₯).
• The letter epsilon can occur in two equally frequent stylistic variants, either shaped $ϵ$ ('lunate epsilon', like a semicircle with a stroke) or $\epsilon$ (similar to a reversed number 3). The symbol ϵ (U+03F5) is designated specifically for the lunate form, used as a technical symbol.
• The symbol Template:Not a typo ("script theta") is a cursive form of theta (θ), frequent in handwriting, and used with a specialized meaning as a technical symbol.
• The symbol Template:Not a typo ("kappa symbol") is a cursive form of kappa (κ), used as a technical symbol.
• The symbol $\varpi$ ("variant pi") is an archaic script form of pi (π), also used as a technical symbol.
• The letter rho (ρ) can occur in different stylistic variants, with the descending tail either going straight down or curled to the right. The symbol Template:Not a typo (U+03F1) is designated specifically for the curled form, used as a technical symbol.
• The letter sigma, in standard orthography, has two variants: ς, used only at the ends of words, and σ, used elsewhere. The form Template:Not a typo ("lunate sigma", resembling a Latin c) is a medieval stylistic variant that can be used in both environments without the final/non-final distinction.
• The capital letter upsilon (Υ) can occur in different stylistic variants, with the upper strokes either straight like a Latin Y, or slightly curled. The symbol ϒ (U+03D2) is designated specifically for the curled form (${\rm Y}$), used as a technical symbol, e.g. in physics.
• The letter phi can occur in two equally frequent stylistic variants, either shaped as $\varphi$ (a circle with a vertical stroke through it) or as $\phi$ (a curled shape open at the top). The symbol Template:Not a typo (U+03D5) is designated specifically for the closed form, used as a technical symbol.
• The letter omega has at least three stylistic variants of its capital form. The standard is the "open omega" (Ω), resembling an open partial circle with the opening downward and the ends curled outward. The two other stylistic variants are seen more often in modern typography, resembling a raised and underscored circle (roughly ^o̲), where the underscore may or may not be touching the circle on a tangent (in the former case it resembles a superscript omicron similar to that found in the numero sign or masculine ordinal indicator; in the latter, it closely resembles some forms of the Latin letter Q). The open omega is always used in symbolic settings and is encoded in Letterlike Symbols (U+2126) as a separate code point for backward compatibility.

Computer encodings

For computer usage, a variety of encodings have been used for Greek online, many of them documented in Template:IETF RFC.

The two principal ones still used today are ISO/IEC 8859-7 and Unicode. ISO 8859-7 supports only the monotonic orthography; Unicode supports both the monotonic and polytonic orthographies.

ISO/IEC 8859-7

For the range A0–FF (hex), it follows the Unicode range 370–3CF (see below) except that some symbols, like ©, ½, § etc. are used where Unicode has unused locations. Like all ISO-8859 encodings, it is equal to ASCII for 00–7F (hex).

Greek in Unicode

Unicode supports polytonic orthography well enough for ordinary continuous text in modern and ancient Greek, and even many archaic forms for epigraphy. With the use of combining characters, Unicode also supports Greek philology and dialectology and various other specialized requirements. Most current text rendering engines do not render diacritics well, so, though alpha with macron and acute can be represented as U+03B1 U+0304 U+0301, this rarely renders well: Template:Lang.

There are two main blocks of Greek characters in Unicode. The first is "Greek and Coptic" (U+0370 to U+03FF). This block is based on ISO 8859-7 and is sufficient to write Modern Greek. There are also some archaic letters and Greek-based technical symbols.

This block also supports the Coptic alphabet. Formerly, most Coptic letters shared codepoints with similar-looking Greek letters; but in many scholarly works, both scripts occur, with quite different letter shapes, so as of Unicode 4.1, Coptic and Greek were disunified. Those Coptic letters with no Greek equivalents still remain in this block (U+03E2 to U+03EF).

To write polytonic Greek, one may use combining diacritical marks or the precomposed characters in the "Greek Extended" block (U+1F00 to U+1FFF).

Combining and letter-free diacritics

Combining and spacing (letter-free) diacritical marks pertaining to Greek language:

Combining	Spacing	Sample	Description
U+0300	U+0060	( Template:Lang)	"varia / grave accent"
U+0301	U+00B4, U+0384	( Template:Lang)	"oxia / tonos / acute accent"
U+0304	U+00AF	( ̄ )	"macron"
U+0306	U+02D8	( ̆ )	"vrachy / breve"
U+0308	U+00A8	( ̈ )	"dialytika / diaeresis"
U+0313	U+02BC	( ̓ )	"psili / comma above" (spiritus lenis)
U+0314	U+02BD	( ̔ )	"dasia / reversed comma above" (spiritus asper)
U+0342		( ͂ )	"perispomeni" (circumflex)
U+0343		( ̓ )	"koronis" (= U+0313)
U+0344	U+0385	( ̈́ )	"dialytika tonos" (deprecated, = U+0308 U+0301)
U+0345	U+037A	( ͅ )	"ypogegrammeni / iota subscript".

Encodings with a subset of the Greek alphabet

IBM code pages 437, 860, 861, 862, 863, and 865 contain the letters ΓΘΣΦΩαδεπστφ (plus β as an alternative interpretation for ß).

See also

• Greek Font Society
• Greek ligatures
• Palamedes
• Romanization of Greek

Bibliography

• Template:Cite book
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• Template:Cite thesis
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• Template:Cite book [Greek translation of Greek: a history of the language and its speakers, London 1997]
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• Template:Cite encyclopedia
• Template:Cite journal
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• Template:Cite book – selections from the Gospels in Macedonian.
• Template:Cite journal
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External links

• Greek and Coptic character list in Unicode
• Unicode collation chartsTemplate:Sndincluding Greek and Coptic letters, sorted by shape
• Examples of Greek handwriting
• Template:Webarchive
• Unicode FAQ – Greek Language and Script
• alphabetic test for Greek Unicode range (Alan Wood)
• numeric test for Greek Unicode range
• Classical Greek keyboard, a browser-based tool
• GFS Typefaces, a collection of free fonts by Greek Font Society