Talk:Greek alphabet

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Contents

[edit] History again (sorry)

"Historically, the Greek alphabet emerged several centuries after the fall of Mycenaean civilisation and consequent extinction of its Linear B script, an early Greek writing system. Linear B is descended from Linear A, which was developed by the Minoans, whose language was probably unrelated to Greek; consequently the Minoan syllabary did not provide an ideal medium for the transliteration of Greek language sounds. The Greek alphabet we recognize today arose after the illiterate Greek Dark Ages — the period between the downfall of Mycenae (c. 1200 B.C.) and the rise of Ancient Greece, which begins with the appearance of the epics of Homer, around 800 B.C., and the institution of the Ancient Olympic Games in 776 B.C."

There are contradictions and logical problems with the above. Given Greek's own beliefs about the Phonecian origins of their alphabet, it can not be claimed that the Greek alphabet 'emerged'. What is the point of mentioning the Minoans here? The proposed "Greek Dark Ages" suggests that Greeks had literacy prior to the 1200 BCE, but there is considerable evidence that the Greeks were not even present in their current area of habitation prior to 1200 BCE, and there is NO evidence of their use of literacy.--Mrg3105 12:25, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Asterisk

The asterisk (*) is put into some of the greek alphabet, yet no one has explained what the meaning behind it. It would be nice if someone could clarify what the asterisk means. Thanks.

problem fixed: see note at bottom of table. Andreas 01:58, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

With some help from other Wikipedians I am now able to read the Lord's Prayer on the Greek language page, but some symbols on the page are still unreadable. These include the two mentioned at the top, the accented second letter in the second rendering of the Greek word "alpha," the letter between beta and eta in the second rendering of "beta," the second forms of stigma and qoppa, etc. The second rendering of "rho" is perhaps the worse, coming back as "ρ?ω?." How do I get to view these letters? Vivacissamamente

I've created a new stub on Greek alphabet/Temp that contains all the letters, for example. --Lumidek 23:57, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

A lot of what was in the article isn't copyvio and can probably be reused, we'd just have to make sure to paste the article history on the talk page or something so credit is given. DopefishJustin (・∀・) 02:45, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
OK, I decided to be bold and do what DopefishJustin recommended: I did a sort of manual diff on the old article and the web site whose copyright it voilated. I think I found all of the parts that were copy/pasted. I removed each of those parts and replaced them with a bunch of XXXXXXXXXXXes, and included a brief (original) summary of what the removed parts had been about. I then pasted all of that into Greek alphabet/Temp. So now Greek alphabet/Temp looks much like the original article, except with big blisters where the copyvio text used to be. The Greek alphabet/Temp article does not actually contain any of the copyvio (to the best of my knowledge), so it should be safe to have in any history. What we need is for someone who's knowledgable in this subject to go through and either replace the removed parts with original work, or delete the placeholders for the parts that aren't necesary. I don't know nearly enough about this subject to do that. Frankly, it's all Greek to me... pun indented =o). I also took the liberty of copy/pasting the history of the old article into the Talk:Greek alphabet/Temp page, in order to preserve credit for the work done. - Eisnel 20:21, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I decided to be bolder - I saw no way of this ever moving. From Wikipedia:Copyright problems:
  • Greek alphabet. I just deleted this and then undeleted it when I changed my mind. It has 77 previous edits. The content has been used to create Greek alphabet/Temp. Isn't the original therefore needed to preserve the author attribution, even if that means some of the page history will be violating? I think if this is deleted, it makes the temp version a violation of the GFDL, so the violating parts should be removed without deleting the history. Angela. 20:11, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • the original author details have been put on the talk page. I think we need to be bold or we will never resolve this one. I'm going to delete and move the temp to the article page. Secretlondon 02:50, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)



The dialect of modern Greek spoken by Greek Cypriots differs in pronunciation from 'mainland' Greek in some respects. Kappa (Qoppa) is pronounced 'G', Tau (also called Daf) is pronounced 'D'.

[edit] Viewing

Someone wanna point out in a box marked "viewing this page" what is needed to view the characters on the page, and please also upload and link to a .pdf of the (relevant sections of) the page with fonts embedded so that others can use a PDF viewer to see what greek letters look like even if their browser does not display greek letters itself?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 218.214.18.27 (talk • contribs) .

There are two links for web pages with alphabets at the end of the article where letters are given as jpeg files. Andreas 14:00, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Names of letters and their pronunciation

This article gives classical names of letters but not modern names. There is also a question of how to transliterate. Conventions for transliterating classical Greek differ from those for Modern Greek. "ΕΥΚΛΙΔΗΣ" is almost always transliterated into "Euclid" when one writes in English, or "Euclides" if you want to keep the suffix that changes according to whether it's nominative, accusative, etc., but if the conventions that newspapers use for transliterating names of modern Greeks were followed, then maybe it would be "Efklides" or "Efkledes". This may not be much of a problem if you're talking about Euclid or about a modern Greek politician, but in the "Mount Athos" article, should one write "Ayion Oros" or "Hagion Oros"? The latter harmonizes with the name of Istanbul's famous "Hagia

Sophia". In the "Transubstantiation" article, I wrote "Metabole is Greek Orthodox for 'transubstantiation'" (and last time I looked, no one had yet objected that "Greek Orthodox" is not a language), but I also mentioned that in modern transliterations it can be "metovole". Lest we ignoramuses continue to make these decisions, could some expert enlgihten us? -- Mike Hardy

Well, there are two typo's in Mike Hardy's remark: Eudlid's Greek spelling; the modern transcription of metabole.

Greek Traditional transcription Modern transcription Proposed transliteration
Eυκλειδης Eukleides Efklidis eykleídes
Aγιov Oρoς Hagion Oros Ayion Oros ágion óros (classical accent)
μεταβoλη metabole metavoli metabolé

Note that the traditional transcription is not exactly the same as the latinisation (i. e., transcription to Latin) which results in Euclides and so on. -- In the transcription, I have used the vowels as pronounced in many European languages, e. g. Italian, because a transcription using the English pronunciation is too difficult for me.
I would propose to write Ayion Oros, because that is more similar to how it is called by the local population. What concerns Hagia Sophia: as the local population does no more speak Greek, we may use a more traditional transcription.

In the meantime, I have added modern pronunciation of the letter names. Is that what you mean by modern names, Mike? -- dnjansen 13:17 Jan 5, 2003 (UTC)

Gamma as a y? Adam Cuerden talk 15:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
To what exactly do you refer? In the table, the modern Greek pronunciation is given as [ɣ~ʝ]. The first of these two IPA glyphs is a gamma (not a y, although it can look like it with some fonts) representing a Voiced velar fricative. On the other hand, many transliterations and transcriptions of Modern Greek are based on English or French orthography and thus use the Latin letter y to represent the Voiced palatal fricative [ʝ].   Andreas   (T) 15:51, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Just seems odd for smeone who's only seen Ancient Greek to imagine gamma as yamma in transliteration. Not half so odd as the upsillon as f, though. Adam Cuerden talk 16:00, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
No, you'd never see "yamma"; the voiced palatal fricative pronunciation only occurs in certain contexts, so you have for example [ʝa'ti] as the pronunciation of γιατί 'why'. --Macrakis 22:37, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

It is very important to include the names of the letters in both Greek and in English (actually Latin -- these names are the same in all Western European languages), and very important to include their phonetic value in both Ancient and Modern Greek. However, I see no good reason to include the pronunciations of the names of the letters in either ancient or modern Greek, since both pronunciations are completely predictable. That is, given the Greek spelling, you can determine the pronunciation in ancient and in modern Greek unambiguously. So I propose to remove both columns under Name / Pronunciation. This should make the table more readable. --Macrakis 16:57, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Various distinct articles on Greek letters have distinct formats (e.g. on specifying the graphical representation of the letters -- some include it in the main paragraph, others at the end of the article and others not at all); maybe they should be unified as format at some time in the future? Not an urgent issue, just something to consider. -- Gutza 23:04, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Working on this using Delta_(letter) as a template. If anyone wants to help that'd be great, because I'll probably get bored around epsilon ;) -- Karl Naylor 08:56, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Why is Bernal being used as an authority on the Greek alphabet? Are you people aware of how controversial his views are? There is no archaeological evidence that Phoenicians widely colonised Greece. We have one trading post at Kommos in Crete during the early Geometric Period (10th-9th century B.C.) that did indeed have Semitic speaking traders and artisans confined to one area of the town and their sanctuary, but no widespread colonisation that Bernal's comment implies. There is no doubt there are Semitic loan words in the Greek language but that does not mean the Aegean region was widely settled by Phoenicians, and it's more likely as a result of trading contact along coastal emporia.

See J.W. Shaw, "Phoenicians in Southern Crete," AJA 93 (1989) 164-83. -- Leanne

Be bold & fix/improve. --Menchi 06:10, Aug 3, 2003 (UTC)

Isn't sampi a modified form of san? In that case, why is it listed separately at the end of the table, instead of along side it in the middle?


The table at the top shows a greek small letter gamma (γ) where a delta should go. I suppose it's a typo in the numeric code entry. I don't know how to edit the "msg" table thing; it's not in the main article.

There we go, it's been fixed. To edit the contents of {{msg:Table_Greekletters}}, edit Template:Table Greekletters. —Bkell 20:38, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

We need something other than iso-8859-1 for this page. How do we switch it to UTF-8?
--Joeljkp 15:42, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Zeta: not [dz] but [zd] or [z:]

According to Michel Lejeune (Phonétique historique du mycénien et du grec ancien) and many other scholars (e.g. Leslie Threatte in the "Greek alphabet" section of The World's Wrinting Systems by Daniels and Bright), ζ has never been pronounced [dz]. In classical Greek, it was [zd].

Hence Ἀθήνασ-δε (-δε as in οἴκαδε "to one's house", from οἶκος and -δε suffix) → *Ἀθήναz-δε → Ἀθήναζε, "to Athenes", etc. Cf. also aeolic ὔσδος ~ attic ὄζος, etc.

Later, [zd] (Hellenistic period) became [z:], then [z] in Modern Greek. Vincent Ramos 15:42, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't find this credible enough (most of scholars actually claim it was pronounced [dz]) - not to mention [zd] sounds rather strange; anyway, one version should be officialy chosen - compare the article on "Z", which claims it has been [dz] in ancient Greek. - 81.15.146.91 22:54, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

To put it bluntly, the argument on [zd] sounding strange is unscientific. I don't know what "most of scholars" is supposed to mean; this impression may come from the fact that the [dz] theory was the mainstream theory until the start of the 20th century, but important scholars have since supported the [zd] theory, finding some serious arguments along the way. Please read again the article of Zeta_(letter)#Pronunciation, as it currently presents any possible evidence that I know of. To summarize, the later value of [z:] is almost certain. There is some convincing evidence that Zeta was pronounced [zd] in Classical Attic. However, there is evidence that suggests that it was possibly pronounced [dz] in some Asian dialects, and [d:] in island Doric dialects. The value in Archaic Greek is highly controversial indeed, and may never been proven due to lack of direct evidence. I don't think Wikipedia has authority to choose anything officially; the main Greek Alphabet article should mention the [zd] value as likely in Classical Ancient Greek (i.e. Classical Attic), and link to an article describing the controversy (currently Zeta_(letter)#Pronunciation, though it may be moved to Ancient Greek Phonolgy or something in the future). Rnabet 09:27, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Digamma

On my computer system, I can't see the Digamma character. Possibly, that's because I don't have a Greek font that includes digamma. The same applies to San, Oopa and Sampi. What can I do to remedy this?

Cosmo 09:37, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

P.S. I'm new to Wikipedia, and I am not too savvy about fonts, except the fonts that came with the MS WORD. Although I can read modern Greek text such as news and advertising (up to a point), I've never come across Digamma, San, Qopa or Sampi.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Digamma"

I answered at Talk:Digamma Pjacobi 09:02, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] merge from Greek letters

I took the sentence "In ancient Greece, its letters were also used to represent numbers, called Greek numerals, in analogy with Roman numerals." from Greek letters which is now a redirect to here. Kappa 11:21, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] More on fonts

I changed some of the Greek text (actually the Greek names of the first few letters in the Main Table) to Arial Unicode MS, which on my browser at least makes most of the characters display correctly. If there are no objections I could continue doing the same with the rest of the Greek text in the article. rossb 15:35, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Having been further advised on this, by Etz Haim (see Template talk:Polytonic), I've now changed to using the {{polytonic}} template rather than specifying the actual font. rossb 09:23, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] First and latter Greek literation

Under the the "Greek" column, what's the difference between the first literation and the latter literation, separated by a solidus (slash)? - Centrx 23:45, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Do any other languages use the Greek alphabet?

Is Greek the only language written in the Greek alphabet or are there also others? Michael Hardy 20:56, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

AFAIK, there is only modern Greek with dialects, but I'm not sure.
There seem to be some distinct dialects of Greek still used, Pontic Greek, 2-400.000 speakers http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=PNT Southern Tsakonian (Less than 300 speakers?) http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=TSD Yevanic (Less than 50 speakers) http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=YEJ I believe these languages could, arguably, be classified as other languages than Greek, and that they use the Greek alphabet. I guess that would be all, unless you're counting mathematical usage, and similar.
  • There are no other major uses of the Greek alphabet today. However, there have been some interesting ones in the past. In my article "Character Codes for Greek: Problems and Modern Solutions" (in Greek Letters: From Tables to Pixels, 1996 ISBN 1884718272), I summarize some of this history. I was just thinking about adding this info to the Wikipedia article yesterday! Someday soon.... --Macrakis 02:54, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] pronunciations

I tried my best to convert all the pronunciations given from SAMPA to IPA, but I'm pretty sure some of those prons weren't SAMPA. I hope someone who knows could check these and fix them if there are errors. In particular I am concerned about the transcription of 'e', 'o', and 'g' in letter names. Nohat 00:31, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've converted some more from SAMPA to IPA, but once again I would welcome anyone checking these. rossb 16:47, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Why Hebrew?

Question: what is a comparison to Hebrew doing in an English encyclopedia? Any objections against removing this? −Woodstone 11:46, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

It is a comparison of alphabet entities and names. It is relevant. Do not delete. Evertype 12:04, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)
Why Hebrew? Because those two alphabets are very closely related to each other. The letters have almost a one-to-one correspondence, and their names are even similar. I say keep it. Foobaz·o< 21:24, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

May I suggest to move this comparison to the Greek and/or the Hebrew version of Wikipedia. It is not relevant for the English version. It would not be practical to start comparing all the alphabets of the world to each other in this fashion. −Woodstone 21:09, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

It's not a random comparison. It's worth showing where the Greek letters came from, and they came from the Phoenician alphabet. The Hebrew alphabet is the closest relative of the Phoenician alphabet that's still in common use. I could see switching it to the ancient letters, if those are available, but otherwise the comparison should be kept.

The whole remainder of the article has no mention of Hebrew. That's why the current state is confusing. If the reason is as explained here, that should be mentioned above the table for clarification and also in the section on history. Could one of you add that? −Woodstone 21:51, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

I've mentioned in the overview. I hope it's adequate.

It could have been closer to the table, but thanks and discussion closed. −Woodstone 22:30, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

[edit] Precomposed vs. combining characters

Right now, the names of the letters are written using both characters and using combining accents. This is confusing, because users will naturally think that there are two versions because there is some distinction being made. I propose that we systematically use precombined characters only, as is done on the other polytonic pages I've looked at. If a user's system doesn't support the precomposed characters (how common is this?), how likely is it that it will render the combining characters correctly? If in fact it is necessary sometimes to show both precomposed and combining variants, I suggest we simply define it as a "Small Matter of Programming" for the polytonic template....

PS I actually prefer combining diacritics in principle, but in practice precomposed work better.... --Macrakis 23:27, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree that we shouldn't have two different versions of the names - particularly as at present without explanation (at least one reader has queried this before). On my browser, both on-screen and printed, the first (precomposed) version looks much better. Also in some cases (for instance omega) the two have different diacritics (the combining version seems to be wrong). rossb 09:32, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I should have mentioned that I deleted the second version some days ago. rossb 13:18, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Greek cursive

Is there any form of cursive for the Greek alphabet? I didn't find one in the internet.

These will show you what it looks like. The second I find especially helpful.
A Greek Database of Unconstrained Handwriting
Examples of Greek Handwriting
--Queezbo 22:24, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Font variants (was: Missing letter)

The lunate form of Σ (Ϲ) is missing from the table in section 1. Gdr 23:51, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

Many variants of letters are missing, but that is as it should be. There should probably be a separate chart of variant shapes, with images of characters (not Unicode references) from a variety of sources. There is a particularly wide variety of shapes in early inscriptions (alpha written "on its side", sigma written with 3 strokes rather than 4, theta with a dot rather than a line in the middle, etc.), but there is also a whole history of uncials, cursives, etc. etc. Unicode happens to encode some of the variants used in mathematics, but this is far from a complete list of variants. What's more, they are marked in the Unicode standard as symbols, not as letters, and should not be used for representing Greek in text: curled beta U+03D0 ϐ; script theta U+03D1 ϑ; script phi U+03D5 ϕ; omega pi U+03D6 ϖ; script kappa U+03F0 ϰ; tailed rho U+03F1 ϱ; lunate sigma U+03F2 ϲ; capital theta U+03F4 ϴ; lunate epsilon U+03F5 ϵ. --Macrakis 14:03, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
But for some reason we've already got the script theta in the main table! rossb 14:25, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
No longer. --Macrakis 16:57, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Alternative theory" of history

User:Xpo_FERENS inserted a reference to an alternative theory of the history of the Greek alphabet which denies its Phoenician origin. This link leads to an article from the Greek newspaper Apogevmatini quoting an article from the Greek magazine Davlos which claims, among other things, that "the Greeks were writing using not only Linear A and B, but also a type of writing identical to that of the alphabet since at least 6000 B.C." The article has many more extravagant claims like this, for example that Greek is not descended from Indo-European (which doesn't exist), that "every (ancient) Greek word is basically an acronym...where every letter provides a significant or less significant notional [i.e. semantic] element", that "Greek is the first and only created language of the human species which provided the basis for all "conventional" languages, as are all the other languages of the world (where there is no causative relationship between the form and the meaning). These other languages are a corrupt form of Greek.", etc. The Davlos site (in Greek only) has much more along these lines. I didn't read the details, but there were also articles on the "technology of the ancient gods", etc. I don't think this is noteworthy enough to report on (the way Wikipedia reports on holocaust denial etc.), but I'd like to hear others' opinions. --Macrakis 22:59, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC) (revised)

[edit] Phoenician Deception

I would like to comment that I added the link to the article in belief that it was a good source for others to get an idea that their is a theory that that questions the current Phoenician orthodoxy. I would appreiciate it if the reference I added to the article was re-inserted by he who removed it. - Xpo FERENS

The theory in question makes extravagant claims which are not accepted by any serious scholars (do you have evidence to the contrary?). Of course, following the Wikipedia NPOV philosophy, it should be reported on if it is noteworthy in itself, just as Holocaust denial is noteworthy, belief in the healing power of crystals is noteworthy, etc. But as far as I can tell, this is just the point of view of one crank publication, Davlos. --Macrakis 15:17, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
In the article many serious scholars are noted who's work has been cited to logically lead to the author's conclusion. One serious scholar I can cite off the top of my head who's beliefs I would say are in accord with that of the author's is that of Dr. Aris Poulianos. I certainly think a theory of such magnitude deserves a whole article in itself let alone the minor reference I made. Now my request of you still stands to re-insert my reference, I would be more than glad to do it myself though I would rather not put myself through the headache of it being repeatedly removed. - Xpo FERENS
I invite other editors to look over the link and to the general content of the grecoreport and davlos sites and draw their own conclusions. There are two questions, I think: 1) does this content represent a serious contribution to scholarship? and 2) if it is pseudoscience or pseudohistory (as I believe), is it noteworthy enough to document in the Wikipedia, and if so, in what article? Perhaps we need an article on Nationalist pseudoscience? --Macrakis 16:10, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think archeaological finds that suggest the complete refutation of the Phoenician theory are meritable enough to be a contribution to scholarship. It is your belief that it is pseudo-history, it is by belief that the problem of the Greek alphabet needs to be seriously reconsidered. - Xpo FERENS

The exact development of writing in Greece might be open to question - I remember the plates that were hard to explain. However, saying the alphabets have no relation and only look somewhat similar is obviously wrong. That site is plainly not a reliable resource, for instance, it goes on to claim that Greek isn't Indo-European. On the main page they explicitly state their aim is to show Greek culture was a gift from God, and so deny any debts to anyone. If there is anything worth mentioning here, we should be able to find a better source. Josh

[edit] Transliterations

I collected some transliterations of classical and modern Greek at Transliteration of Greek into English. I suggest to include at least one of the modern transliterations in the main table (my favourite is the UN/ELOT scheme). The next step would be IMO to use this transliteration for articles about modern Greek geographical and personal names (for instance shouldn't the "c" in Constantine Karamanlis and Costas Caramanlis be "k"), see discussion at Talk:Greece. Markussep 10:33, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

In English, many Greeks use the English equivalents of their names rather than direct transliterations or transcriptions of their Greek names. George Seferis is known as George, not Giorgios or Yorgos, in English—as shown by Google and Amazon search, and despite what Wikipedia currently uses; similarly for Aristotle Onassis. On the other hand, Yannis Ritsos is never referred to as John. Some cases are unclear: John Capodistrias and Ioannis Kapodistrias are both used. Note, however, that though both Ritsos and Kapodistrias were officially Ιωάννης, one is referred to using the informal form and the other using the formal form.... So I think you have to follow the general Wikipedia convention of using the most familiar name, even if that leads to inconsistency. Of course, the first paragraph of the article should give the person's full name in Greek letters for full clarity. See my comments in Talk:Greece for related discussion. --Macrakis 22:35, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Versions or variations of Ancient Greek Letters

The Duenos inscription is the earliest known form of the Latin alphabet dating back to the 6th century BC. Latin alphabet comprised various versions of the Greek alphabet, brought to Italy by Greek colonists. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/latin2.htm


Below is a table with the Greek alphabet variations used in various districts or city-states of ancient Greece.


Image:Alphabet-en003.jpg

I have indicated with a red square the Greek letters Greek letter variations that were dropped from the Greek alphabet before the 5th century BC. They include the symbols C, D, F, L, q, R, S and V.


Image:Alpha-0002.jpg

Image:Alpha-0001.jpg

Image:Alpha-0003.jpg


Effectively only one Latin letter, G (variation of Γ or C) is not present on the above table. --Odysses 4 July 2005 09:16 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your point is here. The only letters that were dropped from the alphabet were F and Q -- the other forms you have marked are just variant shapes. --Macrakis 5 July 2005 18:28 (UTC)

Thanks. I really meant Greek letter variations. For example "gamma" in Corinth was written as "C", "delta" in Argos as "D" and so on.
Today, we call C and D Latin letters, although they were first used in the Greek alphabet. --Odysses 6 July 2005 17:25 (UTC)
Yes, and we call A both a Greek letter (alpha) and a Latin letter (a), although it was first used in the Phoenician alphabet (aleph) (in a different orientation). Lamed (lambda, l) and `ayin (omicron, o) are graphically even more similar to Phoenician. This is all, I think, discussed in the articles on the Phoenician, Greek, and Latin alphabets already, isn't it? --Macrakis 6 July 2005 18:21 (UTC)

It seems that we live again the days of 1850s. There was a strong dispute these days as to whether Troy was pure fiction by Homer or a real ancient city. Many historians these days strongly disputed all evidence indicating the historical existence of Troy. Heinrich Schliemann put an end to this when he uncovered Troy.

Again with the Greek alphabet, we have a great deal of indications that writing existed well before 850 BC.

  • Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus, king of Thrace, and the muse Calliope. Diodorus describes how Orpheus obtained the letters from the Muses. It is important to note that only initiates were allowed to attend the rituals of the mysteries of Samothraki, Eleusis etc. Hence Orphic texts, in the early days, were only available to the few.
  • Homer in Iliad, knows exactly what the words write and letter means.
  • Palamedes an Achean leader in the Trojan War introduced letters [[1]]
  • Plato in Cratylus makes a detailed etymological analysis on how his ancient ancestors created names wisely. For example:
Athene ‘mind’ (nous) and ‘intelligence’ (dianoia), and the maker of names appears to have had a singular notion about her; and indeed calls her by a still higher title, ‘divine intelligence’ (Theou noesis), as though he would say: This is she who has the mind of God (Theonoa);—using alpha as a dialectical variety for eta, and taking away iota and sigma.
also:
You are aware that our forefathers loved the sounds iota and delta, especially the women, who are most conservative of the ancient language, but now they change iota into eta or epsilon, and delta into zeta; this is supposed to increase the grandeur of the sound.

The etymological analysis in Cratylus would not be possible without the use of letters. Likewise, the etymological synthesis of names would not be possible without the use of letters.

There is ample evidence that the ancient Greek alphabet could have been produced in the far depths of prehistory, long before Plato and Homer.

It would be reasonable to assume that the wise men of ancient Greece had rediscovered the long lost alphabet. For this reason they called it "Phoenician alphabet" after the mythical bird phoenix, since they knew it had been lost for centuries but it was revived.

--Odysses 09:42, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Of course Greeks knew how to write in archaic times, they used linear B. This would not be the first time in history that a nation switches writing systems, like Turkey under Atatürk. Andreas 14:53, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

--- Turks changed their writing system twice, but not with a separation period of several hundred years --Mrg3105 22:10, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] pronunciation issues

i've been reading a lot recently about ancient greek pronunciation. some issues as currently represented:

  1. Greek ou was still [o:] in classical times [c. 400 bc]. [u:] is > 300 bc.
  2. The accents in the pronunciation of the letters are [of course] all wrong. we should figure out a way to properly indicate the pitch drop in the perispomenon.
  3. More generally, this page omits diacritics entirely, although they are an integral part of the writing system.
  4. there should be another table describing the "conventional" [somewhat bastardized] modern pronunciation of classical greek. this differs from the actual classical pronunciation as follows:
-- aspirates become fricatives
-- acute, circumflex, grave are all pronounced the same, with stress rather than pitch accent
-- the iota subscript is unpronounced
-- ou is [u] rather than [o]
-- yi is [wi]
-- epsilon and omicron are low-mid; omega, eta and ei are high-mid, and eta and ei are merged

Benwing 4 July 2005 06:37 (UTC)

I like using the upturned question mark: ¿. But Nohat might complain that it's "nonstandard", even though my way is better and righter. lysdexia 7 July 2005 20:38 (UTC)
This is an article about the Greek alphabet. The names of the letters are of course very relevant, as are their phonetic values at various periods. On the other hand, I don't see the point of giving an IPA transcription for the pronunciation of the names of the letters. I propose that we replace the four columns Name:Greek, Name:Traditional transcription, Name: Pronunciation:classical, and Name:Pronunciation:modern with two columns: Name: Greek and Name: English. We should also add the older names of the letters, e.g. "ἒ" in addition to "ἒ ψιλόν".
It also seems to me that the table is getting unwieldy in other ways. Instead of adding columns for the older names of the letters, and for archaic pronunciations, I think it would be better to use a footnote. --Macrakis 7 July 2005 22:15 (UTC)
I agree with Macrakis more or less. There is too much detail about pronunciation, and an article about an alphabet is not really the place to do it. The table is more or less indecipherable, by the way. Why is the Hebrew alphabet included, for example? The table needs some serious trimming if it's to be considered legible. Limit it to, say, 4 columns or something. Preferably less. It would be ideal if the phontical details were properly covered in separate articles such as Greek phonology rather than here.
Peter Isotalo 13:38, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Yes indeed. Why is the Hebrew alphabet included?--Theathenae 18:00, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
You're right the table's way too wide. I'd vote the pronunciations of the letter names ([ˈalpʰa], [ˈalfa] etc.) out first, there's nothing there you can't think of yourself using the pronunciations of the letters. Next the HTML codes, this table is not about HTML, see List of XML and HTML character entity references. The numerical values are also dealt with at Greek numerals, so they can go as well. There is already a discussion about Hebrew alphabet above. Markussep 18:47, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

It would make more sense to include the Phoenician letters rather than the Hebrew. I'd also propose to merge the "archaic" and "classical" pronunciations with a footnote for the archaic cases (perhaps using some convention like dagger† for archaic forms). Putting together the various proposed changes, we'd have:

Letter Name Pronunciation Numeric value Corresponding
Phoenician
letter		 HTML entity Transliteration1
Greek English ancient modern
Α α ἄλφα Alpha [a] [a:] [a] 1 Aleph Aleph &alpha; a

--Macrakis 19:34, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I'd skip the HTML and the numeric value as well (maybe I didn't phrase that clear enough), since they get enough attention on other pages. Phoenician sounds OK to me. Transliteration: see also Transliteration of Greek into English, there are many variants. Markussep 20:20, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Understood. The rationale for the proposal is that these properties are all directly related to the letters -- unlike, say, the pronunciation of the names. The main argument for removing transliteration is probably that the distinction between transliteration and transcription might be confusing for some readers, who might miss "gh" and "y" for gamma, for example. The HTML entity probably belongs in the last column. "Pronunciation" and "Numeric value" should be links (when the articles exist). --Macrakis 00:29, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

I would show transliteration, but make a consistent choice (for instance the "traditional" one for classic Greek, and the UN/ELOT one for modern (if different from traditional). If readers want more options, we'll show them where to find them. For HTML: reference to List of XML and HTML character entity references, for numerical values reference to Greek numerals (both articles exist). Markussep 06:54, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed new table

I trimmed the table into this below. As you can see I didn't replace Hebrew by Phoenician, since I know too little about that. Archaic pronunciations between parentheses. Markussep 08:06, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Letter Name Pronunciation Corresponding
Hebrew
letter		 Transliteration1
Greek English ancient modern ancient modern
Α α ἄλφα Alpha [a] [a:] [a] א 'Aleph a a
Β β βῆτα Beta [b] [v] ב Beth b v
Γ γ γάμμα Gamma [g] [ʝ] before [e] or [i]; [ɣ] otherwise ג Gimel g g
Δ δ δέλτα Delta [d] [ð] ד Daleth d d
Ε ε ἒ ψιλόν Epsilon [e] [e] ה He e e
Ϝ ϝ (1) Ϝαυ ? Digamma [w] - ו Vav w -
Ζ ζ ζῆτα Zeta [zd], later [zː] [z] ז Zayin z z
Η η ἦτα Eta [ɛː] ([h]) [i] ח Heth e i
Θ θ θῆτα Theta [tʰ] [θ] ט Teth th th
Ι ι ἰῶτα Iota [i] [iː] [i] [j] י Yod i i
Κ κ κάππα Kappa [k] [k] ך כ Kaph k, c k
Λ λ λάμβδα Lambda [l] [l] ל Lamed l l
Μ μ μῦ Mu [m] [m] ם מ Mem m m
Ν ν νῦ Nu [n] [n] ן נ Nun n n
Ξ ξ ξῖ Xi [ks] [ks] ס Samekh x x
Ο ο ὄ μικρόν Omicron [o] [o] ע `Ayin o o
Π π πῖ Pi [p] [p] ף פ Pe p p
M (1) (Ϻ ϻ)   San ([z]) - ץ צ Tzadik s -
Q (1) (Ϙ ϙ)   Qoppa ([k]) - ק Qoph q -
Ρ ρ ῥῶ Rho [r], [r̥] [r] ר Resh r (ῥ: rh) r
Σ σ
ς (final)		 σῖγμα Sigma [s] [s] ש Shin s, ss (between vowels) s
Τ τ ταῦ Tau [t] [t] ת Tav t t
Υ υ ὒ ψιλόν Upsilon ([u]) [y] [yː] [i] [v] [f] from ו Vav u, y (between consonants) y, v, f
Φ φ φῖ Phi [pʰ] [f] origin disputed (see text) ph f
Χ χ χῖ Chi [kʰ] ([ks]) [ç] before [e] or [i]; [x] otherwise ch ch
Ψ ψ ψῖ Psi [ps] [ps] ps ps
Ω ω ὦ μέγα Omega [ɔː] [o] o, ô o
Ϡ ϡ (1)   Sampi ([ss] [ks]) -

[edit] The Oldest Alphabet in Use Today?

The second sentence of this article says that Greek is the oldest alphabet still in use today. This seems to me, to be a glaring mistake. The Hebrew alphabet is certainly older than Greek, and certainly in use today. I would delete that line, but it's so obviously wrong, That I think I may have misunderstood something. If nobody responds to this post, I will delete the line in question. Eliezerke 17:02, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

The Hebrew alphabet is certainly not older. To quote from Hebrew alphabet: "The modern script used for writing Hebrew (usually called the Jewish script by scholars, and also traditionally known as the square script, or the Assyrian script), evolved during the 3rd century BC from the Aramaic script, which was used by Jews for writing Hebrew since the 6th century BC." The Greek alphabet, on the other hand, has been in continuous use since the 9th century BC.--Theathenae 17:39, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

The original Hebrew alphabet known as Evrit is still used today though the font of the alphabet has been changed to Ashuryt or Assyrian. Since the alephbet was used in the Jewish scriptures, and these are dated to be at least 3,300 years old, that would make the Hebrew alephbet older by several centuries. It seems to me that nationalist pride has obscured the fairly well documented scientific evidence that Greeks are not native to Greece, and are in fact migrants to the area at about 3200 years ago. Even if they begun to use letters and writing in the 9th century BCE, it seems that several centuries passed during which they were well predisposed to borrow this knowledge from Punic traders, or indeed Israelites who also had access to use of ships. This borrowing is commonly observed throughout history on global scale in many cultures. On the other hand there is no evidence of dead languages being rediscovered after centuries of disuse. Of course given the self-perception of the Greeks in their own primacy within European culture it may be a hard pill to swallow (this is a Hebrew pun – the PIL in Hebrew means an elephant, or an object impossible to swallow, and even if cooked, swallowed only by very many in small portions; this is a further pun on the intellectual pigmy because it is the pigmies who hunt and eat elephants in Africa) by admitting that they borrowed letters and writing from Semitic speakers. This would also kind of ruin the Indo-European theory, and not a few academic careers. --Mrg3105 07:13, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A different opinion worth noting?

Hello, I'd first have to say that, well, I'm Greek, and I have a different opinion concerning the origins of the Greek alphabet, but this time, WITH proof, avec proof, or whatever...

I'll first point you out the webpage containing the evidence (Both in English and Greek, though, being a greek page, content is less in the English version...), and then I'll say a few words...Here goes.

The Hellenic Language (In Greek)

The Hellenic Language (In English)

Now, if you know how to read Greek, that was quite enlightening.But even if you don't, look inside the greek page.There are more pictures anyways, and you might catch something more than the English one...Anyways, it shows us usage of a (primitive, or whatever) used in Dispilio in Kastoria back in 5.250 B.C, which is also the first writing in the world, till now, of course.Amongst other things.Also, it shows us the usage of Greek words in Hawai and Peru (The fact that the Minoans had gone all around the world even by 4000 B.C is not disputed.Look HERE (Greek) and HERE (English).Note that the English article is much smaller and poorer.), comparison charts between Linear 'A, Linear 'B, and more...

That might show you that, well, the Greeks had a system of writing from THAT far back, but it still doesn't solidly prove that we didn't get our Alphabet from the Phoenicians.Well, this does(Unfortunately, only in greek):

The Hellenic Alphabet in use in Milos by 2500 B.C

All in all, that article shows us all that the Alphabet *I* (Along with many, many others) use today was actually a evolutionary work, done by us, and not adapted from someone else...

Anyways, I just wanted to point out another side of the coin, the *dark side*.Although we too learn in our schools that we "adapted" the Phoenician Alphabet, these are SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE, not just conclusions made from whatever happened back then.Anyways, a LOT of the research is done by foreign scientists, not Greek ones...So no room for Nationalism.Could this be added in the article as a different view, but one backed up by serious evidence? I believe that it's for the best.An encyclopedia has to be objective, and that means telling the whole story.

Aaaaand I'm out....

Quote from the indicated source:
"The Hellenic language is the most perfect human achievement in the linguistic field. And this, of course, is not incidental. (...) This language, therefore, is the creation of people with superior thought and mental consistency. The qualities characterizing the language of the Hellenes, also characterize their being. Proof is that the same qualities (clarity, providence, power, expressional wealth etc) are found in their mental and artistic creations."
Unnecessary to say that this kind of bloated talk immediately discredits the source as being scientific. −Woodstone 20:07, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Aaah, friend, thank you for your quick reply.I never said that the guy that writes the page is a scientist.He just gathers information from books and wherever else.The quote you added is from the front page, and it gives a (Quite subjective) "summary" of the whole subject.He tries(Well, not really) to seperate the scientific evidence from the subjective comments, in each article.Try not to be prejudiced by such comments and just focus on the scientific evindence. --B Lizzard 20:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Check out Dispilio Tablet and see good sources.

[edit] Additional information section

I'm not sure I agree with the removal of my addition as "song trivia": A catchy tune that may be readily adapted to learning to recite and remember the Greek alphabet is the theme song from the 1970s police drama Hawaii Five-O. I listed it in the "Additional information section" which gave various aids for learning the alphabet. It was a silly but helpful prop recommended to students by my Greek professor when I was in college. --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 16:15, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't think a "silly" mnemonic like this belongs in WP, especially if it's not widely known (which I don't think it is) -- like say "every good boy deserves fudge" for the treble clef (which is the title of a song and therefore has its own WP page, but doesn't appear in the treble clef article.... --Macrakis 18:53, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Ok, fair enough. --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 02:09, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Western Greek & Eastern Greek

What's the difference between the Western & Eastern versions of the Greek alphabet?? ABGDEZHQIKLMNXOPRSTUFCYW is the _______ Greek alphabet; the other one differs in that... Georgia guy 00:15, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

The western and eastern variants are groupings of alphabet by the different Greek dialects. There should be more info in the article (or in a more specific article) about the early history of the Greek alphabet; see Jeffrey's cited article for info. --Macrakis 23:45, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
What Wikipedian are you referring to as Jeffrey?? Georgia guy 22:43, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Not a Wikipedian. A cited article, in the bibliography section of the main page:
Jeffery, Lilian Hamilton, The local scripts of archaic Greece: a study of the origin of the Greek alphabet and its development from the eighth to the fifth centuries B.C., Oxford, 1961, ISBN 0198140614.
--Macrakis 22:58, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Greek for other languages -- copyright statement

To the extent that the text of this section is copied from my article "Character Codes for Greek: Problems and Modern Solutions", I authorize its use in Wikipedia under the usual Wikipedia license. Stavros Macrakis, 25 November 2005.


[edit] Stroke Order

Would it be silly to include information on the proper stroke order when writing these characters by hand? I couldn't find it on the internet so that's partly why I'm asking here. I'm wondering, for instance, which stroke of Lambda should go first, or which stroke of Phi. Lambda looks a lot better to me when I draw the leftmost stroke first, but I'm curious to know what the standard order is. A5 15:42, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

The forms of the letters depicted in the Greek letter articles are those used in print, where stroke order is irrelevant. The handwritten letters look quite different and are not shown in these articles. The issue is complicated by the fact that whereas the printed letters are basically the same for ancient and modern Greek, the handwritten letters that are used in Greece and are taught in Greek schools are quite differenet from those used in teaching Ancient Greek in schools outside Greece. The latter are more or less renditions of the printed letters. We could see if we could find sources from Greek educational organizations for teaching the modern rendition of Greek handwriting and post an article abount this. Andreas 15:59, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] modern names of the letters

An anonymous editor added the modern names of the letters, unfortunately at the wrong spot (after the letter combinations), in a phonetic transcription using English spelling (ee for [i] etc). I reverted this because this edit had a poor style not fit for an encyclopedia. It is true that the modern names of the letters are missing. They are included in the Greek version at el:Ελληνικό αλφάβητο. I would prefer the pronounciation of the modern names in IPA, because this is the standard. However, including the modern names in the table would make it very wide. One option would be to have two tables, one for the modern and one for the historic names and pronunciations. Andreas 02:15, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

The English names and the modern Greek names are already given in the table, in Greek writing. I do not see the value of adding an IPA transcription of the modern names. This was actually discussed in Talk some time ago. On the other hand, the ancient Greek names (ει not εψιλον etc.) should be added to the Greek names column. Remember, this is an article about the alphabet. --Macrakis 02:25, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I went back to the talk page and saw that this was already discussed previously. But the modern Greek names are actually not in the table. The modern names should be monotonic, and some are different, so today you see mostly μι, νι and not μυ, νυ. There is some controversy about γάμμα or γάμα, see el:Συζήτηση:Γάμμα. Andreas 02:38, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Argh! The Andriotis dictionary (1998) gives only μι, while the Babinotis dictionary (1998) gives both, but with μυ as the main headword. As a natural pedant, I would of course want to have both in the WP, with extensive documentation on the sociolinguistics behind the choice of one or the other. As an advocate, I would certainly prefer μι and γάμα, since the υ/ι and μ/μμ distinctions are complete otiose at this point. But as an editor of a general encyclopedia, I find that the details of the spelling of the names of the letters in Greek are far too obscure a topic to worry about. μυ has the advantage of unifying the ancient and Greek names without falsifying reality substantively (unlike, let's say, ει vs. εψιλον). --Macrakis 02:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that this is too obscure a point to be reflected in this article. But it's possibly appropriate to mention it in the individual articles for the various letters, and I've made a start by updating Mu (letter) accordingly. --rossb 16:24, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alphabet vs. phonology

Several of the phonemes represented by single letters, e.g. Γ = /ɣ/, have allophones, in this case [ʝ] and [ɣ]. Since this is an article about the alphabet, and not modern Greek phonology, this seems to be out of place here, just as dialectal pronunciations would be (e.g. Cretan [ʒ]). There is an extensive (though, alas, not very good) discussion of the phonology in Greek language. I would prefer to keep just the phonemes and not all the variant realizations in the main table here. --Macrakis 02:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Archaic pronunciations in main table

Again, I think we are overloading the main table with too much information. What's more, most letters were pronounced the same in both archaic and classical, and there were multiple archaic alphabets, each a bit different. If someone wants to write an article on archaic Greek alphabets, it would certainly be appropriate to have all this information (along with the different shapes of the letters). But I just don't think it belongs in the main article about the Greek alphabet. --Macrakis 18:43, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

If we're going to remove the archaic pronunciations, then maybe we shuld also remove the archaic letters as well (to a separate article) since they don't really form part of the Greek alphabet as normally understood. Maybe the original reason for including them was that otherwise there would be gaps in the column giving the numerical uses of the latters, but I note that this column has disappeared anyway. Meanwhile the Greek numerals article needs a bit of attention: for instance some of the characters are illegibile. --rossb 19:02, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree about removing the archaic letters from the main table. They should probably be mentioned in the body of the article, with an xref to the History of the Greek alphabet article which you have just volunteered to write (right? :-) ). I have started a stub with some bibliography. --Macrakis 20:06, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't know about having volunteered to write it, but I've had a go. --rossb 20:42, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Transliteration of sigma

The main table claims that the ancient transliteration of sigma is "s, ss (between vowels)". Can anyone provide any evidence for this (eg examples of a single sigma being transliterated as a double s)? If not, I would propose to delete "ss (between vowels)". --rossb 06:59, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I've made the change. There was a similar note at Transliteration of Greek to the Latin alphabet, but interestingly applied to Modern Greek rather than Ancient Greek, which gave the placename "Laris(s)a" as an example. I think this is an exception not a general case, and I've made a similar change over there. As always, I'm happy to be proved wrong... --rossb 17:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] true and complete

The Greek alphabet was never complete: the original alphabet did not distinguish between short and long vowels. The Ionic alphabet used digraphs <ει> and <ου> for /eː/ and /uː/. (except for pi, which has got an exception) - unclear what is meant with this. Andreas 14:12, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Table -- read across or down?

Hello. I find the table hard to read; I want to read down the columns, but the table is ordered across the rows. Does anyone object to reordering the table so that beta is below alpha instead of beside it? 64.48.193.172 18:11, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I think you're referring to the Greek alphabet box in the upper right hand corner of the article, right? That is a template, and can be discussed at its own page, Template:Table Greekletters and Template talk:Table Greekletters. --Macrakis 18:19, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the pointer. I'll take the discussion to the template talk page. 64.48.193.172 19:09, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Hello! When editing the Greek infobox/letter template (and creating/placing individual letter images), I thought about that; however, I decided against it given the similar arrangement of the infobox/template for the English (Latin) alphabet. And I'm sure some might object – though not really me – to reordering it as suggested. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 18:21, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not seeing a need to follow a bad precedent here. With all due respect, 64.48.193.172 19:09, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
As you can see above, I don't necessarily disagree with you. :) E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 19:11, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oldest alphabet?

I'm not sure if this true. Any sources at least? The Aramaic alphabet, for example, is much older and has the characteristics you list. So is Hebrew. AucamanTalk 07:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I've re-worded the corresponding section in Greek language and I can propose something here too if necessary. The term "true alphabet" was apparently meant to refer to a distinction (made also in the alphabet article) between alphabets in the wider sense (including Phoenician etc.), and alphabets in the narrow sense, of which Greek is indeed the oldest one. The difference is that Greek is the first alphabet to represent vowels and consonants on an equal basis. This distinction, between "true alphabet", "abjad" and "abugida", is drawn from an influential reference work, The World's Writing Systems, ed. P. Daniels et al. HTH. Lukas (T.|@) 11:46, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes I was referred to the alphabet article which explains some of the things you're saying. I have to say the phrase "true alphabet" is somewhat misleading and highly POV, but if it's used academically I'm not going to oppose its usage. I'll try to research this out and let you know if I come up with a better terminology. For now you can just ignore this I guess. AucamanTalk 12:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Okay. My personal preference is simply "alphabet in the narrow sense", which is neutral and avoids the evaluative overtones of "true alphabet". I don't think the term "true alphabet" is entrenched enough in technical usage that we are forced to use it. Lukas (T.|@) 12:22, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation Help

What does the Greek letter for "J" look and sound like? --68.37.116.234 21:46, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

If you mean, "what letter corresponds historically to English letter J", the answer is "I" (iota), which corresponds to both I and J — which were not distinguished in the Latin alphabet until the 16th century — see J. If you mean, "how does modern Greek write the sound 'j' IPA [dʒ] as in 'job'", the answer is that standard Greek does not have that sound. The usual approximation is written τζ and pronounced [dz] as in the word τζάμι ['dzami] (glass), borrowed from the Turkish cam [dʒam]. --Macrakis 23:45, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] OMG, this picture is best described as "sweentness"

THIS pic

Check that out, evolution of the alphabet, this has *got* to be on wikipedia. I'm sending the guy who's page it is, an email asking for permission to get the picture. After I do, where should we put it? I can make separate animations for each letter out of it I suppose. Comments? Fresheneesz 08:38, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

This illustration might be nice in the History of the alphabet article. I don't think it belongs here in the Greek alphabet article. And frankly, I can't get as excited about it as you are.... --Macrakis 14:56, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Not gonna lie about it, that is totally BADASS!Cameron Nedland 17:03, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adding uses of Greek alphabet

We could post where the greek alphabet is used, something like this

The article Greek letters used in mathematics is referenced in the first paragraph as symbols in mathematics and science. What else did you have in mind? --Macrakis 14:46, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Whoops, sorry, I didn't read the intro, my bad :) --www.doc 15:25, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Historical evidence is finally needed...

The Phoenician advocates have been hijacking history for a very long time. It is therefore about time that evidence is brought to the table of discussion on where and how you base your claims of the Phoenician origin of the Greek Alphabet. As every good historian would do I suggest that we base all claims on the quotes of the original writers or archaeological evidence.

I am truly sorry if your teachers or textbooks misguided you, but it is about time you face up to your Ego and make nor more fasle claims in ancient history.Furthermore, to call an opposite opinion pseudohistory shows only your fanatisicm and denial to the truth. We recently witnessed the opinion of the Bush administration of the democratically Palestinian elected goverment that was not democratic enough because they did not like it !!! Are you trying to do the same with history? If you do not like it it is not good enough then? To call publications "crank" only show your unwillingness to contribute historical truth.

Point 1: When Herodotus says "I think" why does he say that?

Point 2: Is it valid for a historian to base a whole history on a hypothetical claim?

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Atarnaris (talk • contribs) 03:23, 12 April 2006.

I agree with you that one cannot take Herodotus at face value. Nonetheless, the Semitic/Phoenican origin of the Greek alphabet is the mainstream scholarly position. There is good evidence for that position, including (among other things) the shape, phonetic value, order, and names of the letters. If, of course, you can find an indication in a reputable academic source (not Davlos!) that other theories are held by serious scholars, please discuss it here.

As for 'original writers' and 'archaeological evidence', Wikipedia is an encyclopedia which reports on the current best scholarly understanding of an issue. It is not a place for new interpretations of primary sources and archaeological evidence: see WP:NOR. --Macrakis 13:27, 12 April 2006 (UTC)


Before my contribution about Herodotus you were not even aware on the origin of the Phoenician claim, since you never mentioned Herodotus before. Following my mentioning you were forced to include Herodotus. Instead for claiming scholar proof we ask you to kindly submit this proof. Claiming proof and actually having any is two differnt things. You say there is good eveidence yet you do not bring any.

I suggest you bring your "proof" here so we discuss it point by point before you vandalise the page like a fascist. You did not discuss my two points at all.

I am sorry but you are a bit behind with current best scholarly understanding of the origins of this language. I have a few books I may suggest you read, if you so wish.

To close with my comments: you may say that the Phoenician origin is a theory based on such and such, but definetely not proof. I have numerous quotes from ancient texts to devalue this theory.I suggest you bring evidence on the table.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Atarnaris (talk • contribs) 17:47, 12 April 2006.

Sigh. Atarnaris, you state you "have a few books [you] suggest," which is exactly what Macrakis has been requesting! So please do so, that these sources may be judged on their merits.
As for "fascism" and your need to bring politics to the table, well. Macrakis has demonstrated his good Wikipedia citizenship over thousands of edits on thousands of pages. All your edits have been pushing your POV on those interested in the Greek alphabet.
→ (AllanBz ✍ 06:10, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Dear AllanBz. Thank you for your answer. As you are probably interested in the topic as well what would you suggest would be the way forward to validate every single line that currenly exists on this topic.As I said it is thing to present theories and quite another to present theories as proofs. What we are seeking for any topic is to get closest to the truth and that cannot only happen if proof is presented.

regarding politics there is a strong anti-hellenistic content which is almost racist at times and this has to be looked upon more thoroughly. I therefore suggest that anyone interested in the topic submits proofs for any statement written. Otherwise if no proof or contradictory theories are submitted I suggest that we correct the statements and present them only as theories. (Atarnaris)

It is mentioned: The Greek alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Greek language since about the 9th century BC. What is the proof for the time period mentioned? Any answers please, otherwise it should be revised (Atarnaris)

The referenced "main article", History of the Greek alphabet, has more detail. It mentions not only the mainstream position, but also other positons: "Some scholars argue for earlier dates: Naveh for the 11th century, Stieglitz for the 14th century, Bernal for the 18th–13th century, but none of these is widely accepted." See the article's bibliography. By the way, none of these scholars (or any other scholars that I am aware of) question the Phoenician origin, only the date of its adoption. The article does not mention such things as the Dispilio Tablet, which is sometimes mentioned as a much example of earlier Greek writing, because it hasn't even been published formally by Hourmouziadis (its discoverer), much less discussed in the open literature.

I am not interested in edit warring -- I would appreciate it if you would delete your additions until you bring better evidence. --Macrakis 14:13, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Including Macedonian"?

I'm a bit confused about why Miskin reverted Macrakis' modification to the "other languages" section regarding Macedonian. I can see why one would not want to make too strong a statement implying separate-language status of Macedonian (although to the best of my knowledge the separate-language hypothesis is far more mainstream than Miskin said) - but whatever Macedonian was or wasn't: Writing it was certainly not among the "primary uses" of the Greek alphabet. So it really doesn't belong into that first sentence, in my view. I'd suggest I try to find a more neutral formulation (neutral as to the separate-language issue, that is), but at the place further down in the list where Macrakis wanted to place it. The revert to the old version seems to me not to be a good solution. (Ironically, that version too seems to have been the work of Macrakis himself, back in November, as I know see. [2]). Okay with you guys? Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:34, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The pages of the individual letters

OK, I realise this is not the entirely correct place to post this, but since I've found no better place I'll do it anyway

The pages of the Greek letters do not follow the same standard. For example, Alpha is a disambiguation page and Alpha (letter) is the page on the Greek letter. On the other hand, Theta is on the Greek letter and Theta (disambiguation) is its disambiguation page. Some pages still, such as Beta, have both the letter and the disambiguation awkwardly pushed together on the same page.

To make things even worse, typing the Greek letters into the search box (i.e. pages Α, Β, Γ, Δ, etc...) do not redirect to the same thing. Most of them will take you to the letter page, but Β, Δ and Ρ will take you to the disambiguation page. Even worse, Π will take you to Pi, which is on the mathematical constant!

I propose a serious discussion on how it should be done and then that I implement it accordingly. I don't know yet where such a discussion could take place, but some comments can be put here. Please also leave comments on my talk page.

--HymylyTC 19:14, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. --Macrakis 21:59, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Please see my talk page for my proposition. --HymylyTC 12:09, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Diacritics

user:Jon Awbrey and I had a little dispute over on this article about using diacritics when giving the Greek translations. He maintains that he cannot see the diacriticized characters, and that it's better to include incomplete information than a complete lack of information on account of Unicode squares. I am of the opinion that not using diacritics is as inappropriate as disregarding acutes in Spanish and umlauts in German (which speakers of those languages will assure you CANNOT be omitted), and that not including diacritics leads to ambiguity: compare οὗ (masc gen rel pronoun) to οὐ (not), which without diacritics be distinguished but which are completely dissimilar in meaning. I also do not think that foreign letters should not be omitted to accommodate those with inferior systems-- for example, I can't see several letters on the Proto_Indo_European_language article, however I realize that that's no reason for me to move in and destroy all the Unicode characters there.

I don't want to cause excessive confrontation, however, so, what is the Wikipedia policy for Greek diacritics? Better to omit them or no? --user:Cevlakohn

I include them at all times, and make sure they remain included. Besides, the Palatino Linotype and Tahoma fonts (at least as of Windows XP) support them well, and the {{polytonic}} template is biased towards installed fonts with good polytonic Greek support. - Gilgamesh 19:55, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't think wikipedia should disregard Greek diacritics just to work around bugs in client unicode implementations. Standards like unicode are open, and there are open implementations, for instance recent Linux distributions and Firefox. Maybe, if it is really a problem, wikipedia should offer on the fly transliteration according to user's preferences (just like math formula are converted to images), but wikipedia should definitively not write substandard pages on such an account. For the time being, I would say that if a client cannot display ancient greek, then users should not view ancient greek pages. Rnabet 15:11, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Editors should remember to use the {{polytonic}} template whenever they enter ancient Greek texts.   Andreas   (T) 17:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 'Ayin listed twice in table

Why is 'Ayin listed in the table as the corresponding Phoenician letter for both Omicron and Omega? The articles History of the Greek alphabet and Ayin only mention a relationship between Ayin and Omicron. If its listing with Omega is intentional, there should probably be a note explaining why it appears twice. neatnate 19:18, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

My understanding is that Omega was a later, secondary invention based on Omicron, so the link to Ayin would be an indirect one. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:48, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Eta

My 1953 Webster's Collegiate dictionary has a table of alphabets on the back endpaper, which says that Eta is pronounced as a ā in english or equivalent of French é. Is this information incorrect, and if so, does this misinformation have a history? --Scottandrewhutchins 19:40, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] display error

if your browser window is small, the greek alphabet overlaps the content...i run a little larger than 800x600 in firefox

[edit] GA candidate

I nominated this article as a GAC. It's pretty good, too bad it was delisted from FA. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 17:15, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

GAs typically must use inline citations. I would look into citing the references you have already listed in the inline form ASAP. Otherwise a reviewer would be forced to fail the article. -Fsotrain09 17:26, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


[edit] GA thoughts

  • This article seems pretty strong, however, I'm surprised it doesn't include Greek numberals, which used the alphabet. Surely at the least there should be a link? Adam Cuerden talk 00:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
There is a link in the opening paragraph: "The letters are also used to represent numbers—Greek numerals—in the same sorts of contexts as Roman numerals."   Andreas   (T) 02:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
It'd be improved with a small section briefly explaining them, though. Still, let's have a look at the rest.

1: Well-written: Pass. However, do something about San: It won't display correctly on all computers I've tested, and so should likely be replaced with an image in the list of letters. (Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ϝ/Ϛ Ζ Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ξ Ο Π Ϻ Ϙ/Ϟ Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ Ψ Ω Ϡ ) I did the earlier one for you. This has been an issue since the FA failure.

2: Accurate, verifiable: I studied a bit of Greek, and it is accurate. It has almost no inline references, however, it puts forth fairly basic information. Still, the phonecian comparisons really should give their sources: Bare fail.

3: Broad in coverage: A small section explaining Greek Numbers and linking to the main article would make it broader, but it covers most aspects. Pass.

4: NPOV: Pass.

5: Stable: Pass

6: Images: Pass, though a few more would be nice.

It needs a few cites, not many, and it'll be a clear pass. At the moment, I'm putting it on hold. Send me a message when you're ready for it to be looked at again. Adam Cuerden talk 13:59, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

GAfailed, refs not fixed, etc. Rlevse 19:58, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Place of obsolete letters in the alphabet

By listing obsolete letters separately, their place in the alphabet got lost. Here is the list:

  • Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ϝ/Ϛ Ζ Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ξ Ο Π Ϻ Ϙ/Ϟ Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ Ψ Ω Ϡ

  Andreas   (T) 02:43, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What about other symbols and sounds of the Ancient Greek Alphabet?

Didn't B (beta) look like a pointy backwards B at one time? If so, when? Didn't Gamma also have a "C" sound (as in cat) at one time. (I heard the symbols "G" and "C" were once interchangable for both sounds and it wasn't until much later that each were designated for one sound)(the symbol G actually evolved from C) At what time period did the E look like a sqare? Is they're a way to show the ancient greek alphabet only; without the altered modern letters, so it is possible to compare time periods as well as showing a grid for exact greek periods with each column showing the alphabet and pronunciation for each period seperatly so I'm able to see the evolution? If not, where can I find this information. The charts are too confusing. They are mixing ancient symbols from different time periods with each other.

[edit] Questionable passage

I'm not happy with the following passage from the "history" secton:

The new spelling rule created a system in which the consonantal signs could no longer be pronounced by themselves (as they could in Phoenician), but only in association with signs from the second category of signs, which could be pronounced by themselves (vowels). The spelling rule created the illusion that speech consists of particles (phonemes = Greek alphabetic letters) and unhistorical explanations of the character of the West Semitic predecessors of the Greek alphabet (that they too stood for phonemes, giving rise to such misleading categories as Abjads or Abugidas).

This sounds like a rather speculative and possibly OR argument. "Illusion"? (That speech indeed does consist of "phonemes", on a mental if not on a physical level, is a very basic assumption still held by virtually all of linguistics!). Moreover, the last bit of this passage, from "...and unhistorical explanations..." onwards, is (1) a syntactic anakoluthon, and (2) again totally speculative: what are those "unhistorical explanations"? Who was making them - the ancient Greeks? Modern authors? Who says they are unhistorical and hence wrong? Which are the correct ones? Who says categories like "Abjads" and "Abugidas" are misleading? The categories in themselves? (They are widely used in the field, for all I know.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:30, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Looking into it more, it appears this was added [3] by Bbpowell (talk • contribs), who is apparently identical to Barry B. Powell, a classical scholar, who was active here in July working on his own autobio article and promoting several ideas of his on alphabet-related articles. Rnabet made some good attempts at balancing out some of his POV-pushing, but I think his whole contribution history needs more looking into. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:58, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Breathing on upsilon

The breathing marks on ὗ and ὓ ψιλόν were changed some time ago, in accordance with the grammatical rule that says that an initial upsilon should always carry a rough breathing (this explains the absence of precomposed capital upsilons with smooth breathing marks in Unicode).

However, is this really correct? I believe I have seen a smooth breathing in Greek grammars, and a rough breathing would seem to imply that the name of the letter in English should be hupsilon, which is clearly not the case. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 131.111.247.21 (talk) 00:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC).

The name of the letter seems to be an exception regarding the breathing on upsilon. Google gives 153 "for ὒ ψιλόν" -wikipedia and 20 for "ὓ ψιλόν" -wikipedia, most of the latter from WP mirrors. In contrast, ὔψιλον -wikipedia results in only 6 Google entries. I would suggest to keep the rough breathing in ὕψιλον and put a smooth on ὒ ψιλόν.  Andreas  (T) 12:42, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I have consulted several grammars and dictionaries describing both ancient and modern (polytonic) Greek, as Google counts are hardly reliable for polytonic Greek. (The monotonic reform predates the Internet [for all practical purposes], and many of the occurrences of upsilon come from tables copied from other sites.) These are my findings:
All the ancient Greek grammars give the name of the letter as ὖ ψιλόν, i.e., with smooth breathing and circumflex. One also mentions that the letters epsilon and omicron were called ἔ and ὄ before they got their current names; hence, the names epsilon, omicron, upsilon and omega all follow the same pattern when upsilon is written with smooth breathing and circumflex.
In modern Greek, the correct name of the letter is much more difficult to establish. One grammar gives ὕψιλον, whereas dictionaries indicate a great variety of different forms (smooth or rough breathing, one word with acute accent, two words with either grave or circumflex on the upsilon). Anyway, smooth breathing and circumflex seem to be preferred for ancient Greek, and modern polytonic Greek is not currently indicated in the table.
It is also noteworthy that σίγμα (with acute) is rather more common than σῖγμα (with circumflex), although one grammar explicitly states that the form with circumflex is the more correct.
One grammar also indicates ξῦ as an alternative name, but this may not be worth mentioning.

[edit] τζ

As mentioned above, τζ is pronounced [dz], at least in some loan words (and I can't imagine that it occurs in non-loan words). Is this pronunciation universally true? If so, should it be added to Letter combinations and diphthongs, or is it a straightforward case of voicing assimilation which doesn't require special mention? Does <τ> behave similarly before other voiced consonants? (I can't find anything on voicing assimilation in any of the Greek language articles.) Vilĉjo 17:56, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I think you're right, it's a digraph in its own right and deserves being mentioned. Of course it exists only in Modern Greek. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:33, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, Babiniotes and Andriotes derive τζίτζικας 'cicada' from ancient τέττιξ with influence from onomatopoeia...
As for the table, there are other combinations like τζ [dz]: σβ [zv] σβήνω 'extinguish', σγ [zγ] σγουρός 'crinkly', σμ [zm] Σμύρνη 'Smyrna', and even σμπ [zb] σμπάρο 'volley'. I'm not sure it's useful to include any of these in the table. For that matter, most linguists these days seem to be treating μπ [b] as a phonological, not an orthographic, phenomenon. --Macrakis 20:39, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
In Ancient Greek, too, σ is voiced before β,γ,δ,μ (at least according to Allen's Vox Graeca). So perhaps, even though it seems to be the only instance not beginning with σ, τζ can also be seen as a case of voicing assimilation. Should there be some mention of these cases in the main alphabet table (even if they are not listed under "Letter combinations"); or is this too detailed, and more appropriately left to the phonology article(s) instead? Vilĉjo 23:15, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] armenian alphabet dispute

It says so in the article, but there is no mention of the dispute. It is mentioned in the armenian alphabet article that o was added to for foreign sounds, and a greek influence is mentioned. Where is the dispute? Greek alphabet is stated to be a child of pheonician, but so is armenian (in their respective articles) They are both related to the same parent, but one is not the child of the other. I'm removing it from the list, and if someone finds something, they can simply add it back in.

--ZavenH 04:42, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

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