[41] By the late fifth century BC, it was commonly used by many Athenians. 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.

Michael H. Kutner, Christopher J. Nachtsheim, John Neter, & William Li. Nevertheless, in the Unicode encoding standard, the following three phonetic symbols are considered the same characters as the corresponding Greek letters proper:[58]. The orthographic practice of using the letter case distinction for marking proper names, titles etc. To insert Greek letter type Ctrl+G ( Command G on Mac OS) and then type Latin letter mentioned in the table below. In Modern Greek these names are spelled with -ι. Greek alphabet letters are used as math and science symbols.

Individual letter shapes were mirrored depending on the writing direction of the current line. [27] The letters ⟨θ⟩ and ⟨φ⟩ are generally rendered as ⟨th⟩ and ⟨ph⟩; ⟨χ⟩ as either ⟨ch⟩ or ⟨kh⟩; and word-initial ⟨ρ⟩ as ⟨rh⟩.[31]. [39] The "blue" (or eastern) type is the one from which the later standard Greek alphabet emerged. On Keyboard. 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. [39] Athens used a local form of the "light blue" alphabet type until the end of the fifth century BC, which lacked the letters Ξ and Ψ as well as the vowel symbols Η and Ω. Johnston, "The alphabet", in N. Stampolidis and V. Karageorghis, eds, Additionally, the more ancient combination ⟨. Here too, the changes in the pronunciation of the letter names between Ancient and Modern Greek are regular. [11] Similarly, iota is sometimes spelled γιώτα in Modern Greek ([ʝ] is conventionally transcribed ⟨γ{ι,η,υ,ει,οι}⟩ word-initially and intervocalically before back vowels and /a/). By around 350 BC, zeta in the Attic dialect had shifted to become a single fricative, Epsilon ⟨ε⟩ and omicron ⟨ο⟩ originally could denote both short and long vowels in pre-classical archaic Greek spelling, just like other vowel letters. Masters. Upper Case Letter Lower Case Letter Greek Letter Name English Equivalent Letter Name Pronounce; David Butler, Making Your Own Sense (blog). As Greek letters are more often than not used as variables in mathematical formulas, a Greek letter appearing similar to the TeX rendering is more likely to be encountered in works involving mathematics. In these contexts, the capital letters and the small letters represent distinct and unrelated entities. Greek letters are used to denote the brighter stars within each of the eighty-eight constellations. [25] In 1982, a new, simplified orthography, known as "monotonic", was adopted for official use in Modern Greek by the Greek state. 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. [40] 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 Λ that resembled a Latin L () and a form of Σ that resembled a Latin S (). Greek also introduced three new consonant letters for its aspirated plosive sounds and consonant clusters: Φ (phi) for /pʰ/, Χ (chi) for /kʰ/ and Ψ (psi) for /ps/. [39][40] In the Old Attic alphabet, ΧΣ stood for /ks/ and ΦΣ for /ps/. Such handwriting has been preserved especially from papyrus manuscripts in Egypt since the Hellenistic period. The IPA symbol for the palatal lateral approximant is ⟨ʎ⟩, which looks similar to lambda, but is actually an inverted lowercase y. Greek letters were also used to write numbers. Egbert J. Bakker, 2010, Wiley-Blackwell). [32] Standardized formal transcription systems have been defined by the International Organization for Standardization (as ISO 843),[32][33] by the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names,[34] by the Library of Congress,[35] and others.

Those Coptic letters with no Greek equivalents still remain in this block (U+03E2 to U+03EF). For example, the brightest star in the constellation of Centaurus is known as Alpha Centauri.

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 /ʔ/, bet, or "house", for the /b/ sound, and so on. Here are some of the others and how to type them on macOS from an English keyboard: Beta (ß) option+s (think beta-s in German) You can change the input method to Unicode Hex Input and type keyboard characters and accented letters. The first is "Greek and Coptic" (U+0370 to U+03FF). Pi, Tau and Eta. For me, that gives me two active Keyboard Layouts “U.S” and “Greek Polytonic”. 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 ⟨Ϝ⟩ for 6, koppa ⟨Ϙ⟩ for 90, and a rare Ionian letter for [ss], today called sampi ⟨Ͳ⟩, for 900. Greek alphabet list. are used where Unicode has unused locations. Note: A symbol for the empty set, The Greeks adopted the alphabet from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, one of the closely related scripts used for the West Semitic languages, calling it Φοινικήια γράμματα 'Phoenician letters'.

The founding chapter of each respective organization is its A chapter. 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 fifth century BC and today.

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.

In Archaic and early Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in many local variants, but, by the end of the fourth century BC, the Euclidean alphabet, with twenty-four letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard and it is this version that is still used to write Greek today. [43] By the end of the fourth century BC, it had displaced local alphabets across the Greek-speaking world to become the standard form of the Greek alphabet.[43].

In addition, both in Ancient and Modern Greek, the letter ⟨γ⟩, before another velar consonant, stands for the velar nasal [ŋ]; thus ⟨γγ⟩ and ⟨γκ⟩ are pronounced like English ⟨ng⟩. A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, article by Roger D. Woodward (ed. [41][42] 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". 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.

ISO 8859-7 supports only the monotonic orthography; Unicode supports both the monotonic and polytonic orthographies. Eventually, a seventh vowel letter for the long /ɔː/ (Ω, omega) was introduced. This is why this part is so important. The early history of these letters (and the fourth sibilant letter, obsolete san) has been a matter of some debate.

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. If a rho was geminated within a word, the first ρ always had the smooth breathing and the second the rough breathing (ῤῥ) leading to the transliteration rrh. In some environments, they are devoiced to [af], [ef] and [if] respectively. Click Insert to insert the desired symbol. [11], Some dialects of the Aegean and Cypriot have retained long consonants and pronounce [ˈɣamːa] and [ˈkapʰa]; also, ήτα has come to be pronounced [ˈitʰa] in Cypriot.[45]. The two principal ones still used today are ISO/IEC 8859-7 and Unicode. With the use of combining characters, Unicode also supports Greek philology and dialectology and various other specialized requirements. The letter rho (ρ), although not a vowel, also carries a rough breathing in word-initial position. [41] Roughly thirty years later, the Eucleidean alphabet was adopted in Boeotia and it may have been adopted a few years previously in Macedonia. Five were reassigned to denote vowel sounds: the glide consonants /j/ (yodh) and /w/ (waw) were used for [i] (Ι, iota) and [u] (Υ, upsilon) respectively; the glottal stop consonant /ʔ/ (aleph) was used for [a] (Α, alpha); the pharyngeal /ʕ/ (ʿayin) was turned into [o] (Ο, omicron); and the letter for /h/ (he) was turned into [e] (Ε, epsilon). Go to the Apple Menu > System Preferences > International > Input Menu and check the checkbox for “Greek Polytonic”. A doublet of waw was also borrowed as a consonant for [w] (Ϝ, digamma). {\displaystyle \varnothing } New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005.

Ε was used for all three sounds /e, eː, ɛː/ (correspondinɡ to classical Ε, ΕΙ, Η respectively), and Ο was used for all of /o, oː, ɔː/ (corresponding to classical Ο, ΟΥ, Ω respectively). [59] 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.