Greek alphabet Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === 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.{{sfn|Macrakis|1996|p=}} For some of them, additional letters were introduced. ==== Antiquity ==== * Most of the [[Iron Age]] [[alphabets of Asia Minor]] were also adopted around the same time, as the early Greek alphabet was adopted from the [[Phoenician Alphabet]]. 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 language|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 {{Circa|800}}–300 BC until all the [[Anatolian languages]] were extinct due to [[Hellenization]].<ref>[https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/305290/Understanding%20Relations%20Between%20Scripts%20II_PrintPDF_1.pdf '''Understanding Relations Between Scripts II'''] by '''Philip J Boyes''' & '''Philippa M Steele'''. ''Published in the UK in 2020 by Oxbow Books'': "The Carian alphabet resembles the Greek alphabet, though, as in the case of Phrygian, no single Greek variant can be identified as its ancestor", "It is generally assumed that the Lydian alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet, but the exact relationship remains unclear (Melchert 2004)"</ref><ref>[https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lycian-alphabet '''Britannica – Lycian Alphabet'''] "The Lycian alphabet is clearly related to the Greek, but the exact nature of the relationship is uncertain. Several letters appear to be related to symbols of the Cretan and Cyprian writing systems."</ref><ref>[https://scriptsource.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=script_detail&key=Cari '''Scriptsource.org – Carian''']"Visually, the letters bear a close resemblance to Greek letters. Decipherment was initially attempted on the assumption that those letters which looked like Greek represented the same sounds as their closest visual Greek equivalents. However it has since been established that the phonetic values of the two scripts are very different. For example the theta θ symbol represents 'th' in Greek but 'q' in Carian. Carian was generally written from left to right, although Egyptian writers wrote primarily from right to left. It was written without spaces between words."</ref><ref>[https://omniglot.com/writing/carian.php '''Omniglot.com – Carian'''] "The Carian alphabet appears in about 100 pieces of graffiti inscriptions left by Carian mercenaries who served in Egypt. A number of clay tablets, coins and monumental inscriptions have also been found. It was possibly derived from the Phoenician alphabet."</ref><ref>[https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.31826/jlr-2019-163-405/pdf '''Ancient Anatolian languages and cultures in contact: some methodological observations'''] by '''Paola Cotticelli-Kurras''' & '''Federico Giusfredi''' ''(University of Verona, Italy)'' "During the Iron ages, with a brand new political balance and cultural scenario, the cultures and languages of Anatolia maintained their position of a bridge between the Aegean and the Syro-Mesopotamian worlds, while the North-West Semitic cultures of the Phoenicians and of the Aramaeans also entered the scene. Assuming the 4th century and the '''hellenization of Anatolia''' as the '''terminus ante quem''', the correct perspective of a contact-oriented study of the Ancient Anatolian world needs to take as an object a large net of cultures that evolved and changed over almost 16 centuries of documentary history."</ref> * The original [[Old Italic script|Old Italic alphabets]] was the early Greek alphabet with only slight modifications. * It was used in some [[Paleo-Balkan languages]], including [[Thracian language|Thracian]]. For other neighboring languages or dialects, such as [[Ancient Macedonian language|Ancient Macedonian]], isolated words are preserved in Greek texts, but no continuous texts are preserved. * The [[Greco-Iberian alphabet]] was used for writing the ancient [[Iberian language]] in parts of modern Spain. * [[Gaulish language|Gaulish]] inscriptions (in modern France) used the Greek alphabet until the Roman conquest * The [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] and [[Aramaic language|Aramaic]] text of the [[Bible]] was written in Greek letters in [[Origen]]'s [[Hexapla]]. * The [[Bactrian language]], an [[Iranian languages|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 {{angbr|[[Sho (letter)|þ]]}} for the ''sh'' sound {{IPAblink|ʃ}}.{{sfn|Sims-Williams|1997|p=}} * The [[Coptic alphabet]] adds eight letters derived from [[Demotic (Egyptian)|Demotic]]. It is still used today, mostly in Egypt, to write [[Coptic language|Coptic]], the liturgical language of Egyptian Christians. Letters usually retain an [[Uncial script|uncial form]] different from the forms used for Greek today. The alphabet of [[Old Nubian]] is an adaptation of Coptic. ==== Middle Ages ==== * Coins from the 4th-8th centuries known as [[mordovka]]s were used as currency in Eastern Europe by [[Uralic languages|Uralic peoples]] and were written in [[Moksha language|Moksha]] using Greek uncial script.<ref>{{harvnb|Zaikovsky|1929}}</ref> * An 8th-century [[Arabic language|Arabic]] fragment preserves a text in the Greek alphabet,<ref>J. Blau, "Middle and Old Arabic material for the history of stress in Arabic", ''Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies'' '''35''':3:476-84 (October 1972) [https://www.academia.edu/38210328/Joshua_Blau_Middle_and_Old_Arabic_Material_for_the_History_of_Stress_in_Arabic_Bulletin_of_the_School_of_Oriental_and_African_Studies_vol_35_no_3_1972_476_484 full text]</ref> as does a 9th or 10th century psalm translation fragment.<ref>Ahmad Al-Jallad, ''The Damascus Psalm Fragment: Middle Arabic and the Legacy of Old Ḥigāzī'', in series ''Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Near East'' (LAMINE) '''2''', Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2020; [https://oi.uchicago.edu/research/publications/lamine/lamine2 full text]; see also [[Bible translations into Arabic]]</ref> * An [[Ossetic language|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 languages|South Slavic]] dialects, similar to the modern [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]] and [[Macedonian language]]s, have been written in Greek script.{{sfn|Miletich|1920|p=}}{{sfn|Mazon|Vaillant|1938|p=}}{{sfn|Kristophson|1974|p=11}}{{sfn|Peyfuss|1989|p=}} The modern South Slavic languages now use modified [[Cyrillic alphabets]].<!--see footnote in Macrakis 1996--> ==== Early modern ==== [[File:Karamanlidika title page 1784.JPG|thumb|right|18th-century title page of a book printed in Karamanli Turkish]] * [[Turkish language|Turkish]] spoken by [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Orthodox Christians]] (''[[Karamanlides]]'') was often written in Greek script, and called ''[[Karamanli Turkish|Karamanlidika]]''. * [[Tosk language|Tosk]] [[Albanian language|Albanian]] was often written using the Greek alphabet, starting in about 1500.{{sfn|Elsie|1991|p=}} The printing press at [[Moschopolis]] published several Albanian texts in Greek script during the 18th century. It was only in 1908 that the [[Bitola|Monastir]] conference standardized a [[Albanian alphabet|Latin orthography]] for both Tosk and [[Gheg language|Gheg]]. Greek spelling is still occasionally used for the local Albanian dialects ([[Arvanitika]]) in Greece. * [[Gagauz language|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 [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Orthodox Christians]] in northern Greece. It is now written in Latin or Cyrillic characters. * [[Urum language|Urum]] or Greek Tatar, spoken by Orthodox Christians, used the Greek alphabet. * [[Judaeo-Spanish language|Judaeo-Spanish]] or Ladino, a Jewish dialect of Spanish, has occasionally been published in Greek characters in Greece.<ref>Katja Šmid, "Los problemas del estudio de la lengua sefardí", ''Verba Hispanica'' '''10''':1:113-124 (2002) [https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/VerbaHispanica/article/download/6006/5734 full text]: "Es interesante el hecho que en Bulgaria se imprimieron unas pocas publicaciones en alfabeto cirílico búlgaro y en Grecia en alfabeto griego."</ref> * The Italian humanist [[Giovan Giorgio Trissino]] tried to add some Greek letters (Ɛ ε, Ꞷ ω) to [[Italian orthography]] in 1524.<ref name="Trissino">{{cite book |last1=Trissino |first1=Gian Giorgio |author1-link=Gian Giorgio Trissino |title=De le lettere nuωvamente aggiunte ne la lingua Italiana – Wikisource |date=1524 |url=https://it.wikisource.org/wiki/De_le_lettere_nu%CF%89vamente_aggiunte_ne_la_lingua_Italiana |access-date=20 October 2022 |language=it }}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page