Greek letters with transcription. Greek alphabet, Greek writing

Greek alphabet is a writing system developed in Greece that first appears in archaeological sites in the 8th century BC. This was not the first writing system used to write Greek: Several centuries before the Greek alphabet was invented, the Linear B script was the writing system used to write Greek during the Mycenaean era. The Linear B script was lost around 10,000 BC and with it all knowledge of writing disappeared from Greece until the Greek alphabet was developed.

The Greek alphabet was born when the Greeks adapted the Phoenician writing system to represent their own language by developing a fully phonetic writing system consisting of individual characters arranged in a linear fashion that could represent both consonants and vowels. The earliest inscriptions from the Greek alphabet are graffiti carved on pots and pots. The graffiti found in Lefkandi and Eretria, the Dipilon oinohoe found in Athens, and the inscriptions in Nestor's Pithekkusai goblet date back to the second half of the 8th century BC and are the oldest known Greek letters ever recorded.

ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREEK ALPHABET
At the beginning of the first millennium BC, the Phoenicians who arose in Lebanon became successful sea traders, and they gradually spread their influence westward, establishing outposts throughout the Mediterranean basin. The Phoenician language belonged to the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asian language family and she was closely associated with the Canaanites and Hebrews. With them the Phoenicians carried a commodity for trade, as well as another valuable commodity: their writing system.

The Phoenicians had a writing system similar to that used by other peoples of the Semitic-speaking Levant. They didn't use ideograms; it was a phonetic writing system made up of a set of letters that represented sounds. Like modern Arabic and Hebrew writing systems, the Phoenician alphabet only had letters for consonants, not vowels. The Greeks took the Phoenician alphabet and made several key changes: they dropped those signs for which there was no consonant equivalent in Greek, and used them instead for individual vowel sounds. As a result, the Greek vowel letters A (alpha), E (epsilon), I (iota), O (omicron), Y (upsilon), and H (eta) arose as adaptations of Phoenician letters for consonants that were absent in Greek. By using separate symbols to represent vowels and consonants, the Greeks created a writing system that, for the first time, could represent speech in an unambiguous way.

There are some significant benefits due to these changes. Although syllabic, logographic and pictographic systems can sometimes be ambiguous to represent colloquial, the Greek alphabet can accurately convey speech. In the Middle East, as well as in the Aegean Bronze Age, writing was an art monopolized by specialists, scribes. All of this would have changed in Greece after the Greek alphabet: the Greek alphabet had fewer characters, which made the writing system more accessible to those wishing to learn.

What were the reasons that prompted the Greeks to apply such changes to the Phoenician alphabet? This is not entirely understood, but it seems likely that certain differences between Phoenician and Greek phonology played a role in this process. Although the Phoenician word begins with a vowel (only with a consonant), many Greek words have a vowel at the beginning. This means that if the Phoenician alphabet had not been changed, it would have been impossible to accurately write the Greek language. How these changes were implemented is also unknown. However, there are several conclusions that can be drawn from the available archaeological evidence. It is believed that the innovations were carried out by the Greeks in one move. This is supported by the fact that classical Greek vowels are present in most early examples Greek alphabetical letters, except for only Ω (omega). In other words, there is no evidence of a stage in the development of the Greek alphabet, as far as we can judge from the earliest recorded examples: if, instead of one move, the Greeks gradually implemented these innovations, we would expect to see examples of defective, inconsistent or incomplete vowel representations, but so far none of these has not been identified. This is one of the reasons why some believe that the Greek alphabet had one "inventor" or, according to at least, a certain moment of "invention".

In the most early versions alphabet, the Greeks followed the Phoenician practice of writing from right to left, and the letters had a left orientation. This was followed by a period of bidirectional writing, which means that the writing direction was in one direction on one line, but in the opposite direction on the next - a practice known as bustrophedon. In Boostrofed inscriptions, asymmetrical letters changed orientation in accordance with the direction of the line in which they were part. However, in the 5th century BC. E. The manual of Greek writing was standardized from left to right, and all letters adopted a fixed directional orientation.

LEGENDARY ACCOUNTS IN ORIGIN GREEK ALPHABET
The ancient Greeks were more or less aware of the fact that their alphabet was an adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet, and there have been several reports of the creation of an alphabet in Ancient Greece... One famous example- Herodotus:

So, these Phoenicians, including the Gethirs, came with Kadmos and settled this land [Boeotia], and they passed on a lot of knowledge to the Hellenes and, in particular, taught them the alphabet, which, as it seems to me, the Hellenes did not have before, but which was originally used by all Phoenicians. Over time, both the sound and the shape of the letters have changed (Herodotus, 5.58).

Cadmos, mentioned by Herodotus, is the Greek spelling for Cadmus, the legendary Phoenician of Greek folklore who was considered the founder and first king of Thebes in Boeotia. Interestingly, his name seems to be related to the Phoenician word qadm "east". Due to the alleged participation of Cadmus and the Phoenicians in the transmission of the alphabet, in the VI century BC. The Crete official with the duties of scribes was still called the poinikastas "Phoenicianizer", and the earlier writing was sometimes called the "Cadmean letters". The Greeks called them the alphabets phoinikeia grammata, which can be translated as “ Phoenician letters". Some Greeks, however, were reluctant to acknowledge the eastern influence of their alphabet, so they justified the origin of the name phoinikeia grammata with various apocryphal accounts: some said that the alphabet was invented by Phoenix, the mentor of Akhilleus, while others said that the name was associated with the leaves of the phoinix "palm tree".

SCRIPTS OBTAINED FROM THE GREEK ALPHABET
There were several versions of the early Greek alphabet, broadly classified into two different groups: Eastern and Western alphabets. In 403 BC. E. Athens took the initiative to combine many versions of the alphabet, and one of the eastern versions of the Greek alphabet was accepted as the official one. This official version gradually displaced all other versions in Greece, and it became dominant. As Greek influence grew in the Mediterranean world, several communities came into contact with the Greek idea of writing, and some of them developed their own own systems writing systems based on the Greek model. The Western version of the Greek alphabet, used by the Greek colonists in Sicily, moved to the Italian peninsula. Etruscans and Messapians created their own own alphabet based on the Greek alphabet, inspiring the creation of the old italic scripts, the source of the Latin alphabet. In the Middle East, the Carians, Lycians, Lydians, Pamphiles, and Phrygians also created their own versions of the alphabet based on Greek. When the Greeks gained control of Egypt during the Hellenistic period, the Egyptian writing system was replaced by the Coptic alphabet, which was also based on the Greek alphabet.

The Gothic alphabet, the Glagolic alphabet, and the modern Cyrillic and Latin alphabets are ultimately derived from the Greek alphabet. Although the Greek alphabet is used only for the Greek language today, it is the root script of most scripts used in the Western world today.

Instructions

Write the first four letters Greek alphabet. The uppercase "alpha" looks like a regular A, the lowercase one can look like "a" or a horizontal loop - α. The big "beta" "B", and - the usual "b" or with a tail that sank below the line - β. The uppercase "" looks like the Russian "G", but the lowercase one looks like a vertical loop (γ). Delta represents equilateral triangle- Δ or Russian handwritten "D" at the beginning of the line, and in its continuation looks more like "b" with a tail from the right side of the circle - δ.

Remember the spelling of the next four letters — epsilon, zeta, this, and theta. The first in the uppercase printed and handwritten form is indistinguishable from the familiar "E", and in lowercase it is a mirror image of the "z" - ε. Big Zeta is the well-known Z. Another spelling is ζ. In manuscripts, it may look like a written Latin f - a vertical loop above the line of the line and its mirror reflection below her. "This" "H" or like a lowercase n with a tail down - η. "Theta" has no analogues either in the Latin alphabet or in the Cyrillic alphabet: it is "O" with a dash inside - Θ, θ. In writing, its lowercase outline looks like a Latin v, in which the right tail is raised up and rounded first to the left, and then. There is one more variant of spelling - similar to the written Russian "v", but in a mirror image.

Specify the appearance of the next four letters - "iota", "kappa", "lambda", "mu". The writing of the first is no different from the Latin I, only the lowercase does not have a full stop at the top. "Kappa" is a poured "K", but in the letter inside the word it looks like the Russian "i". The “Lambda” -headcase is written as a triangle without a base - Λ, while the lowercase has an extra tail at the top and a playfully curved right leg - λ. It is very similar to say about "mu": at the beginning of the line it looks like "M", and in the middle of the word - μ. It can also be written as a long vertical line, dropped below the line, to which the "l" stuck.

Try nude, xi, omicron, and pi. "Nu" is displayed as Ν or as ν. It is important that when writing in lowercase, the angle at the bottom is clearly expressed. letters... "Xi" are three horizontal lines that are either not connected or have a vertical line in the center, Ξ. Lowercase letter much more elegant, it is written as "zeta", but with ponytails at the bottom and top - ξ. "Omicron" is only called unfamiliar, but looks like "o" in any spelling. The "pi" in the title variation is a "P" with a wider top bar than the variation. Lowercase is written either in the same way as - π, or as a small "omega" (ω), but with a funky loop at the top.

Consider ro, sigma, tau, and upsilon. "Ro" is a printed "P" big and small, and the variant looks like a vertical bar with a circle - Ρ and ρ. Capitalized Sigma is best described as block letter"M", which was overturned - Σ. Lowercase has two spellings: a circle with a tail to the right (σ) or a disproportionate s, Bottom part which hangs from the line - ς. “Tau” is the headline as a printed “T”, and the usual one is like a hook with a horizontal hat or the Russian written “ch”. "Upsilon" is the Latin "game" in the uppercase version: or v on a leg - Υ. The lowercase υ should be smooth, without an angle at the bottom - this is a sign of a vowel.

Pay attention to the last four letters... "Phi" is written as "f" in both uppercase and lowercase versions. True, the latter can have the form "c", which has a loop and a tail below the line - φ. "Chi" is our "x" and big and small, only in the letter a dash going down from left to right has a smooth bend - χ. "Psi" resembles the letter "I", which has grown wings - Ψ, ψ. In the manuscript, she is depicted similarly to the Russian "u". The capital "omega" is different, printed and handwritten. In the first case, this is an unclosed loop with - Ω. With your hand, write a circle in the middle of the line, under it - a line that can be connected vertical line, but you can not connect. A lowercase letter is written as a double "u" - ω.

Greek alphabet letters

And here it is - the Greek alphabet in all its glory. And only 24 letters, and what a wealth of language!

Under the asterisk:

γ pronounced softly, aspirated, reminiscent of the Ukrainian "g"
δ does not have an exact correspondence in Russian, resembles an English voiced th - pronounced with aspiration
θ does not have an exact match in Russian, resembles English voiceless th - aspirated
ς is written only at the end of a word.

It is interesting that these very voiced and voiceless ths were not given to me in any way when I was learning English. Here, in Greece, I learned to pronounce them correctly - δ and θ.

The modern Greek alphabet of 24 letters was created in 403 BC. by order of Euclid, the then Athenian ruler, and had the goal of creating a single alphabet for the entire Greek-speaking world. More ancient alphabet consisted of 28 letters and each letter also had a certain numerical value. The Phoenician was the prototype of the Greek alphabet. Thus, the earlier writing of Greece, which existed in the Mycenaean era, the Cretan Linear B, which existed in the 15-12 centuries BC, has nothing to do with the modern alphabet. By the way, I saw a sample of this letter in the museum of ancient Mycenae.

Many of you are planning to vacation in Greece, Halkidiki now or in the future. There is still time to learn basic communication phrases in Greek. And I will try to help you with this!

Tell me, did you find the Greek alphabet difficult? The Greek language is not the easiest one, but mastering it is a better understanding of the soul of Greece. Are you interested in Greek? Please write in the comments!

Now listen to a live speech - a satirical program by Lakis Lazopoulos, an anecdote about a cuckoo clock (almost like ours):

The set of letters in the Greek system. lang. arranged in the accepted order (see table below). Letters G. and. used in Russian editions. lang. as symbols mat. and physical designations. In the original, the letters G. and. it is customary to enclose in a circle of red ... ... Publishing dictionary-reference

Greek alphabet- The Greeks first used consonant writing. In 403 BC. NS. under Archon Euclid, the classical Greek alphabet was introduced in Athens. It consisted of 24 letters: 17 consonants and 7 vowels. For the first time, letters were introduced to denote vowels; α, ε, η ... Dictionary linguistic terms T.V. Foal

This article is about the Greek letter. For the Cyrillic numerical sign, see Kopp's article (Cyrillic) Greek alphabet Α α alpha Β β beta ... Wikipedia

Self-name: Ελληνικά Countries: Greece ... Wikipedia

Language Self-name: Ελληνικά Countries: Greece, Cyprus; communities in the USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, Albania, Turkey, Ukraine, Russia, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Italy ... Wikipedia

It is the latest in the history of writing. This name denotes a series of written signs located in a known constant order and conveying approximately completely and accurately all the individual sound elements of which given language … Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron

This term has other meanings, see Alphabet (meanings). The Wiktionary contains an article "alphabet" Alphabets ... Wikipedia

Alphabet- [Greek. ἀλφάβητος, from the name of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet alpha and beta (New Greek vita)] a system of written signs that convey the sound appearance of the words of the language by means of symbols depicting individual sound elements. Invention… … Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary

It is the latest phenomenon in the history of writing (see Letter). This name denotes a series of written signs arranged in a certain constant order and conveying approximately completely and accurately all individual sound elements, of which ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary F. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

ALPHABET- a set of letters or similar characters used in writing, where each letter denotes one or more phonemes. Alphabets were not the most ancient basis of writing, having developed from hieroglyphs or written images used ... ... Symbols, signs, emblems. Encyclopedia

Books

An introduction to the ancient Greek language. Textbook for academic bachelor's degree, Titov O.A .. V study guide reviewed Short story the development of the Greek language from ancient times to the present day, the Greek alphabet, reading rules, types and features of stressing are given. ...
Introduction to Ancient Greek 2nd ed., Rev. and add. Textbook for Academic Bachelor's Degree, Oleg Anatolyevich Titov. The textbook examines a brief history of the development of the Greek language from ancient times to the present day, gives the Greek alphabet, reading rules, types and features of stressing. ...

Wow! Just twenty-four letters? Are there any sounds not marked? This is exactly what it is. There are sounds peculiar to other languages that are not in Greek. Such sounds are all post-alveolar affricates (as in the word “ NS ov "(only softer), [Z] as in the word" f uk ", as in the word" h erta ", and as in English word “j ob ”). So what do the Greeks do when they want to pronounce foreign words with these sounds? If you cannot pronounce the sound correctly, then it is simply transformed into the corresponding alveolar sound: [s], [Z] [z],,. What about other common sounds like [b], [d], [g], etc.? It seems they are not in the alphabet either! Are they also not included in the list of sounds of the language? No! They exist as sounds language. There are simply no separate letters to denote them. When the Greeks want to write sounds, they write them in a combination of two letters: [b] is written as a combination of μπ (mi + pi), [d] as ντ (ni + tau), and [g] as γκ (gamma + kappa). or as γγ (double gamma). Why all these difficulties? Recall from the introduction to this article that the sounds [b], [d], and [g] existed in Classical Greek. Later, perhaps some time after it was written New Testament in the so-called Greek koine(single), these three sounds in pronunciation shifted and began to sound like "soft" sounds ([v],, and). A phonological void appeared. Words containing a combination of "mp" and "nt" were pronounced like and, respectively. Therefore, "explosive" sounds were reintroduced, but letter combinations were used to denote them. There is one more sound that is not in the alphabet: “and ng ma ”, pronounced as in the English word“ ki ng”. This sound is very rare in Greek, and when it appears (as in the words "άγχος": anxiety; "λεγχος": check), it is indicated by the combination gamma + chi, where gamma is pronounced as ingma. For your convenience, below is a table of pronunciation of letter combinations (2 letters), which give new sounds that are not included in the Greek alphabet:

cluster	Pronunciation in modern Greek
ΜΠ μπ	[ b], as in the word “ b yt ”, at the beginning of words or in borrowed words; or: [mb], as in the word “to mb at ".
ΝΤ ντ	[ d], as in the word “ d at ”, at the beginning of words or in borrowed words; or: [nd], as in the word “pho nd”.
ΓΚ γκ ΓΓ γγ	[ g], as in the word “ G orod ”, at the beginning of words or in borrowed words; or: [g], as in “ri ng”. Please note: the formγγ never occurs at the beginning of words, so it is always pronounced [g], as in “ri ng”.
ΓΧ γχ ΓΞ γξ	Frontχ (chi) letter(ri ng) ... Frontξ (xi) letterγ (gamma) is pronounced as “ingma”:(ri ng) ... Please note: the combinationγξ is rare; it only appears in unusual words such asλυγξ (trot).

It is possible that the following pairs do not give the original sounds, but are perceived by native Greek speakers as "one whole":

What about vowels? Are there any similarities with vowels in Russian, or with vowels in other languages? The vowels in Greek are not difficult. In Greek, vowels are similar to vowels in Italian, Spanish ( Russian note transl.) or Japanese: [a], [e], [i], [o], and [u]. Currently, there are three letters in the alphabet for the sound [I] (eta, iota and upsilon), which are pronounced the same, and two letters for the [o] (omicron and omega), which are also pronounced the same. For the sound [u], a combination of letters ου (omicron + upsilon) is used. So, pronouncing vowels is easy. Is there anything else special about vowel sounds? Not in pronunciation, but in spelling. There are three "diphthongs" that are no longer diphthongs, but have become digraphs. (A diphthong is a long sound made up of two elements, each of which has different quality, as in the words: “p ay nd ”, or“B Oh”; a digraph is two letters that are read together as one letter, e.g. c English language th in the word " th ink ”, or ph in the word “gra ph ”.) Below are the Greek vowel digraphs.