Greek alphabet

“ Two facts must first be kept well in view. One of these is the Semitic origin of the Greek alphabet. The Phœnician alphabet, originally derived from the alphabet of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and imported into their mother-country by the Phœnician settlers of the Delta, was brought to Greece, not probably by the Phœnicians of Tyre and Sidon, but by the Aramæans of the Gulf of Antioch, whose nouns ended with the same "emphatic aleph" that we seem to find in the Greek names of the letters, alpha, beta, gamma, (gamla) . ”

“ We know that the numerical value of the Hebrew letters is given with reference to their place in the alphabet, which was arranged for reasons that can hardly have had anything to do with arithmetic. The Greek alphabet is modified from a Semitic one, but instead of letting the numeral value of their letters follow throughout their newly-arranged alphabet, they reckon α, β, γ, δ, ε, properly, as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 259then put in σ for 6, and so manage to let ι stand for 10, as י does in Hebrew, where it is really the 10th letter. ”

“ The Greek alphabet and language held preëminence for centuries, beginning with Alexander's conquest and extending into the early Christian centuries when they were displaced, early in the Middle Ages, under the Latin ascendency. During the increasing domination of the Latin alphabet and literature, national and provincial "hands" were developed and came into active competition in the centuries previous to the invention of printing. ”

“ But to Phenicia and Assyria, the Greeks owe two acquisitions well deserving special mention,—the alphabet, and the first standard and scale of weight, as well as coined money. Of neither of these acquisitions can we trace the precise date. That the Greek alphabet is derived from the Phenician, the analogy of the two proves beyond dispute, though we know not how or where the inestimable present was handed over, of which no traces are to be found [p. 344] in the Homeric poems. ”

“ In learning a new alphabet attention need be paid only to such letters as are not already know. Of the Greek alphabet only twelve characters are unfamiliar:
Note.—The small letters, most used, should be learned. The capital letters may be learned as they occur.
2. ε, ο are always short; η, ω, always long; α, ι, υ, sometimes long, sometimes short.
Note 1.—In diphthongs with a long vowel ι is subscribed. ”

“ When the Romans adopted the Greek alphabet they took over the symbols with their Greek values. But Greek had no sound corresponding to the Latin f, for φ was pronounced p-h, like the final sound of lip in ordinary English or the initial sound of pig in Irish English. ”

“ It cannot be disguised, however, that it is very desirable at least to know the Greek alphabet, even if one does not speak or read the language, since this little knowledge will often serve to give one a clue to the names of streets or railroad stations. Aside from that, the few words the habitual traveler always picks up will serve as well in Greece as anywhere. ”

“ No matter how thoroughly a person may have learned the Greek alphabet, he will never be in a condition to repeat it backwards without further training. But if he chances to set out purposely to learn it backwards, he will probably accomplish this in noticeably shorter time than was the case in the previous learning in the customary order. ”

“ One can picture an entire nationality literally groping for generation after generation, and only slowly settling on the ultimate system. There must have been dozens of innovators who tried their hand at a modification of the value or form of a letter.
Nor can it be denied that what was new in the Greek alphabet was a true invention. The step of introducing full vowel characters was as definitely original and almost as important as any new progress in the history of civilization. ”

“ And for all the fun they liked to make of these island people, the rest of Greece, including Athens, very likely had to come to the Boeotians for the alphabet. But you are not to suppose that the Phoenicians came to Euboea in the flourishing days of Athens, when the marvelous sculptors lived. It was long before. And the Latins of Italy, in their turn, took their letters from the Greek-Phoenicians of Chalkis long, long before Rome became a famous town. And it was because of great wars and the attacks of Asiatic nations that the people who had the best alphabet came to Europe at all. ”

“ The Western Greek alphabet had a different symbol, Χ, for the sound of x and placed it at the end, as did its descendant the Latin alphabet. The original form of ο was a more or less roughly formed circle. The Aramaic and Hebrew ע, which seem so different, arise from a circle left open at the top, , a form which can be traced in Aramaic from the 5th or 6th century B.C. In the Greek alphabets the circle appears sometimes with a dot in the centre, but in many cases it is doubtful whether this mark is, intentional, or is only the result of fixing a sharp point there while describing the circle. ”

“ Greek Use the Greek palette on the editing toolbar; it helps to have a rudimentary understanding of the Greek alphabet. Classical Greek text printed in 1911 used polytonic orthography; the multiple-diacritic entries are all available on the toolbar. In addition, wrap the text in the {{Greek}} template, not to produce the characters, but because it renders in a more authentic font that shows the diacritics better. Do not use italics for Greek text. ”

“ The discovery of a large number of very archaic inscriptions in the island of Thera, which was made by Freiherr Hiller von Gartringen in 1896, has shown that the earliest Greek alphabet was even more like the Phoenician than had been heretofore believed. The symbol for b in Thera (@) is nearer than any previously known to the Semitic letter (@) though, as not infrequently happens in the transference of a symbol from one people to another, its position is inverted—a fate which in this alphabet has befallen also l (Semitic @, Thera @) , and possibly s (Semitic @, Thera @) . ”

“ Certain forms, such as for Χ, are characteristic of one or the other division; but the distinction is not so clearly marked on the vases, on which many alphabets, such as the Ionic and Island varieties, are scarcely represented. The vase-inscriptions fall mainly under three heads: Corinthian and Athenian in the Eastern group, Chalcidian in the Western. During the fifth century (or even earlier) there is a rapid tendency to unification in the Greek alphabet, which is chiefly brought about by the growing supremacy of Athens. ”

“ Throughout the history of Greek the short sound remained practically unchanged. On the other hand, the long sound of α in the Attic and Ionic dialects passed into an open ē-sound, which in the Ionic alphabet was represented by the same symbol as the original ē-sound (see Alphabet: Greek) . The vowel sounds vary from language to language, and the a symbol has, in consequence, to represent in many cases sounds which are not identical with the Greek α whether long or short, and also to represent several different vowel sounds in the same language. ”

“ The Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, who had altogether lost the aspirate, were the first to use the symbol for the long e-sound, and in official documents at Athens down to 403 B.C., when the Greek alphabet as still known was adopted by the state, represented ε, η and the sound arising by contraction or consonant loss as mentioned above which henceforth was written with two symbols, ει, and being really a single sound is known as the “spurious diphthong.” There were some minor distinctions in usage of the symbols and which need not here be given in detail. ”

“ From these names alone, then, even if nothing else were known about the early alphabets, it would be possible to prove the correctness of the Greek legend that they derived their letters from the Phœnicians. A people who themselves invented an alphabet would obviously name the letters with words in their own language, and not with meaningless syllables taken from a foreign speech. ”

“ First, because the general character of the Greek language, as contrasted with the Roman, was not that of blunt hardness but of liquid softness, (see Quinctilian and Cicero, passim;) Secondly, the ancient Greeks, in fact, had a combination of letters by which they could express in an approximate way the Latin v, namely, ου, and by which they actually did so express it on [Pg 22] many occasions; Thirdly, the modern Greeks likewise do pronounce the second letter of the alphabet like the Latin v; and the burden of proof lies on those who assert that the ancients pronounced it otherwise. ”

“ Though uncertain, therefore, it seems not impossible that the original symbol of the Phoenician alphabet, which was a consonant like the English w, may have been differentiated in Greek into two symbols, one indicating the consonant value w and retaining the position of the Phoenician consonant Vau, the other having the vowel value u, which ultimately most dialects changed to a modified sound like French u or German ü. Be this as it may, the value of the symbol Ϝ in Greek was w, a bilabial voiced sound, not the labio-dental unvoiced sound which we call f. ”

“ What is true of Latin is equally true of Greek, with its own peculiar alphabet, used by no other language, and its even greater remoteness from present European tongues, in spite of the many derivatives from it in modern vocabularies, especially in technical terminology, and in spite of the fact that the idiom developed from ancient Greek is a spoken language to-day. The languages of the past can not serve the peoples' of the present in any immediate and practical capacity. ”

“ The Greek character, in its pure form, was used for one language only; but the universal study of that language throughout Europe and the wide diffusion of its literature have been the cause of the accumulation of Greek MSS. in every centre of learning. The field of Latin palaeography is much wider, for the Roman alphabet has made its way into every country of western Europe, and the study of its various developments and changes is essential for a proper understanding of the character which we write.
Handwriting, like every other art, has its different phases of growth, perfection and decay. ”

“ It is plain that the more delicate distinctions of sound were duly felt by the introducers of the alphabet, men of culture and masters of two languages; but after the national writing Became wholly detached from the Hellenic mother-alphabet, the -mediae- and their -tenues- gradually came to coincide, and the sibilants and vowels were thrown into disorder—transpositions or rather destructions of sound, of which the first in particular is entirely foreign to the Greek. ”

“ For that purpose he translated the Bible into the Gothic language, and created an uncial alphabet, derived partly from Greek, partly from Latin, and partly from Runic. Of his twenty-seven letters, two are merely numerals. In the twenty-five that were used for writing, the c (g) , d, l, p, and ch have their Greek uncial shapes, the a, b, e, f, h, i, k, m, n, r, s, t, and z may be called Latin uncials; the q resembles our capital u, but is plainly an adaptation of the Greek koppa, the th seems to be modified from the Greek ph, but may have easily been the Greek th ”

“ For cuneiform appears to be essentially a Semitic script, and the Phœnicians in their contact with other Semitic peoples would, it may be assumed, have retained and adapted some, if not all, of the cuneiform characters long before they became familiar with Egyptian hieroglyphic or hieratic. Granting, however, all that the upholders of M. de Rougé's theory may demand, their inference as to the direct connection between the Greek and other alphabets and the Phœnician alphabet is not necessarily to be accepted. ”

“ If systems are here to be distinguished at all, we may not divide the alphabets into two classes according to the value of the —"id:X" as —"id:zeta" or as —"id:chi", but we shall have to distinguish the alphabet of 23 from that of 25 or 26 letters, and perhaps further in this latter case to distinguish the Ionic of Asia Minor, from which the later common alphabet proceeded, from the common Greek of earlier times. ”

“ The enigma as to how the Latins came to employ the Greek sign corresponding to -v for the -f quite different in sound, has been solved by the bracelet of Praeneste (xiv. Developments Of Alphabets in Italy, note) with its -fhefhaked- for -fecit-, and thereby at the same time the derivation of the Latin alphabet from the Chalcidian colonies of Lower Italy has been confirmed. For in a Boeotian inscription belonging to the same alphabet we find in the word -fhekadamoe- (Gustav Meyer, Griech. Grammatik, sec. 244, ap. fin.) ”

“ The discovery of the alphabet is at once the triumph, the instrument and the register of the progress of our race. The oldest abecedarium in existence is a child's alphabet on a little ink-bottle of black ware found on the site of Cere, one of the oldest of the Greek settlements in Central Italy, certainly older than the end of the sixth century B. C. The Phœnician alphabet has been reconstructed from several hundred inscriptions. ”

“ The Greeks, who took their letters from the Phœnicians, wrote [Greek character] . When the Greeks, instead of writing, like the Phœnicians, from right to left, began to write from left to right, they turned each letter, and as [Phoenician character] became [Greek character] , our k, so [Phoenician character] , vau, became F, the Greek so-called Digamma, [Greek character] , the Latin F.
The first letter in Chu-fu, too, still exists in our alphabet, and in the transverse line of our H we may recognize the last remnant of the lines which divide the sieve. ”