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History of the Greek AlphabetThe history of the greek alphabet begins in the Phoenician period with the Phoenician letter forms. The greek alphabet derived from these letter forms and continues to be used today especially in the realm of mathematics. The Phoenician alphabet was an abjad which means that is only consistently explicit about the consonants and later on the style developed vowels which were more suitable for semitic languages than the greek language. Several of the Phoenician letters used during the time of their creation used consonant letters that are not found in Greek script or the greek alphabet. In terms of the greek alphabet this was developed by one of the greek scholars with extensive knowledge of Phoenician script and after being established in Greece it was exported to other places namely Phrygia and a script similar to greek script was created here. After this the style of script traveled westwards and the Etruscans also adapted the greek alphabet and incorporated it into their own script.
Many of the letters that the Phoenicians used were adopted by the Greeks after their creation. Though Phoenician gutturals did not exist with the greek style alphabet the heth was a sound that was retained as a consonant sound in greek language. The Phoenician consonants aleph and he became alpha and e in the greek alphabet. In addition to this the Greeks made distinctions between letters based on the length of certain vowels. The greek language also has 5 short vowels and seven long ones though it only has 5 vowel letters. In the 6th century the letter eta became a letter that stood for a long vowel in greek language and in addition to this a new letter named omega was developed for long vowels. Though the provenance of omega isn’t clearly known it is assumed to come from the omicron with a line that is drawn under it.
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