Origins of the Greek Alphabet

The Greeks derived their alphabet around 800 BCE from the Phoenicians, a people who lived on the coast of the modern nations of Lebanon and Israel. Find Phoenicia (and its main city, Tyre) on this map (hint: there's a yellow arrow pointing to it!). Then find the places that are Phoenician colonies (they are the same brown color as Phoenicia itself). What does this tell you about Phoenicians? What were they good at?

image credit: Ancient History Encyclopedia/CC-BY-SA-3.0

The word alphabet comes from the names of the first two Greek letters, alpha and beta. Before this time, in the Mycenaean period, the Greeks had used a system that modern scholars call Linear B: a mix of ideograms (representational drawings of things; thus, a deer is represented by), and syllabograms (distinct symbols standing for full syllables; thus, the sound ka is represented by)

Clay tablet inscribed with Linear 'B' script, recording offerings of oil to a goddess.
British Museum 1910,0423.1AN452317001
Photo credit: © Trustees of the British Museum/CC-BY-SA-4.0

The new alphabet from the Phoenicians was phonetic: symbols stood for discrete sounds. Great economy (not too many symbols!) and flexibility (represent all the sounds you need to!) was achieved by discriminating between consonants and vowels: using the alphabet it was possible to represent the sounds of the Greek language with only 24 symbols. The older "Linear B" writing system had required mastery of almost two hundred symbols.

A wine jug found near the Dipylon Cemetery in Athens, c. 750 BCE
National Archaeological Museum, Athens inv. 192
The text, which may be the earliest alphabetic inscription in Greek, runs from right to left, and the letter A appears on its side.
The text translates to "whoever of all the dancers plays most delicately, to him this...."
Photo credit: durutomo/CC-BY-SA 3.0

The Greek alphabetic writing system came to dominate the region of the Mediterranean: it was adopted by many foreign speakers (most notably Latin speakers) to represent their various languages. The letters of the Greek alphabet are recognizable as the progenitors of the letters of the English alphabet, and of the various alphabets of the various European states. In most cases, European alphabets derive from the Greek by way of the Roman alphabet; some, however, come directly from the Greek. The Cyrillic alphabet, for example, is in common use in eastern Europe and northern Asia; it derives from the Greek alphabet and was brought to Russia in the ninth century CE by a Greek Orthodox Missionary, St. Cyril, and his comrade, Methodius.

St. Cyril and Methodius with the Cyrillic alphabet
Wall painting, Zahari Zograf, 1847, Troyan Cloister
Public domain

The Greek Alphabet

Here is the Greek alphabet; first, we give the capital letter, then the lower case, and then a transliteration (a representation in our alphabet) of the letter’s name. Finally, we give an English word that demonstrates the pronunciation of the ancient Greek letter as it is usually taught today. So, β sounds like the “b” in bit, while ο (omicron) sounds like the “ough” in bought or thought. (There is some difference of opinion both on how ancient Greek was pronounced and on how students should be taught to pronounce it, but we're not going to touch that here).

Read through this chart several times, and practice saying the names of the letters and then repeating the sounds they make.

Capital	Lower Case	Name	Pronunciation
Α	α	alpha	father (long α) drama (short α)
Β	β	beta	bit
Γ	γ	gamma	get
Δ	δ	delta	den
Ε	ε	epsilon	get
Ζ	ζ	zeta	adds, gadzooks
Η	η	eta	wait, bait
Θ	θ	theta	thought
Ι	ι	iota	pizza (long ι) bit (short ι)
Κ	κ	kappa	duck
Λ	λ	lambda	lit
Μ	μ	mu	meet
Ν	ν	nu	neat
Ξ	ξ	xi	taxi
Ο	ο	omicron	thought, bought
Π	π	pi	cap
Ρ	ρ	rho	drama
Σ	σ or ς	sigma	set
Τ	τ	tau	cat
Υ	υ	upsilon	boot (long υ) put (short υ)
Φ	φ	phi	fit
Χ	χ	chi	backhand
Ψ	ψ	psi	upset
Ω	ω	omega	total

There are three more things you should know:
1. There are two forms of the lower-case letter sigma: σ (at the beginning or in the middle of a word), and ς (at the end of a word). They are pronounced the same. When σ is followed by β, γ, δ, or μ, it is pronounced like English z.

2. When γ (gamma) is followed by another γ, κ, χ, or ξ, it makes an "n" sound. So, ἄγγελος "messenger" is pronounced angelos, ὄγκος "mass" is pronounced onkos, and βρόγχος "airway" is pronounced bronchos. (By the way, γ, κ, χ, and ξ are all velars: consonants made with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, also called the velum). Try pronouncing them and see!

3. You don’t need to worry yet about all those little accents over the letters, except for the ᾽ or ῾ over a vowel at the beginning of a word. These are called breathings. When ῾ (called a rough breathing) appears over an initial vowel, the word begins with an “h” sound: so ἑχἀγονον "hexagon" is pronounced hexagonon. When ᾽ (called a smooth breathing) appears over an initial vowel, it is pronounced without the "h" sound; so, ἐπιστολή "letter" is pronounced epistolē. Thus the Greek word ὁμός (homos), meaning "same," gives us the English root homo-, while the Greek word ὀρθός (orthos) "straight" gives us the English root ortho-.