popular Wiki of the Day

Greek alphabet

Welcome to Popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.

With 1,559,477 views on Saturday, 5 October 2024 our article of the day is Greek alphabet.

The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants. In Archaic and early Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in many local variants, but, by the end of the 4th century BC, the Euclidean alphabet, with 24 letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard and it is this version that is still used for Greek writing today.

The uppercase and lowercase forms of the 24 letters are:

Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ/ς, Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, Ω ω.

The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Like Latin and Cyrillic, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter; it developed the letter case distinction between uppercase and lowercase in parallel with Latin during the modern era. Sound values and conventional transcriptions for some of the letters differ between Ancient and Modern Greek usage because the pronunciation of Greek has changed significantly between the 5th century BC and today. Modern and Ancient Greek also use different diacritics, with modern Greek keeping only the stress accent (acute) and the diaeresis.

Apart from its use in writing the Greek language, in both its ancient and its modern forms, the Greek alphabet today also serves as a source of international technical symbols and labels in many domains of mathematics, science, and other fields.

This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:52 UTC on Sunday, 6 October 2024.

For the full current version of the article, see Greek alphabet on Wikipedia.

This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.

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Until next time, I'm long-form Danielle.

Broadcast on:: 06 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

Welcome to Popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today. With 1,559,477 views on Saturday, October 5, 2024, our article of the day is Greek alphabet. The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late ninth or early eighth century BC. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants. In archaic and early classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in many local variants, but by the end of the fourth century BC, the Euclidean alphabet with 24 letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard, and it is this version that is still used for Greek writing today. The uppercase and lowercase forms of the 24 letters are alpha alpha beta beta gamma gamma delta delta epsilon epsilon zeta zeta eta eta theta iota iota kappa kappa lambda lambda mu mu nu zai zai omicron omicron pi pi rho rho sigma sigma sigma tau tau upsilon upsilon phi phi qi qi xi xi ohm omega. The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Like Latin and Cyrillic, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter. It developed the lettercase distinction between uppercase and lowercase in parallel with Latin during the modern era. Sound values and conventional transcriptions for some of the letters differ between ancient and modern Greek usage because the pronunciation of Greek has changed significantly between the fifth century BC and today. Modern and ancient Greek also use different diacritics with modern Greek keeping only the stress accent acute and the diocesan. Apart from its use in writing the Greek language in both its ancient and its modern forms, the Greek alphabet today also serves as a source of international technical symbols and labels in many domains of mathematics science and other fields. This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 152 UTC on Sunday, October 6, 2024. For the full current version of the article search Wikipedia for Greek alphabet. This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons attribution share-alike license. Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes. Follow us on Mastodon at wikioftheday@master.ai. Also check out Kermudgen's Corner, a current events podcast. Until next time, I'm Long Form Danielle.