The orthography of the Greek language ultimately has its roots in the adoption of the Greek alphabet in the 9th century BC. Some time prior to that, one early form of Greek, Mycenaean, was written in Linear B, although there was a lapse of several centuries (the Greek Dark Ages) between the time Mycenaean stopped being written and the time when the Greek alphabet came into use.
Early Greek writing in the Greek alphabet was phonemic, different in each dialect. Since the adoption of the Ionic variant for Attic in 403 BC, however, Greek orthography has been largely conservative and historical.
Given the phonetic development of Greek, especially in the Hellenistic period, certain modern vowel phonemes have multiple orthographic realizations:
/i/ can be spelled η, ι, υ, ει, οι, or υι (see Iotacism);
/e/ can be spelled either ε or αι;
/o/ can be spelled either ο or ω.
This affects not only lexical items but also inflectional affixes, so correct orthography requires mastery of formal grammar, e.g.η καλή/ikaˈli/ 'the good one (fem. sing.)' vs.οι καλοί/ikaˈli/ 'the good ones (masc. pl.)'; καλώ/kaˈlo/ 'I call' vs.καλό/kaˈlo/ 'good (neut. sing.)'.
Similarly, the orthography preserves ancient doubled consonants, though these are now pronounced the same as single consonants, except in Cypriot Greek.
The orthography of the Greek language ultimately has its roots in the adoption of the Greek alphabet in the 9th century BC. Some time prior to that, one...
Greekorthography has used a variety of diacritics starting in the Hellenistic period. The more complex polytonic orthography (Greek: πολυτονικό σύστημα...
ϊ—also see the section on romanizing Greek diacritical marks below. The traditional polytonic orthography of Greek uses several distinct diacritical marks...
orthographia, which derives from Ancient Greek: ὀρθός (orthós, 'correct') and γράφειν (gráphein, 'to write'). Orthography is largely concerned with matters of...
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...
what follows and if a diaeresis is present on the second vowel (see Greekorthography). Tau was derived from the Phoenician letter taw (𐤕). Letters that...
Greek alphabet was developed during the Iron Age, centuries after the loss of Linear B, the syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek...
see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. A phonemic orthography is an orthography (system for writing a language) in which the graphemes (written...
spoken language -such as in the grammar, orthography and phonology of Greek- at the time of the Ancient Greek, the Koine, Jewish Koine, Medieval and Modern...
lowercase ο, Greek: όμικρον) is the fifteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. This letter is derived from the Phoenician letter ayin: . In classical Greek, omicron...
was based on Greek uncial script, augmented by ligatures and by letters from the Glagolitic alphabet for consonants not found in Greek. The Glagolitic...
(originally from Greek χίλια khilia "a thousand"), e.g. kilogramme, kilomètre, kilowatt, kilohertz. The diacritics used in French orthography are the acute...
transcription delimiters. Ancient Greek phonology is the reconstructed phonology or pronunciation of Ancient Greek. This article mostly deals with the...
Greek (Modern Greek: Ελληνικά, romanized: Elliniká, pronounced [eliniˈka]; Ancient Greek: Ἑλληνική, romanized: Hellēnikḗ) is an independent branch of the...
words List of language orthographies French orthography German orthographyGreekorthography Hangul orthography Italian orthography Latin spelling and pronunciation...
the "soft breathing" in Byzantine Greekorthography Spiritus asper, the "hard breathing" in Byzantine Greekorthography Spiritus (journal), an academic...
phoneme /ʃ/ via the acrophonic principle. Ancient Greek did not have a /ʃ/ phoneme, so the derived Greek letter sigma (Σ) came to represent the voiceless...
diverge by varying amounts. Etymological rules from Greek and South Slavic languages made the orthography imprecise and difficult to master. Meletii Smotrytskyi's...
Portuguese orthography is based on the Latin alphabet and makes use of the acute accent, the circumflex accent, the grave accent, the tilde, and the cedilla...
and in other orthographies it may represent a vowel or a consonant. In Latin, Y was named I graeca ("Greek I"), since the classical Greek sound /y/, similar...
Danish orthography is the system and norms used for writing the Danish language, including spelling and punctuation. Officially, the norms are set by...
/ / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. Russian orthography has been reformed officially and unofficially by changing the Russian...
/ / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers...
characters disappear and replaced them with new characters mixed with Greekorthography and Syriac alphabet. However, the spread of Christianity boosts the...
Greek numerals Greek orthographyGreek phrases Greek verbs Greek words for love Eros Religion in ancient Greece Twelve Olympians Greek mythology Modern understanding...
generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (Ελληνικά, Elliniká), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including...
After sound changes eliminated /w/ from spoken Greek, digamma was used only as a numeral. However, the Greek alphabet also gave rise to other alphabets,...
⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. German orthography is the orthography used in writing the German language, which is largely phonemic...
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