The Greek Alphabet

The ancient Greeks had several myths about the creator of the first alphabet: was it Athena, Prometheus, Orpheus, the Muses, Sisyphus, or the Phoenix and his daughter Akteeona?

greek alphabet

Watch our Greek Alphabet demo from LingoLearn’s online Greek course:

Going back to the written tradition, we find various reports on how the ancient Greeks believed that the alphabet had been developed. According to the Roman Pliny, the Epigenes argued that writing was known to the Assyrians in 720 thousand years before his time. According to Plato, the Egyptians accepted the writing as a gift of the god Thoth (whose Greek counterpart was Hermes) who created the letters of the alphabet. Diodorus and Herodotus say that the letters were brought from Phoenicia Cadmus.

There have been a lot of assumptions about the creation of the Greek alphabet but it is undeniable that it also became the basis for the creation of the Latin alphabet, which is now used by countless nations around the world. This fact makes the Greek alphabet a lot easier than we would have ever thought it to be.

The Greek alphabet consists of 24 capital and small letters:

1 A, a (alpha)

2 B, β (vita)

3 Γ, γ (gama)

4 Δ, δ (delta)

5 Ε, ε (epseelon)

6 Ζ, ζ (zeeta)

7 Η, η (eeta)

8 Θ, θ (theeta)

9 Ι, ι (giota)

10 Κ, κ (kapa)

11 Λ, λ (lamda)

12 Μ, μ (mee)

13 Ν, ν (nee)

14 Ξ, ξ (ksee)

15 Ο, ο (omikron)

16 Π, π (pee)

17 Ρ, ρ (ro)

18 Σ, σ (sigma)

19 Τ, τ (taf)

20 Υ, υ (eepseelon)

21 Φ, φ (phee)

22 Χ, χ (chee)

23 Ψ, ψ (psee)

24 Ω, ω (omega)

If we take a closer look at the letters above, we can see a lot of common letters with the Latin alphabet, such as A, B, E, H, K, M, N, O, Y, etc…

LingoLearn’s online Greek course will show you how easy it is to learn the Greek letters, using this common background shared by the Greek and Latin alphabets.

greek alphabet


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