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The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. [2] [3] It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, [4] and is the earliest known alphabetic script to have developed distinct letters for consonants as well as vowels. [5]
Greek has a system of five vowels /i, u, e, o, a/. The first two are close to the cardinal vowels [i, u]; the mid vowels /e, o/ are true-mid [e̞, o̞]; and the open /a/ is near-open central . [15] There is no phonemic length distinction, but vowels in stressed syllables are pronounced somewhat longer [iˑ, uˑ, eˑ, oˑ, aˑ] than in ...
High pitch on short vowel or rising pitch on long vowel Ὰὰ: Alpha with grave: Archaic letter indicating normal or low pitch ᾶ: Alpha with circumflex: Archaic letter indicating high or falling pitch Ἀἀ: Alpha with smooth breathing: Archaic letter denoting the absence of /h/ prior to the vowel Ἄἄ: Alpha with acute and smooth breathing
Later in Attic Greek, they were always pronounced together. In Greek synaeresis, two vowels merge to form a long version of one of the two vowels (e.g. e + a → ā), a diphthong with a different main vowel (e.g. a + ei → āi), or a new vowel intermediate between the originals (e.g. a + o → ō).
In phonotactics, ancient Greek words could end only in a vowel or /n s r/; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, [21] notably the following:
All forms of the Greek alphabet were originally based on the shared inventory of the 22 symbols of the Phoenician alphabet, with the exception of the letter Samekh, whose Greek counterpart Xi (Ξ) was used only in a subgroup of Greek alphabets, and with the common addition of Upsilon (Υ) for the vowel /u, ū/.
In Ancient Greek, the diaeresis (Greek: διαίρεσις or διαλυτικά, dialytiká, 'distinguishing') – ϊ – appears on the letters ι and υ to show that a pair of vowel letters is pronounced separately, rather than as a diphthong or as a digraph for a simple vowel. In Modern Greek, the diaeresis usually indicates that two ...
A mora is a unit of vowel length; in Ancient Greek, short vowels have one mora and long vowels and diphthongs have two morae. Thus, a one-mora vowel could have accent on its one mora, and a two-mora vowel could have accent on either of its two morae. The position of accent was free, with certain limitations.