Unicode Demystified

The Greek Alphabet

The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. It was first developed around 700 B.C. and had largely acquired its present form by about 400 B.C. Prior to 400 B.C., a number of regional variants of the Greek alphabet existed. The Latin alphabet evolved from one of these, which explains why some of the Latin letters look different from their modern Greek counterparts. By 400 B.C., all Greek-speaking peoples had standardized on a single version of the alphabet, which has come down to us more or less intact.^[2]

^[2] My sources for most of the historical information on the Greek alphabet, and on how it works, are Leslie Threatte, “The Greek Alphabet,” in The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels ...