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What's the Greek alphabet like?

• The Greek alphabet was developed from the Phoenician alphabet and has been in use since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. The word alphabet itself comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: 维位蠁伪 [alpha] and 尾萎蟿伪 [beta]
• The Greek alphabet gave rise to the Latin, Cyrillic, Gothic and various other alphabets. The Greek alphabet has 24 letters

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What's significant about the Greek alphabet?

• Pronunciation and use of accents

  In 1982, the Greek language was greatly simplified with the introduction of the monotonic system. Since then, only the acute accent and the double dots are used instead of the many other little marks that could surround a letter

  As a general rule, all Greek words of more than one syllable, with a few exceptions, are written with an accent which indicates where you should put the emphasis, eg:
  
  渭慰谓蠈蟼 [monos], single
  蟿蠈谓慰蟼 [tonos], accent
  

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• The same but different

  Some letters of the Greek alphabet are identical to Latin ones though some of them sound different:
  B [v], 螚 [ee], 螜 [ee], 巍 [r], 违 [ee], 围 [ch]
  
  Others are completely different from the Latin ones though they might sound familiar:
  螕 [g], 螖 [th as in this], 螛 [th as in think], 螞 [l], 螢 [x or ks], 螤 [p], 桅 [f or ph], 唯 [ps], 惟 [o as in olive]
  
  Here are a few challenging letters to pronounce:
  纬 [soft g or y as in yes] and 蠂 [ch as in loch]

  Some sounds are produced by the combination of two letters: These are the [b], [d], [g]
  
  渭蟺/渭蟺 [b as in baby]
  谓蟿/谓蟿 [d as in day/daddy]
  纬魏/纬魏 or 纬纬 [g as in go]
  
  Other frequent combinations are:
  蟿蟽 /蟿蟽 [ts as in chain]
  蟿味 / 蟿味 [dz as in beads]

  Some letters and letter combinations sound the same when spoken but have a completely different meaning when written. For example the words 位蔚委蟺蔚喂 [le委pei], he/she/it is missing , 位委蟺畏 [l委pei], the fats and 位蠉蟺畏 [lypei] sorrow are all pronounced lipi. Similarily, 蠄喂位萎 [psilei], fine/thin, and 蠄畏位萎 [pseilei], tall are both pronounced psilei. It would be difficult to come up with a sentence that would combine these words, but still worth keeping it in mind.

  Confusion can result from the fact that the question mark [?] in Greek is written as a semicolon [;]

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• Email and website conventions

  听 @听蟺伪蟺维魏喂 [papaki], duckling
  听 .听蟿蔚位蔚委伪 [teleia], dot
  听 /听魏维胃蔚蟿慰蟼 [kathetos], forward slash
  听 -听蟺伪蠉位伪 [pavla], hyphen
  听 _听魏维蟿蠅 蟺伪蠉位伪 [kato pavla] , underscore

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