The capital letters of the modern Greek alphabet are almost identical to those of the Ionic alphabet. The blue group developed into the modern Greek alphabet, while the red group developed into the Etruscan alphabet, other alphabets of ancient Italy and eventually the Latinīy the early 4th century BC, the epichoric alphabets were replaced by the eastern Ionic alphabet.
These local alphabets, known as epichoric, can be divided into three groups: green, blue and red. Parts of Italy, and in Albania, Armenia, Romania and Ukraine.Īt first, there were a number of different versions of the alphabet used in various different Greek cities. Language of Cyprus, officially recognized as a minority language in Status: official language of Greece, an official.Writing systems: Linear B, Cypriot syllabary, Greek alphabet.Spoken in: Greece, Albania, Cyprus, and a number of other countries.Language family: Indo-European, Hellenic.The result was the world's first fully phonemic alphabet which represented both consonant and vowel sounds. New letters were also devised: Φ (phi), Χ (chi) and Ψ (psi). When the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet to write their language they used five of the Phoenician consonants to represent vowel sounds: yodh (?) became Ι (iota), waw (?) became Υ (upsilon), 'aleph (?) became Α (alpha), 'ayin (?) became Ο (omicron), and he (?) became Ε (epsilon). For example, alpha comes for the Canaanite aleph (ox) and beta from beth (house). The original Canaanite meanings of the letter names was lost when the alphabet was adapted for Greek. It was developed from the Canaanite/Phoenician alphabet and the order and names of the letters are derived from Phoenician. The Greek alphabet has been in continuous use since about 750 BC. On Crete another script, known as the Cypriot syllabary, was used to write the local variety of Greek between about 1200 and 300 BC. This variety of Greek is known as Mycenaean. Greek was first written in Mycenae with a script known as Linear B, which was used between about 15 BC. There were about 238,000 Greek speakers in Australia in 2016, and in 1987 there were about 20,000 Greek speakers in Italy. In 2012 there were about 13.1 million speakers of Greek worldwide, including 10.7 million in Greece, 1.1 million in Cyprus, and 15,200 in Albania. It is an official language in Greece and Cyprus, and is recognised as a minority language Albania, Armenia, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine. It is spoken mainly in Greece and Cyprus, and also in Australia, Albania, Italy, Ukraine, Turkey, Romania and Hungary. One of the titles of the Emperor was the koine word, "kurios," ( κύριος ) which means "Lord." It was a divine title of the emperor! It was the main word used by the LXX ( Septuagint ) translators of the Old Testament when they translated the Hebrew word, YHVH.Greek belongs to the Hellenic branch of the Indo-European language family. One reason was Rome's acceptance of all cult religions as long as the Emperor was worshipped as well. Koine Greek became more popular in Rome than Latin. ) koine Greek had become the common language in Israel. By the time the New Testament was written ( mid to late 1st century A.D. Alexander wanted a Greek language common to all peoples. Our search engine should understand your query and provide the proper results.īefore Alexander the Great, the Greek language was an assortment of localized dialects. To use our lexicon, enter an English word or Strong's Number in the text box above and click 'Go!'.
By using the Strong's version of the King James, New American Standard, Holman Christian Standard, English Standard Version, Berean Study Bible or World English Bible, a deeper knowledge, of the passage being studied, can be gained. This lexicon has been developed to aid the user in understanding the original text of the Greek Old and New Testament.