Scripts
Greek Script
GREEK
Also Known As Greek Alphabet
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Origin from 800 BCE
The Greek alphabet was adapted from the Phoenician abjad around the eighth century BCE, and its decisive innovation was assigning some Phoenician consonant letters unused in Greek to vowel sounds instead, producing the first script in which vowels are written as full letters rather than left to the reader to supply. That innovation passed on twice over: Greek letters carried west through Euboean colonists to the Etruscans and from the Etruscans to the Latin alphabet, and passed north into the medieval Balkans and Eastern Europe through the Byzantine Greek uncial script adapted by ninth-century missionaries, traditionally credited to Saint Cyril and his circle alongside the earlier Glagolitic script, into what became the Cyrillic alphabet. Latin and Cyrillic therefore both descend from Greek, but by different, indirect routes centuries apart, not as two direct copies of the same original.
Facts
DirectionalityEarly Greek inscriptions were written boustrophedon, alternating direction line by line, before left-to-right became standard. In Use Since (Year)Circa eighth century BCE; the exact date of adaptation from Phoenician is not fixed in the sources. Cross-Tradition Connections
Ancestor Of
Cyrillic Script, Scripts By way of the Byzantine Greek uncial script adapted in the ninth century, traditionally credited to Saint Cyrils circle, with some letterforms carried over from the earlier Glagolitic script rather than from Greek directly.
Latin Script, Scripts By way of Euboean Greek colonists and the Etruscan alphabet in Italy, not by direct adoption.
Held Differently
Glagolitic Alphabet, Scripts Why this is disputed. Omniglot states the brothers probably modelled Glagolitic on a cursive form of the Greek alphabet. Other scholarship identifies two competing schools: a palaeographic theory that Cyril built the letters from pre-existing scripts, naming Hebrew, Samaritan, Coptic, Armenian and Georgian as candidate 'Oriental' influences (named proponents include Vondrak, Nahtigal and Fortunatov), against an idiographic theory that the letters were a largely original invention. The question is unresolved.
Georgian Script, Scripts Why this is disputed. Recent historiography favors Greek influence in letter order and numeric value, but some scholars argue instead for a Semitic model such as Aramaic; a separate tradition crediting Mesrop Mashtots personally with the Georgian script has been rejected by Georgian scholarship.
Associated With
This source names Latin directly: "and from the Etruscans to the Latin alphabet, and passed north into the medieval Balkans and Eastern Europe through the Byzantine Greek uncial script adapted by ninth-century missionaries..."
Descends From
The Greek alphabet adapted the Phoenician abjad around the eighth century BCE, repurposing several Phoenician consonant letters as vowel letters, the innovation that makes Greek the first true alphabet.
Influenced
General scholarly consensus, though the alphabet also shows some resemblance to Pahlavi and Syriac.
Script Of
Sources
1. Omniglot: The Online Encyclopedia of Writing Systems and Languages
2. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
David Crystal (editor), Cambridge University Press, 2010
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Descends From: Phoenician Script
Wikipedia: Armenian Alphabet
Influenced: Armenian Alphabet, Origin sectionQuote, Influenced: Armenian Alphabet, Origin section
the general consensus is that Armenian is modeled after the Greek alphabet
Wikipedia: Georgian Scripts
Influenced: Georgian Script, Origin sectionQuote, Influenced: Georgian Script, Origin section
scholars have debated whether it was inspired more by the Greek alphabet, or by Semitic alphabets such as Aramaic
Wikipedia: Coptic Alphabet
Ancestor Of: Coptic Alphabet, Lead sectionQuote, Ancestor Of: Coptic Alphabet, Lead section
The repertoire of glyphs is based on the uncial Greek alphabet, augmented by letters borrowed from the Egyptian Demotic.
Dissenting Readings (2 dissenting readings)
Ancestor Of: Glagolitic Alphabet
These Slavic philologists argued for Oriental script influences beyond Greek cursive, proposing that Glagolitic's non-Greek letterforms echo Hebrew, Samaritan, Coptic, Armenian or Georgian models, against the more commonly stated view that Cyril modelled the alphabet mainly on a cursive form of the Greek alphabet.
A dissenting reading, from Vaclav Vondrak, Rajko Nahtigal and Filipp FortunatovRain of God's Letters: Glagolitic Alphabet as a Mystical Tool?
Influenced: Georgian Script
Javakhishvili, a Georgian historian, studied Koryun's fifth-century biography of Mesrop Mashtots (the source of the tradition crediting Mashtots with the Georgian script) and concluded that the passage crediting Mashtots is a sixth- or seventh-century addition to the text, not part of Koryun's original account; linguist Tamaz Gamkrelidze separately argued that creating a new script would have required a thorough linguistic analysis Mashtots could not have performed, since he did not know the Georgian language.
A dissenting reading, from Ivane JavakhishviliWikipedia: Georgian Scripts
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