The Greek Alphabet

Did you know the alphabet we use today comes from the Greeks? In fact, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet are ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’. Put them together and what do you get? Alphabet!

The Greek alphabet has 24 letters. They look different from the letters we use today. 


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The Greeks learned a lot about writing from the Phoenicians. They borrowed their alphabet but added new things to it like vowels. The Phoenicians didn’t have vowels in their alphabet. There were also some sounds that the Greeks added in the form of new letters. 

At first, Greek was written from right to left, like Phoenician writing, but then it was changed from left to right. It was also written entirely in capital letters.

Other changes were made by different civilisations until eventually our alphabet was created.


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Some Greek letters are still used in science and maths like these two:

Pi (Π) is used to measure circles.

Lambda (λ) is used to measure wavelengths.