Archaic Greek alphabets

The system now familiar as the standard 24-letter Greek alphabet was originally the regional variant of the Ionian cities in Anatolia.

The "red" (or western) type is the one that was later transmitted to the West and became the ancestor of the Latin alphabet, and bears some crucial features characteristic of that later development.

Thus, the aspirated plosives /pʰ/, /kʰ/ are spelled either simply as Π and Κ respectively, without a distinction from unaspirated /p/, /k/, or as digraphs ΠΗ, ΚΗ.

This is the system found in Crete and in some other islands in the southern Aegean, notably Thera (Santorini), Melos and Anaphe.

[5] The "red" (western) type also lacks Phoenician-derived Ξ for /ks/, but instead introduces a supplementary sign for that sound combination at the end of the alphabet, Χ.

This system is found in the cities of the Ionian dodecapolis, Knidos in Asia Minor, and in Corinth and Argos on the northeastern Peloponnese.

[8] Yet another distinction was found in a group of cities in the north-east of the Peloponnese, most notably Corinth: here, it was not the open-mid /ɛː/ that was distinguished among the three e-sounds, but the closed-mid /eː/.

Early Crete had an archaic form (which resembled its original model, the Y-shaped Phoenician waw ), or a variant with the stem bent sideways ().

[11] Roger Woodard, professor of classics at the University at Buffalo, hypothesizes that San may originally have stood for [ts].

The new letter Omega (Ω) to denote the long half-open [ɔː] sound was invented first in the East, in the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, at some time before 600 BC.

[16] Some Ionian cities used a special letter , alphabetically ordered behind Ω, for a sibilant sound in positions where other dialects had either ΣΣ or ΤΤ (e.g. τέͳαρες 'four', cf.

As an alphabetic character, it has been attested in the cities of Miletus,[17] Ephesos, Halikarnassos, Erythrae, Teos (all situated in the region of Ionia in Asia Minor), in the island of Samos, in the Ionian colony of Massilia,[18] and in Kyzikos (situated farther north in Asia Minor, in the region of Mysia).

In Pontic Mesembria, on the Black Sea coast of Thrace, it was used on coins, which were marked with the abbreviation of the city's name, spelled ΜΕͲΑ.

[20] In one attested document, the Arcadocypriot Greek of Mantineia used an innovative letter similar to И (), probably derived from a variant of san, to denote what was probably a [ts]-like sound in environments reflecting etymological Proto-Greek */kʷ/.

[22] A special letter for a variant realization of the short /e/ sound, , was briefly used in the Boeotian city of Thespiae in the late 5th century BC.

Since its shape suggests a compromise form between an Ε and an Ι, it is thought that it denoted a raised allophone, approaching /i/.

Η was originally a closed rectangular shape and developed several variants with different numbers of arrangements of connecting bars between the two outer stems.

[28] The letter Ι had two principal variants: the classical straight vertical line, and a crooked form with three, four or more angular strokes ( ).

[29] The letters Γ and Λ had multiple different forms that could often be confused with each other, as both are just an angle shape that could occur in various positions.

[30] The letter Α had different minor variants depending on the position of the middle bar, with some of them being characteristic of local varieties.

All letters could additionally occur in a mirrored form, when text was written from right to left, as was frequently done in the earliest period.

[33] By the late 5th century, use of elements of the Ionic alphabet side by side with this traditional local alphabet had become commonplace in private writing, and in 403 BC, a formal decree was passed that public writing would switch to the new Ionic orthography consistently, as part of the reform after the Thirty Tyrants.

[34] The Euboean alphabet was used in the cities of Eretria and Chalcis and in related colonies in southern Italy, notably in Cumae, Pithecusae and Rhegion.

San (Ϻ) for /s/ was not normally used in writing, but apparently still transmitted as part of the alphabet, because it occurs in abecedaria found in Italy and was later adopted by Etruscan.

Corinth used san (Ϻ) instead of Σ for /s/, and retained qoppa (Ϙ) for what was presumably a retracted allophone of /k/ before back vowels.