History of the Greek alphabet only required one. The history here is complicated, but basically "sāmekh" dropped out in certain dialects, and was reused to represent in others, while usage for the sound varied between "ṣādē" and "šin". The letter now known as sigma took its name from "sāmekh" but its form from "šin", while the letter San, which occurred in a few dialects only, took its name from "šin" but its place in the alphabet from "ṣādē". A further Greek letter of uncertain origin, sampi, is found occasionally, and may represent an affricate, such as . For the special case of zeta, see Zeta
Greek alphabet late ninth century BC or early eighth century BC, the Greek alphabet emerged. The period between the use of the two writing systems, during which no Greek texts are attested, is known as the Greek Dark Ages. The Greeks adopted the alphabet from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, one of the closely related scripts used for the West Semitic languages. However, the Phoenician alphabet is limited to consonants. When it was adopted for writing Greek, certain consonants were adapted to express vowels. The use of both vowels and consonants makes Greek the first alphabet in the narrow sense, as distinguished from