Greek alphabet with no Greek equivalents still remain in this block (U+03E2 to U+03EF). To write polytonic Greek, one may use combining diacritical marks or the precomposed characters in the "Greek Extended" block (U+1F00 to U+1FFF). Combining and spacing (letter-free) diacritical marks pertaining to Greek language: IBM code pages 437, 860, 861, 862, 863, and 865 contain the letters ΓΘΣΦΩαδεπστφ (plus β as an alternate interpretation for ß). Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late ninth or early eighth century BC. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the first
History of the Greek alphabet foreshadowed the development of vowel letters with a limited use of "matres lectionis", that is, consonants that pulled double duty as vowels, which for historical reasons occurred mostly at the ends of words. For example, the two letters "wāw" and "yōdh" stood for both the approximant consonants and , and the long vowels and in Phoenician. By this point in time, Greek had lost its sound, so Phoenician "yōdh" was used only for its vocalic value, becoming the Greek vowel letter iota . However, several Greek dialects still had a sound, and here "wāw" was used for both of its