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 Phoenician values, but with different forms: as the Greek letter digamma for the consonant , and as the letter upsilon for the vowel . Upsilon was added at the end of the alphabet, perhaps to avoid upsetting the alphabetic order that was used in Greek numerals. Phoenician "hē" had been used as a "mater lectionis" for both and in addition to , but in Greek it was restricted to , following the acrophonic principle; its value was instead written with the letter "’āleph", while Greek was written with "ḥeth". All Phoenician letters had been acrophonic, and they remained so in