Romanization of Greek Greek numerals which employed the entire alphabet, including the nonstandard letters digamma, stigma, or sigma-tau (placed between epsilon and zeta), koppa (placed between pi and rho), and sampi (placed after omega). As revised in 2001, ELOT 743 provides for the uncommon characters to be given (in Greek) as $ for stigma, + for koppa, and / for sampi. These symbols are not given lower-case equivalents. When used as numbers, the letters are used in combination with the upper "keraia" numeral sign ⟨ʹ⟩ to denote numbers from 1 to 900 and in combination with the lower "keraia" ⟨͵⟩ to denote multiples
Greek alphabet the abjads used in Semitic languages, which have letters only for consonants. Greek initially took over all of the 22 letters of Phoenician. Five were reassigned to denote vowel sounds: the glide consonants ("yodh") and ("waw") were used for [i] (Ι, "iota") and [u] (Υ, "upsilon") respectively; the glottal stop consonant ("|aleph") was used for [a] (Α, "alpha"); the pharyngeal ("ʿayin") was turned into [o] (Ο, "omicron"); and the letter for ("he") was turned into [e] (Ε, "epsilon"). A doublet of waw was also borrowed as a consonant for [w] (Ϝ, digamma). In addition, the Phoenician letter for the emphatic