Greek alphabet glottal ("heth") was borrowed in two different functions by different dialects of Greek: as a letter for /h/ (Η, heta) by those dialects that had such a sound, and as an additional vowel letter for the long (Η, eta) by those dialects that lacked the consonant. Eventually, a seventh vowel letter for the long (Ω, omega) was introduced. Greek also introduced three new consonant letters for its aspirated plosive sounds and consonant clusters: Φ ("phi") for , Χ ("chi") for and Ψ ("psi") for . In western Greek variants, Χ was instead used for and Ψ for . The origin
History of the Greek alphabet History of the Greek alphabet The history of the Greek alphabet starts with the adoption of Phoenician letter forms and continues to the present day. The Greek alphabet postdates Linear B, the syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, by several centuries. This article concentrates on the early period, before the codification of the now-standard Greek alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet was strictly speaking one that was consistently explicit only about consonants, though even by the 9th century BC it had developed "matres lectionis" to indicate some, mostly final, vowels. This arrangement is much less suitable for Greek than