Classroom lesson · The Greek alphabet · 🇬🇷 Greece

The Greek alphabet

Where most European letters originally came from

Greek letters carved into a stone tablet

Photo · Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

The Greek alphabet is one of the oldest alphabets still used today. It has 24 letters. Most of the letters in this very sentence - the ones English, Spanish, French and many other languages use - came from the Greek alphabet first.

Tell me more

The Greek alphabet started around 2,800 years ago. The Greeks borrowed letter shapes from another ancient people called the Phoenicians, then added something nobody had done before - separate letters for vowels (the a, e, i, o, u sounds). That is a big deal, because it lets you spell out almost any sound.

The word 'alphabet' itself is Greek. The first two letters of the Greek alphabet are alpha (A) and beta (B) - alpha + beta = alphabet. The letters carry on: gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta... right through to omega at the end. Many of those names probably sound familiar - they get used in maths, science and even computer games.

Some Greek letters look exactly like English ones. A is A, M is M, Z is Z. Some look the same but make different sounds (a Greek P makes an 'R' sound; a Greek H makes an 'EE' sound). And some look totally different: Δ is a 'd' and Ω is an 'o'.

When the Romans came along, they borrowed the Greek alphabet, changed a few letters, and made what we now call the Latin alphabet - the one you use to read this. So every time you write a letter in English, you are using a shape with a Greek ancestor.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

01Which Greek letters have you seen before? Where?
02Why might it be helpful to have separate letters for vowels and consonants?
03If you had to invent a brand-new letter for a sound English doesn't have, which sound would it be?

Try this

Classroom activity

Print or write the Greek alphabet on the board: Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε... Each pupil writes their name in Greek letters, sounding it out letter by letter. Compare across the class - whose name looks the most different?

The Greek alphabet

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Discussion prompts

Classroom activity

Other things that make Greece special

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