The Greek alphabet was developed in about 1000 BC. It was adapted from Northern Semitic, an alphabet from which Hebrew __01__ . The Semitic languages, including Hebrew and Arabic, have many consonantal sounds, while vowels are relatively unimportant. Their alphabet, __02__ , had no symbols for vowels. The Greeks changed the alphabet; consonantal signs which represented sounds not __03__ in Greek were re-used for vowel sounds. Greek thus became the first alphabet in the world with signs for both vowels and consonants.
At the start, the direction of writing was from right to left, but the early Greeks adopted an unusual practice of writing. This was called boustrophedon, meaning “as the ox ploughs.” In this writing system, all the even number rows were written in the same direction and all the odd number rows in the opposite direction. There is a very good example of this in the Greek city of Gortys in Crete, __04__ the laws of the city were carved on a wall in boustrophedon style and are still there for all to see. Around 500 BC, the practice changed to writing from left to right, and this continues to the present day.
The Roman alphabet used for Western European languages, the Cyrillic alphabet used for Eastern European languages, and even the Scandinavian Runic alphabet are all directly adapted from the Greek alphabet. Thus, it certainly was the parent of all modern European alphabets. __05__ , the word alphabet itself comes from the names of the first two Greek letters, Alpha and Beta.
01.
Select one of the following: