The Greek alphabet originated from the Phoenician alphabet, which has only consonants and is written from right to left. The vowels in Greek were developed, and the Greeks added vowels.

Because the Greek writing tool was a wax board, sometimes the first line was written from right to left, and the last line was written from left to right, which became the so-called "cultivated land" writing, and then gradually evolved into all writing from left to right. The direction of the letters is also reversed.

The Romans introduced the Greek alphabet, changed it into Latin alphabet with a little change, and it became popular all over the world. Greek letters are widely used in academic fields, such as mathematics.

Cyrillic letters also evolved from Greek letters. The English word alphabet (letter) comes from the alphabetum in vulgar Latin, and the alphabetum comes from the Greek word α λ φ α β ο ν (transliteration of Beton), which is the synthesis of the first two Greek letters α(Alpha) and β(Beta).

Extended data:

Greek letters used in mathematics, science and engineering.

The Greek alphabet is used in mathematics, science, engineering and other fields. In mathematics, Greek letters are usually used to represent constants, special functions and some specific variables. In the field of mathematics, the meanings of uppercase and lowercase Greek letters are usually different and irrelevant.

Some capitalized Greek letters are written in the same or very similar way to the corresponding Latin letters, so they will not be used, such as: A, B, E, H, I, K, M, N, O, P, T, X, Y, Z.

Besides, lowercase ι(iota), ο(omicron) and μ (upsilon) are very similar to I, O and U in Latin letters, so they are rarely used. Sometimes, font variants of Greek letters have specific meanings in mathematics, such as φ(phi) and π(pi).

In financial mathematics, Greek letters are variables used to represent investment risks.

Mathematicians whose mother tongue is English don't read Greek letters with modern or ancient pronunciations, but read traditional English pronunciations. For example, the letter θ, these mathematicians will read it as [? θeit？ ]。 (In ancient times: [th^ε? Ta], nowadays: [? θita ])

Baidu Encyclopedia-Greek alphabet