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The history of the Greek alphabet starts with the adoption of Phoenician letter forms and continues to the present day. This article concentrates on the early period, before the codification of the now-standard Greek alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet was strictly speaking an abjad 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.〔M. O'Connor, ''Epigraphic Semitic Scripts,'' in Daniels and Bright, ''The World's Writing Systems,'' 1996〕 This arrangement is much less suitable for Greek than for Semitic languages, and these ''matres lectionis,'' as well as several Phoenician letters which represented consonants not present in Greek, were adapted according to the acrophonic principle to represent Greek vowels consistently, if not unambiguously. The Greek alphabet was developed by a Greek with first-hand experience of contemporary Phoenician script. Almost as quickly as it was established in the Greek mainland, it was rapidly re-exported, eastwards to Phrygia, where a similar script was devised. It was also exported westwards with Euboean or West Greek traders, where the Etruscans adapted the Greek alphabet to their own language. ==Chronology of adoption== Most specialists believe that the Phoenician alphabet was adopted for Greek during the early 8th century BC, perhaps in Euboea.〔The date of the earliest inscribed objects; A.W. Johnston, "The alphabet", in N. Stampolidis and V. Karageorghis, eds, ''Sea Routes from Sidon to Huelva: Interconnections in the Mediterranean'' 2003:263-76, summarizes the present scholarship on the dating.〕 The earliest known fragmentary Greek inscriptions date from this time, 770–750 BC, and they match Phoenician letter forms of c. 800–750 BC.〔Pierre Swiggers, ''Transmission of the Phoenician Script to the West,'' in Daniels and Bright, ''The World's Writing Systems,'' 1996〕 The oldest substantial texts known to date are the Dipylon inscription and the text on the so-called Cup of Nestor, both dated to the late 8th century BC, inscriptions of personal ownership and dedications to a god. Some scholars argue for earlier dates: Naveh (1973) for the 11th century BC, Stieglitz (1981) for the 14th century, Bernal (1990) for the 18th–13th century, some for the 9th, but none of these are widely accepted. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of the Greek alphabet」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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