Lesson one
Introduction to Attic Greek
When we learn English formally, we begin with the A, B, C’s. Our letters are arranged in an orderly alphabet. We even have a song for it!
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The same is true for Ancient Greek. The Greeks were aware of their alphabet, and the order in which we learn it is not a modern concept. Their alphabet had a specific order, which is fascinating to think about.
Origins
The Phoenicians, an ancient civilization that sailed the Mediterranean, are noted to have one of the earliest alphabets. When the Phoenicians traveled and traded with the Ancient Greeks, the Greeks adopted their written alphabet.
As a Semitic language, the Phoenicians had no use for vowels since their spoken language only contained consonants.
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In contrast, the Greek spoken language does have vowels. And so, the Greeks replaced five Phoenician consonants with vowels in order to be able to fully express the Greek language in its written form.
In addition to not having vowels, the Phoenicians wrote right to left. At first, the Greeks adopted this method.
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Then they began to write Boustrophedon style, which you can imagine was difficult to follow. Boustrophedon literally means ‘how an ox moves’, because the text alternates left to right as an ox would when plowing​​ fields.​
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By five hundred BCE the Greeks had ditched that model and wrote left to right.
