The
Greek alphabet has been used to write the
Greek language since the 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier
Phoenician alphabet, and was the first alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants. It is the ancestor of the
Latin and
Cyrillic scripts. Apart from its use in writing the Greek language, in both its ancient and its modern forms, the Greek alphabet today also serves as a source of
technical symbols and labels in many domains of mathematics, science and other fields.