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with initial consonants made silent, and were then used acrophonically to represent vowels. These were alpha, e (later called e psilon), iota, o (later called o micron), and u (later called u psilon) – <?, ?, ?, ?, ?> – five letters for twelve vowel sounds. (The lost initial consonants were .) Later the [h] (from ) dropped out from the Eastern Greek dialects, and the letter heta (now pronounced eta) became available; it was used for . About the same time, the Greeks created an additional letter, o mega, probably by writing o micron with an underline, that was used for . Digraphs <??> and <??>, no longer pronounced as diphthongs and , were adopted for and Thus, Greek entered its classical era with seven letters and two digraphs – <?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ??, ??> – for twelve vowel sounds. Long were never distinguished from short , even though the distinction was meaningful. Although the Greek alphabet was a good match to the consonants of the language, it was defective when it came to some vowels.

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