How to write/draw greek characters.

Greek Learning Greek
1

Hi everyone, this is my first post as I’ve only just discovered this excellent site after deciding I would like to learn ancient greek and latin. So far I’ve only been reading about the different styles and transitions the languages have taken through time and just trying to learn a little each day. My question involves the writing of the greek characters. Is there a proper way to do this and does it make a difference? I know this might sound like a pedantic question but I thought I might as well get it right from the beginning then to learn it and find out I’m doing it wrong later.

The only site I’ve found on the topic is here (scroll down to the bottom and you will see the arrows in blue).

http://www.ibiblio.org/koine/greek/lessons/alphabet.html

Here the person has shown how he draws the characters with arrows, but some of the characters could easily be drawn differently. Any input would be great. Thanks for your time.

2

Hi,
There’s this thread that dealt with the similar question.

Remember that the small letters(miniscules) are actually a quickhand for the large letters, er, capitals.

IMO, how to draw the character is not very important. The most comfortable way for you is the best way to draw them. Only if the characters you’ve drawn are recognizable, at the least for you. :wink:

3

As an independant learner, I doubt anyone will ever need to read what I write in ancient greek except myself. I just aim for making it easy to write and making it similar enough to what is printed in books/websites that I can identify it easily. And when I write Greek on the computer I just use transliteration, since I do not want to go to the effort of getting a Greek font on one of my word processors.

An interesting phenomenon is how my long term usage of the Roman alphabet (since I was 4 years old or so) influences my writing of Greek, and lately my Greek writing is affecting my Roman alphabet (English) handwriting. I have always had a very distinctive way of writing the letter ‘a’ (probably the easiest way for someone to identify my handwriting), which is different from the alpha. Sometimes, when I write alpha, I accidently put an ‘a’ instead, in which case I flip the pencil and get the eraser to work. And recently, instead of writing my distinct ‘a’ in English, I put in an alpha. There are other examples, but this is the clearest.

4

here is another site; it has animations showing the letters being written.

http://www.wesleyan.edu/classics/greek_resources/writing_guide/writing_guide.html