Writing Greek in the Roman Alphabet: The Cretan System (1211-1669 CE)

What is it about?

The article describes and traces the history of a system for writing the modern Greek language which was used mainly on the island of Crete under Venetian domination (1211-1669 CE). Since many Greek-speaking Cretans were taught to write in Latin or some form of Italian, this system allowed them to become literate in Greek with little effort. Its orthography is phonetic, based on the sounds of the language, with no influence from the orthography of Ancient Greek. It is a remarkably accurate way of writing modern Greek according to the rules of Italian orthography. For sounds that do not exist in Italian it uses combinations of two letters (digraphs): th represents the first sound of English thing, dh the first sound of that, while gh stands for the final sound of English (originally Gaelic) loch or German Bach. The system came to be used, alongside the Greek alphabet, for anything from notarized documents to literary texts. However, this article’s author does not advocate for abandoning the Greek alphabet, with its deep symbolic links to Greek culture and identity.

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Photo by Leonhard Niederwimmer on Unsplash

Photo by Leonhard Niederwimmer on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The article show how people were able to analyse the sounds of a language before the advent of modern linguistics, and create a writing system on this basis.