Q 01/05

Which letter comes third in the 24-letter Greek alphabet, after alpha and beta?

A) Delta

B) Epsilon

C) Gamma

D) Zeta

Answer · why

C) Gamma

Gamma. The order stuck in science: Ernest Rutherford had already named alpha and beta rays, so he called the third kind of radiation gamma rays in 190...

Q 02/05

What is the last letter of the Greek alphabet?

A) Zeta

B) Omega

C) Chi

D) Psi

Answer · why

B) Omega

Omega means 'big o'. Medieval Greeks added the tag to tell it from the alphabet's other o, the 'little o', once the two letters had come to sound the ...

Q 03/05

From which earlier alphabet was the Greek alphabet derived?

A) Egyptian hieroglyphs

B) Phoenician

C) Aramaic

D) Etruscan

Answer · why

B) Phoenician

Phoenician. The Greeks kept the letter order and even the names, so alpha and beta are simply aleph and bet, the Phoenician words for ox and house.

Q 04/05

Why is Greek often called the first 'true' alphabet?

A) It gave every letter its own name

B) It wrote vowels as well as consonants

C) It was written from left to right

D) It had upper and lower case

Answer · why

B) It wrote vowels as well as consonants

It wrote vowels as well as consonants. The script it was borrowed from spelled only consonants, so the Greeks reassigned some of its letters, such as ...

Q 05/05

The Greek alphabet ended centuries without writing in Greece, a period known as what?

A) Dark Ages

B) Archaic period

C) Heroic Age

D) Hellenistic period

Answer · why

A) Dark Ages

The Dark Ages. In Greece the name covers the centuries after writing died out with the Mycenaean palaces around 1200 BC, an era that left no written r...