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How did the Greek alphabet develop from the Phoenician alphabet?

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The Parthenon stands atop the Acropolis hill in Athens, Greece, surrounded by ancient stone walls and ruins, with city buildings and a distant hill in the background. — ancient Greek civilization The Acropolis, Athens.

The Greek alphabet was derived from the Phoenician alphabet through commercial contacts, likely by the 8th century BCE. While the Phoenician system consisted of 22 letters representing only consonants, the Greeks adapted these signs to fit their own phonology.12

The most significant innovation in this development was the introduction of vowels. The Greeks repurposed five Phoenician letters to represent vowel sounds: alpha (a), epsilon (e), iota (i), omicron (o), and upsilon (u). This creation of a system that explicitly represented both consonants and vowels resulted in a more economical and unambiguous method of writing.13

Over time, the alphabet underwent further reforms, including the addition of new letters such as phi (ph), chi (ch), psi (ps), and omega (ō). Although local variations existed across different city-states for centuries, the alphabet was eventually normalized around 400 BCE with the adoption of the Ionic form. This system became the foundation for many subsequent writing systems, including the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets.13