How did the addition of vowels to the alphabet help Greek civilization exactly?
Don’t get confused. Greek alphabet always had vowels. But there were only capital letters used, and no stress marks. “In Classic Greek there were no lowercase letters, only capitals. So there were no accent marks over the letters. Later, during the Hellenistic times (last three centuries BC) lowercase letters were introduced, and along with them, the accent marks.” “The scholars (grammarians) of Alexandria introduced diacritic accent marks to fascilitate their philological work. These little marks, had to do with stress, the lost prosody’s aspiration, and also the iota hypogegrammenon. These marks were used until 1982 e.v. and the script is called polytonic greek script.” These additions to the greek alphabet, together with the simplified grammar, were vital for the non-greek populations to learn greek more efficiently and know how to pronounce it.
