Alphabet

An alphabet is a series of symbols (letters) which correlate to individual sounds, allowing the spoken word to be recorded for later use. The word "alphabet" is a combination of the first two letters (alpha and beta) of the Greek alphabet, which, itself was derived from the first two letters of the Phoenician and the Hebrew Aleph and Bet. Many ancient alphabets are believed to have been developed from even earlier writings, of ancient pictograms where a spoken sound or word was represented by small drawing of an object. These pictures eventually developed into formalised graphical symbols. By convention these symbols are written in a specific order (alphabetic order) when listed. The alphabet was a great impetus to literacy as there was no longer a need to learn myriads of pictures to represent the multitudinous concepts present in reality and thought. Now, with the alphabet, all that was needed was to learn the symbols to represent the rather limited sounds of any particular language.

Latin Alphabets

The Latin alphabet (or Roman alphabet) is the most widely-used alphabetic writing system in the world. Most Western alphabets are based on the script of ancient Rome which comprises the following 23 characters or letters:

Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, Ee, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Oo, Pp, Qq, Rr, Ss, Tt, Vv, Xx, Yy, Zz

English Alphabet

In the English language three characters have been added to the Latin alphabet, and the English alphabet comprises the following 26 characters:

Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, Ee, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Jj, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Oo, Pp, Qq, Rr, Ss, Tt, Uu, Vv, Ww, Xx, Yy, Zz

Other Languages

Most Germanic and Romance languages from Europe use the same letters as the English alphabet. Some languages expand the alphabet's representation with with diacritical markings on the letters, but these are not considered by the language to be distinct letters. digraphs and ligatures .

Greek Alphabet

Main article: Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet comprises the following characters:

Αα, Ββ, Γγ, Δδ, Εε, Ζζ, Ηη, Θθ, Ιι, Κκ, Λλ, Μμ, Νν, Ξξ, Οο, Ππ, Ρ ρ, Σσς, Ττ, Υυ, Φφ, Χχ, Ψψ, Ωω

In addition to the single letters, Greek letters may be combined to make completely new sounds, such as ντ, which makes a "d" sound or αυ, which makes the sound "af" or "av".

Cyrillic Alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet, and variants of it, is used in Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croat and Mongolian (in the Republic of Mongolia). The Cyrillic alphablet was mandatory in Soviet republics before their independence from the Soviet Union, but many of these have reverted to their earlier alphabets which often are based on Latin letters.

Hebrew Alphabet

The Hebrew alphabet is made up of 22 letters used in the Hebrew and Jewish languages. The Hebrew word for "alphabet" is אלף-בית ("alef-bet"), derived from the first two letters of the alphabet. Five of the letters - Kaf, Mem, Nun, Pe and Tsadi - have a different appearance when used as the last letter in a word. The letters are written and read from right to left, and have only one case. The Hebrew Alphabet (for the Hebrew language, as opposed to the "Jewish" language - Yiddish) is totally consonental, vowels sometimes written with other signs and sometimes not written at all. This is in conformity to the secondary nature of vowels in the languages themselves of the Semitic group of languages. The present Hebrew alphebet is not the original Hebrew alphabet but is a development of the Aramaic script. In some Hebrew literature,such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the original Hebrew alphabet is used for the divine Name of God - Yod, Hay, Vav, Hay, within a text employing the "modern" Hebrew, Aramaic derived script. The original Hebrew script is much closer to the pictographs from which the alphabetic script was derived [1]. Examples - the "y" sound represented alphabetically by the Yod looks like a hand and indeed,Yod, or its varient Yad means "hand". The "k" sound represented by the "Kaf" looks like the palm of a hand, and kaf means palm of the hand. The "Ayin" looks like an eye and "ayin" means eye. The alphabetic sign was, thus, a stylized derivation, of the very first sound heard in the words for very common objects, and so were called by what the object was known as in the language.

Alef	Bet/Vet	Gimel	Dalet	He	Vav	Zayin	Khet	Tet	Yod	Kaf/Khaf
א	ב	ג	ד	ה	ו	ז	ח	ט	י	כ
										ך
Lamed	Mem	Nun	Samekh	Ayin	Pe/Fe	Tsadi	Kuf	Resh	Shin/Sin	Tav
ל	מ	×	ס	×¢	פ	צ	ק	ר	ש	ת
	ם	ן			ף	ץ

See Also

• Semitic languages

External Links

• Evolution of Alphabets
• Evolution of Greek Alphabet from Phoenecian