{{Short description|Alphabetic writing systems}}{{Alphabet|state=uncollapsed}}The history of the alphabet goes back to the consonantal writing system used to write Semitic languages in the Levant during the 2nd millennium BCE. Nearly all alphabetic scripts used throughout the world today ultimately go back to this Semitic script.BOOK, Sampson, Geoffrey,archive.org/details/writingsystems00geof, Writing systems: A linguistic introduction, Stanford University Press, 1985, 0-8047-1254-9, 77, registration, Its first origins can be traced back to a Proto-Sinaitic script developed in Ancient Egypt to represent the language of Semitic-speaking workers and slaves in Egypt.ENCYCLOPEDIA, Sinaitic inscriptions, Encyclopedia Britannica,www.britannica.com/topic/Sinaitic-inscriptions, 2019-08-21, Unskilled in the complex hieroglyphic system used to write the Egyptian language, which required a large number of pictograms, they selected a small number of those commonly seen in their surroundings to describe the sounds, as opposed to the semantic values, of their own Canaanite language.JOURNAL, Goldwasser, O., 2012, The Miners that Invented the Alphabet - a Response to Christopher Rollston,journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/jaei/article/view/16085/16030, Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, 4, 3, 10.2458/azu_jaei_v04i3_goldwasser, free, JOURNAL, Goldwasser, O., 2010, How the Alphabet was Born from Hieroglyphs.,www.academia.edu/6916402, Biblical Archaeology Review, 36, 2, 40â€“53, This script was partly influenced by the older Egyptian hieratic, a cursive script related to Egyptian hieroglyphs.Himelfarb, Elizabeth J. “First Alphabet Found in Egypt”, Archaeology 53, Issue 1 (Jan./Feb. 2000): 21.JOURNAL, Goldwasser, Orly, Orly Goldwasser, 2010, How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs,members.bib-arch.org/biblical-archaeology-review/36/2/6, Biblical Archaeology Review, Washington, DC, Biblical Archaeology Society, 36, 1, 0098-9444, 6 Nov 2011, The Semitic alphabet became the ancestor of multiple writing systems across the Middle East, Europe, northern Africa, and Pakistan, mainly through Ancient South Arabian,BOOK, Sass, Benjamin,www.worldcat.org/oclc/63062039, The alphabet at the turn of the millennium: the West Semitic alphabet ca. 1150-850 BCE : the antiquity of the Arabian, Greek and Phrygian alphabets, Emery and Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology, Makhon le-arkheÊ¼ologyah Ê»a. sh. Sonyah u-Mará¸³o Nadler, 2005, Emery and Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology, 978-965-266-021-3, Tel-Aviv, English, 63062039, Phoenician and the closely related Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, and later Aramaic (derived from the Phoenician alphabet) and the Nabateanâ€”derived from the Aramaic alphabet and developed into the Arabic alphabetâ€”five closely related members of the Semitic family of scripts that were in use during the early first millennium BCE. Some modern authors distinguish between consonantal alphabets, with the term abjad coined for them in 1996, and “true alphabets” with letters for both consonants and vowels. In this narrower sense, the first true alphabet would be the Greek alphabet, which was adapted from the Phoenician alphabet. Many linguists are skeptical of the value of wholly separating the two categories. Latin, the most widely used alphabet today,{{sfn|Haarmann|2004|p=96}} in turn derives from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, themselves derived from Phoenician.

Predecessors

Two scripts are well attested from before the end of the fourth millennium BCE: Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs.Hieroglyphs were employed in three ways in Ancient Egyptian texts: as logograms (ideograms) that represent a word denoting an object visually depicted by the hieroglyph, as phonographs denoting sounds, or as determinatives which provide clues to meaning without directly writing sounds.WEB, hieroglyphics,csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/hieroglyphics.htm, Since vowels were mostly unwritten, the hieroglyphs which indicated a single consonant could have been used as a consonantal alphabet, or abjad. This was not done when writing the Egyptian language, but seems to have been an influence on the creation of the first alphabet (used to write a Semitic language).JOURNAL, Daniels, Peter T., 2016, Writing in the World and Linguistics,escholarship.org/uc/item/7vv3w7p8, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 36, 36, 81, All subsequent alphabets around the world have either descended from this first Semitic alphabet, or have been inspired by one of its descendants by stimulus diffusion, with the possible exception of the Meroitic alphabet, a 3rd-century BCE adaptation of hieroglyphs in Nubia to the south of Egypt. The Rongorongo script of Easter Island may also be an independently invented alphabet, but too little is known of it to be certain.WEB, Magazine, Smithsonian, Anderson, Sonja, Did the People of Easter Island Invent a Writing System From Scratch?,www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/research-reveals-the-natives-of-easter-island-invented-a-written-language-from-scratch-180983793/, 2024-02-17, Smithsonian Magazine, en,

Consonantal alphabets

Semitic alphabet

The Proto-Sinaitic script of Egypt has yet to be fully deciphered. However, it may be alphabetic and probably records the Canaanite language. The oldest examples are found as graffiti in the Wadi el-Hol and date to {{circa|1850 BCE}}.JOURNAL, Darnell, John Coleman, John Coleman Darnell, Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W., F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Lundberg, Marilyn J., McCarter, P. Kyle, P. Kyle McCarter Jr., Zuckerman, Bruce, 2005, Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi el-HÃ´l, The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 59, 63, 65, 67â€“71, 73â€“113, 115â€“124, 3768583, The table below shows hypothetical prototypes of the Phoenician alphabet in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Several correspondences have been proposed with Proto-Sinaitic letters.{| class=wikitable! Egyptian prototype|F1|O1|T14|O31|A28|T3|Z4|O6|F35|D42|D46

! Phoenician

missing image!
- PhoenicianA-01.svg>20px]]

PhoenicianB-01.svg>20px

PhoenicianG-01.svg>20px

PhoenicianD-01.svg>20px

PhoenicianE-01.svg>20px

PhoenicianW-01.svg>20px

PhoenicianZ-01.svg>20px

PhoenicianH-01.svg>20px

Phoenician teth.svg>20px

PhoenicianI-01.svg>20px

PhoenicianK-01.svg>20px

! Acrophony|Ê¾alp ‘ox’

beth (letter)>bet ‘house’

gaml ‘Boomerang#Hunting>thrown hunting club’

daleth>digg ‘fish’ or ‘door’

he (letter)>haw, hillul ‘jubilation’

waw (letter)>waw ‘hook’

zayin>zen, ziqq ‘handcuff’|á¸¥et ‘courtyard’ or ‘fence’|á¹Ä“t ‘wheel’

yodh>yad ‘arm’

Kaph>kap ‘hand’

{| class=wikitable! Egyptian prototype|S39|N35|I10|R11|D4|D21|M22|V24|D1|T9A|Z9

! Phoenician

PhoenicianL-01.svg>20px

20px)

PhoenicianN-01.svg>20px

PhoenicianX-01.svg>20px

PhoenicianO-01.svg>20px

PhoenicianP-01.svg>20px

PhoenicianTsade-01.svg>20px

PhoenicianQ-01.svg>20px

PhoenicianR-01.svg>20px

PhoenicianS-01.svg>20px

Proto-semiticT-01.svg>20px

! Acrophony

Lamedh>lamd ‘goad’|mem ‘water’

Nun (letter)>nun ‘large fish’ or ‘snake’|samek ‘support’ or ‘pillar’|Ê¿en ‘eye’|piÊ¾t ‘bend’|á¹£ad ‘plant’

qoph>qup ‘monkey’ or ‘cord of wool’|raÊ¾s ‘head’

Å¡imÅ¡>Å¡ananuma ‘bow’

taw (letter)>taw ‘signature’

This Semitic script adapted Egyptian hieroglyphs to write consonantal values based on the first sound of the Semitic name for the object depicted by the hieroglyph, the “acrophonic principle”.{{sfn|Hooker|1998|pp=211â€“213}} For example, the hieroglyph per ‘house’ was used to write the sound {{IPA blink|b}} in Semitic, because {{IPA blink|b}} was the first sound in the Semitic word bayt ‘house’.{{sfn|McCarter|1974|pp=54â€“68}} Little of this proto-Canaanite script has survived, but existing evidence suggests it retained its pictographic nature for half a millennium until it was adopted for governmental use in Canaan.WEB, Azevedo, Joaquim, 1994, The Origin and Transmission of the Alphabet,digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=theses, February 14, 2024, Digital Commons @ Andrews University, The first Canaanite states to make extensive use of the alphabet were the Phoenician city-states and so later stages of the Canaanite script are called Phoenician. The Phoenician cities were maritime states at the center of a vast trade network and soon the Phoenician alphabet spread throughout the Mediterranean. Two variants of the Phoenician alphabet had major impacts on the history of writing: the Aramaic alphabet and the Greek alphabet.BOOK, Van De Mieroop, Marc, Vernaculars That Changed the World, 2022, Before and after Babel, 149â€“C7.P48, Oxford University Press, 978-0-197-63466-0,

Descendants of the Aramaic abjad

File:Arabic alphabet world distribution.png -

The Phoenician and Aramaic alphabets, like their Egyptian prototype, represented only consonants, a system called an abjad. The Aramaic alphabet, which evolved from the Phoenician in the 7th century BCE, to become the official script of the Persian Empire, appears to be the ancestor of nearly all the modern alphabets of Asia except India:

The Arabic alphabet descended from Aramaic via the Nabataean alphabet of what is now southern Jordan. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script) and the most used abjad system.WEB, Arabic Alphabet,www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/31666/Arabic-alphabet, live,web.archive.org/web/20150426185709/https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/31666/Arabic-alphabet, 26 April 2015, 2015-05-16, EncyclopÃ¦dia Britannica,
The modern Hebrew alphabet started out as a local variant of Imperial Aramaic. The original Hebrew alphabet has been retained by the Samaritans.{{sfnm|Hooker|1998|1p=222|Robinson|2007|2p=172}}
The Syriac alphabet used after the third century CE evolved, through the Pahlavi scripts and Sogdian alphabet, into the alphabets of North Asia such as the Old Turkic alphabet (probably), the Old Uyghur alphabet, the Mongolian writing systems, and the Manchu alphabet.
The Georgian scripts are of uncertain provenance, but appear to be part of either the Persian-Aramaic or Greek family.

Alphabets with vowels

Greek alphabet

Adoption

missing image!
- NAMA Alphabet grec.jpg -
Greek alphabet on an ancient black figure vessel. There is a digamma but no ksi or omega. The letter phi upright in the photograph is missing a stroke and looks like the omicron ÎŸ, but on the other side of the bottom it is a full Î¦.

File:Cippo perugino, con iscrizione in lingua etrusca su un atto giuridico tra le famiglie dei velthina e degli afuna, 02.jpg|thumbnail|Etruscan writing, the beginning of the writing with the Latin alphabet Latin alphabetBy at least the 8th century BCE the Greeks borrowed the Phoenician alphabet and adapted it to their own language,{{sfn|McCarter|1974|p=62}} creating in the process the first “true” alphabet, in which vowels were accorded equal status with consonants. According to Greek legends transmitted by Herodotus, the alphabet was brought from Phoenicia to Greece by Cadmus. The letters of the Greek alphabet are the same as those of the Phoenician alphabet, and both alphabets are arranged in the same order.{{sfn|McCarter|1974|p=62}} However, whereas separate letters for vowels would have actually hindered the legibility of Egyptian, Phoenician, or Hebrew, their absence was problematic for Greek, where vowels played a much more important role.{{sfn|Daniels|Bright|1996|p=27|loc=“there are languages for which an alphabet is {{em|not}} an ideal writing system. The Semitic abjads really do fit the structure of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic very well, [more] than an alphabet would [...], since the spelling ensures that each root looks the same through its plethora of inflections and derivations.“}} The Greeks used for vowels some of the Phoenician letters representing consonants which weren’t used in Greek speech. All of the names of the letters of the Phoenician alphabet started with consonants, and these consonants were what the letters represented; this is called the acrophonic principle.However, several Phoenician consonants were absent in Greek, and thus several letter names came to be pronounced with initial vowels. Since the start of the name of a letter was expected to be the sound of the letter (the acrophonic principle), in Greek these letters came to be used for vowels. For example, the Greeks had no glottal stop or voiced pharyngeal sounds, so the Phoenician letters ’alep and `ayin became Greek alpha and o (later renamed omicron), and stood for the vowels {{IPA|/a/}} and {{IPA|/o/}} rather than the consonants {{IPA|/Ê”/}} and {{IPA|/Ê•/}}. As this fortunate development only provided for five or six (depending on dialect) of the twelve Greek vowels, the Greeks eventually created digraphs and other modifications, such as ei, ou, and oâ€”which became omegaâ€”or in some cases simply ignored the deficiency, as in long a, i, u’’.{{sfn|Robinson|2007|p=170}}Several varieties of the Greek alphabet developed. One, known as the Cumae alphabet, was used west of Athens and in southern Italy. The other variation, known as Eastern Greek, was used in Asia Minor. The Athenians ({{circa|400 BCE}}) adopted that latter variation and eventually the rest of the Greek-speaking world followed. After first writing right to left, the Greeks eventually chose to write from left to right, unlike the Phoenicians who wrote from right to left. Many Greek letters are similar to Phoenician, except the letter direction is reversed or changed, which can be the result of historical changes from right-to-left writing to missing image!
- Cyrillic alphabet world distribution.svg">thumb|right|350px|Global distribution of the Cyrillic alphabet. The dark green areas shows the countries where this alphabet is the sole main script. The light green shows the countries where the alphabet co-exists with other scripts.Greek is in turn the source of all the modern scripts of Europe. The alphabet of the early western Greek dialects, where the letter eta remained an {{IPA|/h/}}, gave rise to the Old Italic alphabet which in turn developed into the Old Roman alphabet. In the eastern Greek dialects, which did not have an /h/, eta stood for a vowel, and remains a vowel in modern Greek and all other alphabets derived from the eastern variants: Glagolitic, Cyrillic, Armenian, Gothicâ€”which used both Greek and Roman lettersâ€”and perhaps Georgian.{{sfn|Robinson|2007}}Although this description presents the evolution of scripts in a linear fashion, this is a simplification. For example, Georgian scripts derive from the Semitic family, but were also strongly influenced in their conception by Greek. A modified version of the Greek alphabet, using an additional half dozen demotic hieroglyphs, was used to write Coptic Egyptian. Then there is Cree syllabics (an abugida), which is a fusion of Devanagari and Pitman shorthand developed by the missionary James Evans.Andrew Dalby (2004:139) Dictionary of Languages
Latin alphabet
thumb|right|350px|Global distribution of the Latin alphabet. The dark green areas show the countries where this alphabet is the sole main script. The light green shows the countries where the alphabet co-exists with other scripts.A tribe known as the Latins, who became the Romans, also lived in the Italian peninsula like the Western Greeks. From the Etruscans, a tribe living in the first millennium BCE in central Italy, and the Western Greeks, the Latins adopted writing in about the seventh century. In adopting writing from these two groups, the Latins dropped four characters from the Western Greek alphabet. They also adapted the Etruscan letter F, pronounced ‘w,’ giving it the ‘f’ sound, and the Etruscan S, which had three zigzag lines, was curved to make the modern S. To represent the G sound in Greek and the K sound in Etruscan, the gamma was used. These changes produced the modern alphabet without the letters G, J, U, W, Y, and Z, as well as some other differences.C, K, and Q in the Roman alphabet could all be used to write both the {{IPA|/k/}} and {{IPA|/É¡/}} sounds; the Romans soon modified the letter C to make G, inserted it in seventh place, where Z had been, to maintain the gematria (the numerical sequence of the alphabet). Over the few centuries after Alexander the Great conquered the Eastern Mediterranean and other areas in the third century BCE, the Romans began to borrow Greek words, so they had to adapt their alphabet again in order to write these words. From the Eastern Greek alphabet, they borrowed Y and Z, which were added to the end of the alphabet because the only time they were used was to write Greek words.The Anglo-Saxons began using Roman letters to write Old English as they converted to Christianity, following Augustine of Canterbury’s mission to Britain in the sixth century. Because the Runic wen, which was first used to represent the sound ‘w’ and looked like a p that is narrow and triangular, was easy to confuse with an actual p, the ‘w’ sound began to be written using a double u. Because the u at the time looked like a v, the double u looked like two v’s, W was placed in the alphabet after V. U developed when people began to use the rounded U when they meant the vowel u and the pointed V when the meant the consonant V. J began as a variation of I, in which a long tail was added to the final I when there were several in a row. People began to use the J for the consonant and the I for the vowel by the fifteenth century, and it was fully accepted in the mid-seventeenth century.(File:Evolution of minuscule.svg|thumb|none|600px|Simplified relationship between various scripts leading to the development of modern lower case of standard Latin alphabet and that of the modern variants.)
Letter names and order
The order of the letters of the alphabet is attested from the fourteenth century BCE in the town of Ugarit on Syria’s northern coast.{{sfn|Robinson|2007|p=162}} Tablets found there bear over one thousand cuneiform signs, but these signs are not Babylonian and there are only thirty distinct characters. About twelve of the tablets have the signs set out in alphabetic order. There are two orders found, one of which is nearly identical to the order used for Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and a second order very similar to that used for Ethiopian.JOURNAL, Millard, A. R., 1986, The infancy of the alphabet, World Archaeology, 17, 3, 390â€“398, 10.1080/00438243.1986.9979978, 124703, It is not known how many letters the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet had nor what their alphabetic order was. Among its descendants, the Ugaritic alphabet had 27 consonants, the South Arabian alphabets had 29, and the Phoenician alphabet 22. These scripts were arranged in two orders, an ABGDE order in Phoenician and an HMÄ¦LQ order in the south; Ugaritic preserved both orders. Both sequences proved remarkably stable among the descendants of these scripts.The letter names proved stable among the many descendants of Phoenician, including Samaritan, Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek alphabet. However, they were largely abandoned in Tifinagh, Latin and Cyrillic. The letter sequence continued more or less intact into Latin, Armenian, Gothic, and Cyrillic, but was abandoned in Brahmi, Runic, and Arabic, although a traditional abjadi order remains or was re-introduced as an alternative in the latter.The table is a schematic of the Proto-Sinaitic script and its descendants.{| class=“wikitable” style="border-collapse:collapse; text-align:center;”! {{numero}}! Reconstruction! IPA! value!Proto-Sinaitic!Proto-CanaaniteWEB, Proto-Canaanite - List of symbols,mnamon.sns.it/index.php?page=Simboli&id=53&lang=en, 2024-02-05, mnamon.sns.it, en, ! Ugaritic! Phoenician! Imperial Aramaic! Hebrew! Arabic! Greek! Latin! Cyrillic! Runic
| 1
sem Ê¼alp>Ê¾alp}} ‘ox’ {{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}}{{sfn 1966|loc=fig. 1}} /Ê”/}}| 1 20x20px|Aleph) 15x15px)| ðŽ€ Phnx sem|Ê¾Älep}} 10x10px)ð¡€ ‘ÄlapÌ± Hebr sem|Ê¾Älef}} Arab aleph>ïº}} {{transl Ê¾alif}}| Î‘ alpha| A| Ð azÅ Ansuz rune>áš¨ *ansuz
| 2
sem beth (letter)>bayt}} ‘house’ {{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} /b/}}| 2 20x20px|Bet) 18x18px)| ðŽ Phnx sem|bÄ“t}} 12x12px)ð¡ bÄ“á¹¯ Hebr sem|bÄ“á¹¯}} Arab sem|bÄÊ¾}} Beta (letter)>Î’ bÄ“ta| B| Ð’ vÄ•dÄ•, Ð‘ buky| á›’ *berkanan
|3
sem|gaml}} ‘throwstick’ /É¡/}}| 3 20x20px|Gimel) 15x15px)| ðŽ‚ Phnx sem|gÄ«mel}} 15x15px)ð¡‚gÄmal Hebr sem|gÄ«mel}} Arab sem|jÄ«m}}| Î“ gamma| C, G| Ð“ glagoli| áš² *kaunan
| 4
sem dalet>dalt}} ‘door’, {{transl digg}} ‘fish’ /d/}}| 4 20x20px 20x20px|Dalet) 15x15px)| ðŽ„ Phnx sem|dÄlet}} 15x15px)ð¡ƒ dÄlaá¹¯ Hebr sem|dÄleá¹¯}} Arab sem Arab sem|á¸Äl}}| Î” delta| D| Ð” dobro|
| 5
sem he (letter)>haw}} “window” / {{transl hillul}} “hallel ” {{sfn>Colless p=96|loc=fig. 5}} /h/}}| 5 20x20px|Heh) 15x15px)| ðŽ… Phnx sem|hÄ“}} 15x15px)ð¡„ hÄ“ Hebr sem|hÄ“}} Arab sem|hÄÊ¾}}| Î• epsilon| E| Ð• ye, Ð„ estÄ|
| 6
sem wÄw}} ‘hook’ {{sfn>Colless p=96|loc=fig. 5}} /w/}}| 6 20x20px|Waw) 15x15px)| ðŽ† Phnx sem|wÄw}} 15x15px)ð¡… waw Hebr sem|vÄv}} Arab sem|wÄw}} Î¥ upsilon| F, U, V, W, Y| ÐžÑƒ / ê™Š ukÅ â†’ Ð£| áš¢ *Ã»ruz / *Ã»ran
| 7
sem zayin>ziqq}} ‘manacle’ {{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} /z/}}| 7 20x20px|Ziqq) (File:Proto-canaaniteZ01.svg|15x15px) ðŽ‡ {{Script ð¤†}} {{transl zayin}} 15x15px)ð¡† zayn {{script ×–}} {{transl zayin}} Arab sem|zayn or zÄy}} Î– zÄ“ta Z ê™€ / Ð— zemlya
|8
sem zayin>dayp}} “eyebrow” {{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} /Ã°/}}|â€“ 20x20px|Zayin) 15x15px)ð¡ƒ dalaá¹¯)WEB, Aramaic and Hebrew: A linguistic comparison,vocab.chat/blog/aramaic-and-hebrew.html#:~:text=One%20pattern%20in%20the%20differences,Aramaic%20and%20%C2%AB%20%D7%96%D6%B8%D7%94%D6%B8%D7%91%20%C2%BB%20in%20Hebrew, 2024-01-21, vocab.chat, Arab sem|á¸Äl}})
| 9
sem heth>á¸¥aá¹£ir}} ‘mansion’{{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} /Ä§/}}| 8 20x20px|á¸¤et) (File:Proto-canaaniteá¸¤01.svg|15x15px)| ðŽˆ {{Script ð¤‡}} {{transl á¸¥Ä“t}} (File:Heth.svg|15x15px)ð¡‡ á¸¥Ä“á¹¯ {{script ×—}} {{transl á¸¥Ä“á¹¯}} Arab sem Arab sem|á¸«ÄÊ¾}} Î— Ä“ta H Ð˜ iÅ¾e ášº *haglaz
|10
sem heth>á¸«ayt}} ‘thread’{{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} /x/}}|â€“ 20x20px|ð“Ž›)|ðŽƒ Arab sem|á¸«ÄÊ¾}})
| 11
sem teth>á¹ab}} ‘good’{{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} /tË¤/}}| 9 20x20px) {{efn name=changePho}} 15x15px))| ðŽ‰ Phnx sem|á¹Ä“t}}) 15x15px)ð¡ˆ á¹eá¹¯) Hebr sem|á¹Ä“á¹¯}}) Arab sem Arab sem|áº“ÄÊ¾}})| (Î˜ thÄ“ta)|| (Ñ² fita)|
| 12
sem Yodh>yad}} ‘hand’{{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} /j/}}| 10 20x20px 20x20px|Yad) 15x15px)| ðŽŠ Phnx sem|yÅd}} 15x15px)ð¡‰ yoá¸ Hebr sem|yÅá¸}} Arab sem|yÄÊ¾}}| Î™ iota| I, J| Ð† iÅ¾ei| á› *isaz
| 13
sem kaph>kap}} ‘palm’{{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} /k/}}| 20 20x20px|Khof) 15x15px)| ðŽ‹ Phnx sem|kap}} 15x15px)ð¡Š kÄpÌ± Hebr sem|kÄf}} Arab sem|kÄf}}| Îš kappa| K| Ðš kako|
| 14
sem Lamedh>lamd}} ‘goad’{{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} /l/}}| 30 20x20px|Lamed) 15x15px)| ðŽ Phnx sem|lÄmed}} 15x15px)ð¡‹ lÄmaá¸ Hebr sem|lÄmeá¸}} Arab sem|lÄm}}| Î› lambda| L| Ð› lyudiye| á›š *laguz / *laukaz
| 15
Mem>Maym ‘waters’{{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} /m/}}| 40 20x20px|Mem) 15x15px)| ðŽŽ Phnx sem|mÄ“m}} 15x15px)ð¡Œ mim Hebr sem|mÄ“m}} Arab sem|mÄ«m}}| Îœ mu| M| Ðœ myslite|
| 16
sem naá¸¥Å¡}} ‘snake’{{sfn>Colless p=96|loc=fig. 5}} /n/}}| 50 20x20px|Nun) 15x15px)| ðŽ Phnx sem|nun}} 15x15px)ð¡ nun Hebr sem|nun}} Arab sem|nÅ«n}}| Î nu| N| Ð naÅ¡Ä|
| 17
sem samek>samk}} ‘support’ /s/}}| 60|â€” 15x15px)|ðŽ’ Phnx sem|sÄmek}} 15x15px)ð¡Ž semkaá¹¯ Hebr sem|sÄmeá¸µ}}|| Îž ksi, (Î§ chi)| (X)| Ñ® ksi, (Ð¥ xÄ•rÅ)|
| 18
sem Ê»en>Ê¿ayn}} ‘eye’{{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} /Ê•/}}| 70 20x20px|Ayin) (File:Phoenician_ayin.svg ð¤)|ðŽ“ {{Script ð¤}} {{transl Ê¿ayin}} (File:Ayin.svg|15x15px)ð¡ Ê¿ayn {{script ×¢}} {{transl Ê¿ayin}} Arab sem|Ê¿ayn}} ÎŸ omikron O Ðž onÅ
|19
Ghayn>Ä¡inab ‘grape’{{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}}{{sfn 1966|loc=fig. 1}} /É£/}}|â€“ 20x20px|Ghayn)|ðŽ™ Arab sem|Ä¡ayn}})
| 20
sem Pe (Semitic letter)>pay}} ‘mouth’{{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} / {{transl piÊ¾t}} ‘corner’ /p/}}| 80 20x20px)(File:Proto-semiticP-01.svg|19x19px) 15x15px)| ðŽ” Phnx sem|pÄ“}} 15x15px)ð¡ pÄ“ Hebr sem|pÄ“}} Arab sem|fÄÊ¾}} Pi (letter)>Î pi| P| ÐŸ pokoi|
21 {{transl á¹£ad }}/Tsade>á¹£imaá¸¥ ‘plant’{{sfn 1966 sem tsade>á¹£irar}} ‘bag’{{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} {{IPA /É¬Ë¤/}}?,{{IPA|/Î¸Ë¤/}} 90 (File:Serabit-El-Khadim-á¹¢356.svg|16x16px) File:Proto-canaaniteá¹¢01.png -
ðŽ• {{Script ð¤‘}} á¹£ÄdÄ“ 15x15px)(File:Sade_2.svg|15x15px)ð¡‘ á¹£Äá¸Ä“ {{script ×¦ ×¥}} {{transl á¹£Äá¸i}} Arab sem|á¹£Äd}}, Ð¦ tsi, Ð§ ÄrvÄ
15x15px)ð¡ Ê¿ayn)WEB, Aramaic and Hebrew: A linguistic comparison,vocab.chat/blog/aramaic-and-hebrew.html#:~:text=One%20pattern%20in%20the%20differences,Aramaic%20and%20%C2%AB%20%D7%96%D6%B8%D7%94%D6%B8%D7%91%20%C2%BB%20in%20Hebrew, 2024-01-21, vocab.chat, Arab sem|á¸Äd}})
|ðŽ‘
15x15px)ð¡ˆ á¹eá¹¯)WEB, Aramaic and Hebrew: A linguistic comparison,vocab.chat/blog/aramaic-and-hebrew.html#:~:text=One%20pattern%20in%20the%20differences,Aramaic%20and%20%C2%AB%20%D7%96%D6%B8%D7%94%D6%B8%D7%91%20%C2%BB%20in%20Hebrew, 2024-01-21, vocab.chat, Arab sem|áº“ÄÊ¾}})
| 22
sem qoph>qup}} ‘monkey’ PANDEY >FIRST=ANSHUMAN TITLE=REVISITING THE ENCODING OF PROTO SINAITIC IN UNICODE WEBSITE=UNICODE.ORG, / {{transl qoph }} ‘cord’, ‘line’ {{sfn>Albright loc=fig. 1}} /kË¤/}} or {{IPA|/q/}}| 100 20x20px|Qoph) 15x15px)|ðŽ– Phnx sem|qÅp}} 15x15px)ð¡’ qopÌ± Hebr sem|qÅf}} Arab sem|qÄf}} Q| Ò€ koppa|
| 23
sem raÊ¼s>raÊ¾Å¡}} ‘head’ {{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} /r/}} or {{IPA|/É¾/}}| 200 20x20px|Resh) 15x15px)|ðŽ— Phnx sem|rÄ“Å¡}} 15x15px)ð¡“ rÄ“Å¡ Hebr sem|rÄ“Å¡}} Arab sem|rÄÊ¾}}| Î¡ rho| R| Ð rÄtsi| áš± *raidÃ´
|24
sem Shin (letter)>Å›amÅ¡}} ‘shamash ’ {{sfn>Colless p=96 Albright loc=fig. 1}} /Êƒ/}}|â€“ 20x20px){{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}}/(File:Proto-semiticÅ 01.svg Colless p=94|loc=fig. 2}} 15x15px)) ðŽŒ {{Script ð¤”}} {{transl Å¡in}} (File:Shin.svg|15x15px)ð¡” Å¡in Hebr sem|Å¡in}}) Arab sem|sÄ«n}}) Î£ sigma, Ï› stigma S Ð¡ slovo, Ð¨ Å¡a, Ð© Å¡ta, ê™‚ / Ð… dzÄ•lo á›Š *sowilÃ´
25 {{transl Shin (letter) }} ‘breast’ {{sfn>Colless p=96|loc=fig. 5}} {{IPA /É¬/}} 300 (File:Serabit-El-Khadim-á¹®348.svg|15x15px) 24x24px)?{{Efn | glyph for Å› has been found in the Canaanite Lachish Comb inscription, though no such glyph has been found in Proto-Sinaitic, and its origin hasn’t been discovered.>name=GlyphSl}} VAINSTUB >FIRST=DANIEL FIRST2=MADELEINE FIRST3=MICHAEL G. FIRST4=KATHERINE M. FIRST5=MIRIAM FIRST6=RIVKA FIRST7=YUVAL FIRST8=YOSEF URL=HTTPS://JJAR.HUJI.AC.IL/SITES/DEFAULT/FILES/JJAR/FILES/JJAR2_ART4_LACHISH_P76-119_2022-10-12_01.PDF WEBSITE=JERUSALEM JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY, Hebr|×©×‚}} Å›in) Arab sem|Å¡Ä«n}})
15x15px) (File:Taw.svg|15x15px)ð¡• tawWEB, Aramaic and Hebrew: A linguistic comparison,vocab.chat/blog/aramaic-and-hebrew.html#:~:text=One%20pattern%20in%20the%20differences,Aramaic%20and%20%C2%AB%20%D7%96%D6%B8%D7%94%D6%B8%D7%91%20%C2%BB%20in%20Hebrew, 2024-01-21, vocab.chat, Hebr sem|Å¡in}} Arab sem Arab sem|á¹¯ÄÊ¾}})
| 26
sem taw (letter)>taw}} ‘mark’ {{sfn 2010 loc=fig. 5}} /t/}}| 400 20x20px|Tof) 15x15px)| ðŽš Phnx sem|tÄw}} Hebr sem|tÄv}} Arab sem Arab sem|á¹¯ÄÊ¾}} | Î¤ tau| T| Ð¢ tvrdo| á› *tÃ®waz
These 26 consonants account for the phonology of Northwest Semitic. Of the 29 consonant phonemes commonly reconstructed for Proto-Semitic, the voiceless fricatives Å›, á¹£Ì, and á¹¯Ì£ are missing. The phonemes {{transl|sem|á¸, á¹¯, á¸«, Ä¡}} disappeared in Canaanite, merging with {{transl|sem|z, Å¡, á¸¥, Ê¿}} in Canaanite scripts, respectively. The six variant letters added in the Arabic alphabet include these (except for {{transl|sem|Å›}}, which survives as a separate phoneme in Ge’ez áˆ ):

{{transl|sem|á¸}} â†’ á¸Äl
{{transl|sem|á¹¯}} â†’ á¹¯ÄÊ¾
{{transl|sem|á¹±}} â†’ áº“ÄÊ¾
{{transl|sem|Ä¡}} â†’ Ä¡ayn
{{transl|sem|á¹£Ì}} â†’ á¸Äd
{{transl|sem|á¸«}} â†’ á¸«ÄÊ¾

Graphically independent alphabets
One modern national alphabet that has not been graphically traced back to the Canaanite alphabet is the Maldivian script, which is unique in that, although it is clearly modeled after Arabic and perhaps other existing alphabets, it derives its letter forms from numerals. Another is the Korean Hangul, which was created independently in 1443. The Osmanya alphabet was devised for Somali in the 1920s by Osman Yusuf Kenadid, and the forms of its consonants appear to be complete innovations.Among alphabets that are not used as national scripts today, a few are clearly independent in their letter forms. The bopomofo phonetic alphabet is graphically derived from Chinese characters. The Santali alphabet of eastern India appears to be based on traditional symbols such as “danger” and “meeting place”, as well as pictographs invented by its creator. (The names of the Santali letters are related to the sound they represent through the acrophonic principle, as in the original alphabet, but it is the final consonant or vowel of the name that the letter represents: le “swelling” represents e, while en ‘thresh grain’ represents n.)In early medieval Ireland, Ogham consisted of tally marks, and the monumental inscriptions of the Old Persian Empire were written in an essentially alphabetic cuneiform script whose letter forms seem to have been created for the occasion.
Alphabets in other media
Changes to a new writing medium sometimes caused a break in graphical form, or make the relationship difficult to trace. It is not immediately obvious that the cuneiform Ugaritic alphabet derives from a prototypical Semitic abjad, for example, although this appears to be the case. And while manual alphabets are a direct continuation of the local written alphabet (both the British two-handed and the French/American one-handed alphabets retain the forms of the Latin alphabet, as the Indian manual alphabet does Devanagari, and the Korean does Hangul), Braille, semaphore, maritime signal flags, and the Morse codes are essentially arbitrary geometric forms. The shapes of the English Braille and semaphore letters are not derived from the graphic forms of the letters themselves. Most modern forms of shorthand are also unrelated to the alphabet, generally transcribing sounds instead of letters.
See also

History of writing
History of the Arabic alphabet
History of the Latin script
History of the Hebrew alphabet
History of the Greek alphabet
Runes
List of creators of writing systems
List of languages by first written accounts

Notes
{{notelist}}
References
Citations
{{reflist|2}}
Works cited

BOOK, Albright, W. F.,archive.org/details/AlbrightTheProtoSinaiticInscriptionsAndTheirDecipherment1969, The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and Their Decipherment, Harvard University Press, 1966, 978-0-89130-221-6, William F. Albright,
JOURNAL, Colless, Brian Edric, 2010, Proto-alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi Arabah, Antiguo Oriente, 8, 75â€“96, 59462334,
BOOK, Coulmas, Florian, The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems, Blackwell, 1996, 0-631-21481-X, Oxford,
BOOK, The world’s writing systems, Oxford University Press, 1996, 978-0-195-07993-7, Daniels, Peter T., Peter T. Daniels, New York, Bright, William,
BOOK, Haarmann, Harald, Geschichte der Schrift, C. H. Beck, 2004, 3-406-47998-7, 2nd, Munich, de, History of Writing,
BOOK, 1990, Reading the past: ancient writing from cuneiform to the alphabet, 1998, British Museum Press, 978-0-714-18077-9, Hooker, J. T., London,
JOURNAL, McCarter, P. Kyle, 1974, The Early Diffusion of the Alphabet, The Biblical Archaeologist, 37, 3, 54â€“68 [62], 10.2307/3210965, 3210965, 126182369,
BOOK, Robinson, Andrew,www.worldcat.org/title/145735363, The story of writing, 2007, 1995, Thames & Hudson, 978-0-500-28660-9, 2nd, London, 145735363,

Further reading

JOURNAL, Colless, Brian E., 2014, The Origin of the Alphabet, Antiguo Oriente, 12, 71â€“104,
BOOK, A history of the alphabet, Unwin, 1977, 978-0-905-41812-4, Diringer, David, David Diringer, London,
BOOK, Fischer, Steven Roger, A history of writing, Reaktion Books, 2021, 978-1-789-14349-2, New, London, 2005,
BOOK, Hoffman, Joel M., In the beginning: a short history of the Hebrew language, New York University Press, 2004, 978-0-814-73654-8,
BOOK, Logan, Robert K., The alphabet effect: a media ecology understanding of the making of Western civilization, Hampton Press, 2004, 978-1-572-73522-4, Cresskill, NJ, 1986,
JOURNAL, Millard, A. R., 1986, The Infancy of the Alphabet, World Archaeology, 17, 3, 390â€“398, 10.1080/00438243.1986.9979978, 124703,
BOOK, Naveh, Joseph, Early history of the alphabet: an introduction to west Semitic epigraphy and palaeography, Magnes Press, 1997, 978-9-652-23436-0, Reprint, Jerusalem, 1982,
BOOK, Powell, Barry B., Homer and the origin of the Greek alphabet, Cambridge University Press, 1991, 978-0-521-37157-5,
JOURNAL, Ullman, B. L., 1927, The Origin and Development of the Alphabet, American Journal of Archaeology, 31, 3, 311â€“328, 0002-9114, 497822,

External links

The Greek alphabet on h2g2
The Development of the Western Alphabet on h2g2
“The Alphabet â€“ its creation and development” on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time featuring Eleanor Robson, Alan Millard, Rosalind Thomas

{{Writing systems}}{{Northwest Semitic abjad}}

- content above as imported from Wikipedia
- "history of the alphabet" does not exist on GetWiki (yet)
- time: 7:26am EDT - Wed, May 22 2024

[ this remote article is provided by Wikipedia ]

LATEST EDITS [ see all ]

GETWIKI 21 MAY 2024

The Illusion of Choice
Culture

GETWIKI 09 JUL 2019

Eastern Philosophy
History of Philosophy

GETWIKI 09 MAY 2016

GetMeta:About
GetWiki

GETWIKI 18 OCT 2015

M.R.M. Parrott
Biographies

GETWIKI 20 AUG 2014

GetMeta:News
GetWiki