Alphabet
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The basic Latin alphabet, the most widely used alphabet in the world.
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| Features | |
|---|---|
| Type | Segmental writing system |
| Languages | Used globally for hundreds of languages |
| Time period | c. 2000 BCE to present |
| Direction | Varies (primarily Left-to-right or Right-to-left) |
| Lineage | |
| * Egyptian hieroglyphs | |
| Derived systems | |
| Greek alphabet, Latin alphabet, Cyrillic script, Arabic script, Hebrew alphabet, Aramaic alphabet | |
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written symbols or graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. It is a type of segmental writing system in which each symbol roughly stands for a specific consonant or vowel, distinguishing it from other types of writing systems such as syllabaries (where each symbol represents a syllable) and logographies (where each symbol represents a word, morpheme, or semantic unit).
The most widely used alphabet in the world today is the Latin alphabet, which evolved from the Greek alphabet, the first writing system to assign independent letters to both vowels and consonants.
Etymology
The English word alphabet came into Middle English from the Late Latin word alphabetum, which in turn was derived from the Ancient Greek alphabetos (ἀλφάβητος). The Greek word was created from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha (α) and beta (β). The names for these Greek letters themselves were derived from the earlier Phoenician letters aleph (meaning "ox") and beth (meaning "house").
History
Ancient Egypt and the Sinai
The history of the alphabet begins in ancient Egypt. By the 27th century BCE, Egyptian writing had a set of some 24 hieroglyphs to represent syllables that begin with a single consonant of their language, plus a vowel (or no vowel) to be supplied by the native speaker.
The first fully phonemic script, the Proto-Sinaitic script, was developed around 2000 BCE by Semitic-speaking workers in the Sinai Peninsula. This script adapted Egyptian hieroglyphs to represent the sounds of their own language based on the acrophonic principle. For example, the hieroglyph for "house" (beth in Semitic) was used to write the consonant /b/.
Phoenician and Greek alphabets
The Proto-Sinaitic script eventually evolved into the Phoenician alphabet by the 11th century BCE. The Phoenician script was an abjad, meaning it contained letters for consonants only, leaving the vowels implicit. Due to the maritime trading culture of the Phoenicians, their writing system spread across the Mediterranean.
In the 8th century BCE, the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet to their own language. Because the Greek language placed a high structural importance on vowels, the Greeks repurposed several Phoenician letters representing guttural consonants not present in Greek to serve as independent vowel letters (such as alpha, epsilon, iota, omicron, and upsilon). This innovation created the first "true alphabet" in which both vowels and consonants had equal status.
Latin and Cyrillic descendants
The Etruscans adapted the Greek alphabet for their own language, and the Romans subsequently adapted the Etruscan alphabet to write Latin. As the Roman Empire expanded, the Latin alphabet spread throughout Europe and later, via colonization, across the globe.
In Eastern Europe, the Greek alphabet served as the basis for the Glagolitic and eventually the Cyrillic script, which is used today to write Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and other Slavic languages.
Types of alphabetic systems
While the term alphabet is often used loosely to refer to any phonetic writing system, linguists such as Peter T. Daniels strictly classify segmental writing systems into three distinct categories:
- True alphabets: Scripts that have separate letters for both consonants and vowels (e.g., the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets).
- Abjads: Scripts in which letters primarily or exclusively represent consonants, leaving the vowels to be inferred by the reader based on context and grammar. Examples include the Arabic script and the Hebrew alphabet.
- Abugidas: Scripts in which consonant letters are the base characters, and vowels are indicated by modifying the base character with secondary diacritics or structural changes. Examples include the Devanagari script used for Hindi and the Geʽez script used in Ethiopia.
Collation and alphabetical order
Alphabets usually have a standard sequence in which their letters are ordered, known as alphabetical order. This ordering facilitates the process of collating and sorting information, such as in dictionaries, encyclopedias, and directories.
The order of the letters in the Latin alphabet (A, B, C, D, etc.) was largely inherited from the Phoenician alphabet, with modifications made over centuries to accommodate new letters like J, U, and W.