The history of the alphabet begins in Ancient Egypt, more than a millennium into the history of writing. Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing', or simply syllabics, is a family of Abugidas {dubious}} used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian Nearly all the segmental scripts (loosely " Alphabets " but see below for more precise terminology used around the globe appear to have derived from the An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a Phoneme, a Spoken language, either Ancient Egypt was an Ancient Civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now The history of writing encompasses the various Writing systems that evolved in the Early Bronze Age (late 4th millennium BC) The first pure alphabet emerged around 2000 BCE to represent the language of Semitic workers in Egypt (see Middle Bronze Age alphabets), and was derived from the alphabetic principles of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. In Linguistics and Ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical " Shem " Hebrew שם translated as "name" Arabic: ساميّ The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar Undeciphered scripts dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE and believed to be ancestral Egyptian hieroglyphs (ˈhaɪərəʊɡlɪf from Greek grc-Grek ἱερογλύφος " sacred carving " also hieroglyphic = grc-Grek Most alphabets in the world today either descend directly from this development, for example the Greek and Latin alphabets, or were inspired by its design. The Greek alphabet (Ελληνικό αλφάβητο is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early ^[1]

Pre-alphabetic scripts

Two scripts are well attested from before the end of the fourth millennium BCE: Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Egyptian hieroglyphs (ˈhaɪərəʊɡlɪf from Greek grc-Grek ἱερογλύφος " sacred carving " also hieroglyphic = grc-Grek Both were well known in the part of the Middle East that produced the first widely used alphabet, the Phoenician. The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BC There are signs that cuneiform was developing alphabetic properties in some of the languages it was adapted for, as was seen again later in the Old Persian cuneiform script, but it now appears these developments were a sideline and not ancestral to the alphabet. Old Persian cuneiform is the primary script used in Old Persian writings The Byblos syllabary has suggestive graphic similarities to both hieratic Egyptian and to the Phoenician alphabet, but as it is undeciphered, little can be said about its role, if any, in the history of the alphabet. The Byblos syllabary, also known as the Pseudo-hieroglyphic script, Proto-Byblian, Proto-Byblic, or Byblic, is an undeciphered writing system Hieratic is a Cursive writing system used in pharaonic Egypt that developed alongside the hieroglyphic system to which it is intimately

Early history

The Beginnings in Egypt

By 2700 BCE the ancient Egyptians had developed a set of some 22 hieroglyphs to represent the individual consonants of their language, plus a 23^rd that seems to have represented word-initial or word-final vowels. Ancient Egypt was an Ancient Civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now Egyptian hieroglyphs (ˈhaɪərəʊɡlɪf from Greek grc-Grek ἱερογλύφος " sacred carving " also hieroglyphic = grc-Grek In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract These glyphs were used as pronunciation guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections, and, later, to transcribe loan words and foreign names. A logogram, or logograph, is a Grapheme which represents a word or a Morpheme (a meaningful unit of language However, although alphabetic in nature, the system was not used for purely alphabetic writing. That is, while capable of being used as an alphabet, it was in fact always used with a strong logographic component, presumably due to strong cultural attachment to the complex Egyptian script. The first purely alphabetic script is thought to have been developed around 2000 BCE for Semitic workers in central Egypt. In Linguistics and Ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical " Shem " Hebrew שם translated as "name" Arabic: ساميّ Over the next five centuries it spread north, and all subsequent alphabets around the world have either descended from it, or been inspired by one of its descendants, with the possible exception of the Meroitic alphabet, a 3rd century BCE adaptation of hieroglyphs in Nubia to the south of Egypt - though even here many scholars suspect the influence of that first alphabet. The Meroitic script is an Alphabetic script originally derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs used to write the Meroitic language of the Kingdom of Meroë / This article is about the region in Africa for other uses see Nubia (disambiguation.

The Semitic alphabet

Chart showing details of four alphabets' descent from Phoenician abjad, from left to right Latin, Greek, original Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic. The Greek alphabet (Ελληνικό αλφάβητο is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early The Hebrew alphabet (אָלֶף-בֵּית עִבְרִי alephbet ’ivri) consists of 22 letters used for writing the Hebrew language. The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa such as Arabic, Persian, and Urdu.

The Middle Bronze Age scripts of Egypt have yet to be deciphered. The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar Undeciphered scripts dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE and believed to be ancestral However, they appear to be at least partially, and perhaps completely, alphabetic. The oldest examples are found as graffiti from central Egypt and date to around 1800 BCE [1]/[2]. The Graffito (archaeology (plural Graffiti) has been created by humans since Homo sapiens have been traversing this planet ^[2] These inscriptions, according to Gordon J. Hamilton, are evidence that the place of the alphabet’s invention was likely in Egypt proper. ^[3]

This Semitic script did not restrict itself to the existing Egyptian consonantal signs, but incorporated a number of other Egyptian hieroglyphs, for a total of perhaps thirty. It is thought, with no direct evidence, that they used Semitic rather than Egyptian names for them. ^[4] So, for example, the hieroglyph per ("house" in Egyptian) became bayt ("house" in Semitic). Pr is the hieroglyph for 'house' the floor-plan of a walled building with an open doorway ^[5] It is unclear at this point whether these glyphs, when used to write the Semitic language, were purely alphabetic in nature, representing only the first consonant of their names according to the acrophonic principle, or whether they could also represent sequences of consonants or even words as their hieroglyphic ancestors had. Acrophony (Greek acro uppermost head + phonos sound is the naming of letters of an Alphabetic writing system so that a letter's name begins For example, the "house" glyph may have stood only for b (b as in beyt "house"), or it may have stood for both the consonant b and the sequence byt, as it had stood for both p and the sequence pr in Egyptian. However, by the time the script spread to Canaan, it was purely alphabetic, and the hieroglyph originally representing "house" stood only for b. Canaanites redirects here For the 1940s social and political movement in Israel, see Canaanites (movement. ^[6]

The first Canaanite state to make extensive use of the alphabet was Phoenicia, and so later stages of the Canaanite script are called Phoenician. Phoenicia ( Phoenician: Phoenician nunsvg|12px|נ]]Phoenician nun The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BC Phoenicia was a maritime state at the center of a vast trade network, and soon the Phoenician alphabet spread throughout the Mediterranean. Two variants of the Phoenician alphabet would have major impacts on the history of writing: the Aramaic alphabet and the Greek alphabet. The Aramaic alphabet is an Abjad, a Consonantal Alphabet, used for writing Aramaic. The Greek alphabet (Ελληνικό αλφάβητο is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early [3]

Descendants of the Aramaic abjad

See also: Genealogy of scripts derived from Proto-Sinaitic

The Phoenician and Aramaic alphabets, like their Egyptian prototype, represented only consonants, a system called an abjad. Nearly all the segmental scripts (loosely " Alphabets " but see below for more precise terminology used around the globe appear to have derived from the An Abjad is a type of Writing system in which each symbol stands for a Consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate Vowel. The Aramaic alphabet, which evolved from the Phoenician in the 7th century BCE as the official script of the Persian Empire, appears to be the ancestor of nearly all the modern alphabets of Asia:

• The modern Hebrew alphabet started out as a local variant of Imperial Aramaic. The Persian Empire was a series of Iranian empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland and beyond in Western Asia The Hebrew alphabet (אָלֶף-בֵּית עִבְרִי alephbet ’ivri) consists of 22 letters used for writing the Hebrew language. (The original Hebrew alphabet has been retained by the Samaritans. The Samaritan alphabet is a direct descendant of the paleo-Hebrew variety of the Phoenician alphabet. ) ^{[7] [8]}
• The Arabic alphabet descended from Aramaic via the Nabatean alphabet of what is now southern Jordan. The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa such as Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. The Nabataeans ( Arabic: الأنباط, Al-Anbāṭ) were an ancient Semitic people Arabs of southern Jordan, Canaan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (الأردنّ al-Urdunn) is an Arab country in Southwest Asia spanning the southern
• The Syriac alphabet used after the 3rd century CE evolved, through Pahlavi and Sogdian, into the alphabets of northern Asia, such as Orkhon (probably), Uyghur, Mongolian, and Manchu. The Syriac alphabet is a Writing system used to write the Syriac language from around the 2nd century BC. The Sogdian alphabet was originally used for the Sogdian language, which belongs to the Iranian family The Old Turkic script (also Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script; Turkish: Orhun Yazıtları, 鄂爾渾文字 The classic vertical Mongolian script (ɣɣul bičig, cyrillic: Монгол бичиг Mongol bichig) was the first of many writing systems created The Manchu alphabet was used for recording the now near-extinct Manchu language; a similar script is used today by the Xibe people who speak a language descended
• The Georgian alphabet is of uncertain provenance, but appears to be part of the Persian-Aramaic (or perhaps the Greek) family. The Georgian alphabet (ქართული დამწერლობა is the writing system currently used to write the Georgian language and other South Caucasian
• The Aramaic alphabet is also the most likely ancestor of the Brahmic alphabets of the Indian subcontinent, which spread to Tibet, Mongolia, Indochina, and the Malay archipelago along with the Hindu and Buddhist religions. The Brahmic family is a family of syllabaries (writing systems used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Central Asia and East Asia, This article deals with the geophysical region in Asia For geopolitical treatments see South Asia. Definitions of Tibet See also Definitions of Tibet Name In English The English word Tibet, like the word for Tibet in most European Mongolia (mɒŋˈɡoʊliə, literally Mongol country/nation,) is a Landlocked Country in East Indochina, or the Indochinese Peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. The Malay Archipelago is a name given to the Archipelago located between mainland Southeastern Asia ( Indochina) and Australia. Hinduism is a religious tradition that originated in the Indian subcontinent. Buddhism is a family of beliefs and practices (China and Japan, while absorbing Buddhism, were already literate and retained their logographic and syllabic scripts. China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Japan topics. Buddhism is a family of beliefs and practices A logogram, or logograph, is a Grapheme which represents a word or a Morpheme (a meaningful unit of language A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate Syllables which make up Words A symbol in a syllabary typically represents an optional )
• The Hangul alphabet was invented in Korea in the 15th century. Korea is a geographic area composed of two sovereign countries a civilization and a former state situated on the Korean Peninsula in East Asia. Tradition holds that it was an autonomous invention; however, Gari Ledyard suggests that portions of its consonantal system may be based on half a dozen letters derived from Tibetan via the imperial Phagspa alphabet of the Yuan dynasty of China; Tibetan is a Brahmic script. Gari Keith Ledyard (b 1932 Syracuse New York) is Sejong Professor of Korean History Emeritus at Columbia University. The Tibetan script is an Abugida of Indic origin used to write the Tibetan language as well as the Dzongkha language, Ladakhi language The ’Phagspa script (дөрвөлжин үсэг dörvöljin üseg "square script" Tibetan: hor gsar yig "new Mongolian script" The Yuan Dynasty ( Pinyin: Yuáncháo Dai Ön Ulus (Дай Юан Улс was a ruling Dynasty founded by the Mongol leader Kublai Uniquely among the world's alphabets, the rest of the consonants are derived from this core as a featural system. In Linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that may be analyzed in phonological theory ^[9]

Western ←		Phoenician	→ Brahmic			→ Korean
Latin	Greek		Gujarati	Devanagari	Tibetan
A	Α		અ	अ	ཨ
B	В		બ	ब	བ	ㅂ, ㅁ
C, G	Г		ગ	ग	ག	ㄱ, (ㆁ)
D	Δ		ધ (ઢ)	ध (ढ)	-
E	Ε		હ	ह	ཧ	(ㅱ)
F, V	Ϝ, Υ		વ	व	ཝ
Z	Ζ		દ (ડ)	द (ड)	ད (ཌ)	ㄷ, ㄴ
H	Η		ઘ	घ	-
-	Θ		થ (ઠ)	थ (ठ)	ཐ (ཋ)
I, J	Ι		ય	य	ཡ
K	Κ		ક	क	ཀ
L	Λ		લ	ल	ལ	ㄹ
M	Μ		મ	म	མ
N	Ν		ન	न	ན
-	Ξ		શ	श	ཤ
O	Ο		?
P	Π		પ, ફ	प, फ	པ, ཕ
-	Ϡ		સ	स	ས	ㅈ, ㅅ
Q	Ϙ		ખ	ख	ཁ
R	Ρ		ર	र	ར
S	Σ		ષ	ष	ཥ
T	Τ		ત (ટ)	त (ट)	ཏ (ཊ)

Table: The spread of the alphabet west (Greek, Latin) and east (Brahmic, Korean). Note that the exact correspondence between Phoenician (through Aramaic) to Brahmic is uncertain, especially for the sibilants and the letters in parentheses. A sibilant is a type of Fricative or Affricate Consonant, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the Vocal tract towards The transmission of the alphabet from Tibetan (through Phagspa) to Hangul is also controversial.

Greek alphabet

Transmission of the Alphabet to Greece

See also: History of the Greek alphabet

By at least the 8th century BCE the Greeks borrowed the Phoenician alphabet and adapted it to their own language. The History of the Greek alphabet starts with the adoption of Phoenician letter forms and continues to the present day ^[10] The letters of the Greek alphabet are the same as those of the Phoenician alphabet, and both alphabets are arranged in the same order. ^[11] 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. In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract The Greeks adapted those Phoenician letters for consonants they couldn't pronounce to write vowels. All of the names of the letters of the Phoenician alphabet started with consonants, and these consonants were what the letters represented, something called the acrophonic principle. Acrophony (Greek acro uppermost head + phonos sound is the naming of letters of an Alphabetic writing system so that a letter's name begins However, several Phoenician consonants were rather soft and unpronounceable by the Greeks, 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, in Greek these letters now stood for vowels. For example, the Greeks had no glottal stop or h, so the Phoenician letters ’alep and he became Greek alpha and e (later renamed e psilon), and stood for the vowels /a/ and /e/ rather than the consonants /ʔ/ and /h/. Alpha (uppercase Α, lowercase α; Αλφα is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. Epsilon (uppercase Ε, lowercase ε; Έψιλον is the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet, corresponding phonetically to a Close-mid front unrounded 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 o (which became omega), or in some cases simply ignored the deficiency, as in long a, i, u. A digraph, bigraph, or digram is a pair of characters used to write one Phoneme (distinct sound or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond OMEGA is the premier Counter-terrorism unit of Latvia. Founded in 1992 OMEGA cooperates with many other counter-terrorism units over the world ^[12]

Several varieties of the Greek alphabet developed. One, known as Western Greek or Chalcidian, was west of Athens and in southern Italy. The Cumae alphabet, was a western variant of the early Greek alphabet, used between the 8th to 5th centuries BC Athens (ˈæθənz Αθήνα Athina,) the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery as one of the world's Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest The other variation, known as Eastern Greek, was used in present-day Turkey, and the Athenians, and eventually the rest of the world that spoke Greek adopted this variation. The History of the Greek alphabet starts with the adoption of Phoenician letter forms and continues to the present day Turkey (Türkiye known officially as the Republic of Turkey ( is a Eurasian Country that stretches 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.

Descendants of the Greek Alphabet

Greek is in turn the source for all the modern scripts of Europe. The alphabet of the early western Greek dialects, where the letter eta remained an h, gave rise to the Old Italic and Roman alphabets. Eta (uppercase &Eta, lowercase η Ήτα) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet. Old Italic refers to several now extinct Alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European (predominantly Italic 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, Gothic (which used both Greek and Roman letters), and perhaps Georgian. The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavic Alphabet. The Cyrillic alphabet (səˈrɪlɪk also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters is actually a family of Alphabets, subsets of which are used by The Armenian alphabet is an Alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. This article is about the 4th century alphabet of the Gothic bible The Georgian alphabet (ქართული დამწერლობა is the writing system currently used to write the Georgian language and other South Caucasian ^{[13] [14]}

Although this description presents the evolution of scripts in a linear fashion, this is a simplification. For example, the Manchu alphabet, descended from the abjads of West Asia, was also influenced by Korean hangul, which was either independent (the traditional view) or derived from the abugidas of South Asia. Georgian apparently derives from the Aramaic family, but was strongly influenced in its conception by Greek. The Greek alphabet, itself ultimately a derivative of hieroglyphs through that first Semitic alphabet, later adopted an additional half dozen demotic hieroglyphs when it was used to write Coptic Egyptian. The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. Then there is Cree syllabics (an abugida), which appears to be a fusion of Devanagari and Pitman shorthand; the latter may be an independent invention, but likely has its ultimate origins in cursive Latin script. Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing', or simply syllabics, is a family of Abugidas {dubious}} used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian An abugida ( from Ge‘ez አቡጊዳ ’äbugida or Amharic አቡጊዳ ’abugida is a segmental Writing system which Pitman shorthand is a system of Shorthand for the English language developed by Englishman Sir Isaac Pitman ( 1813 – 1897) who first

Development of the Roman Alphabet

A tribe known as the Latins, who became known as the Romans, also lived in the Italian peninsula like the Western Greeks. Latin is the name of various peoples or ethnicities related to the Latium region in the Italian Peninsula, to the Latin language, or to its descendants 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 fifth century. Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to the culture and way of life of a people of ancient Italy Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest In adopted 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. The Etruscan Language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization in the ancient region of Etruria (modern Tuscany plus western F is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ef or eff (ɛf S is the nineteenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ess or occasionally es (ɛs generally es- To represent the G sound in Greek and the K sound in Etruscan, the Gamma was used. G is the seventh letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled gee or occasionally ge (dʒiː K is the eleventh letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled kay (keɪ Gamma (uppercase &Gamma, lowercase γ Γάμμα is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. These changes produced the modern alphabet without the letters G, J, U, W, Y, and Z, as well as some other differences. G is the seventh letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled gee or occasionally ge (dʒiː J is the tenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet; it was the last of the 26 letters to be added U is the twenty-first letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled u (juː W is the twenty-third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled double-u (ˈdʌbljuː The letter Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Z is the twenty-sixth and last letter of the modern Latin alphabet.

C, K, and Q in the Romans’ alphabet could all be used to write the k sound, and C could also be used to write the sound 'g. C is the third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cee or occasionally ce (siː K is the eleventh letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled kay (keɪ Q is the seventeenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cue (kjuː C is the third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cee or occasionally ce (siː ' The Romans invented the letter G and inserted it into the alphabet between F and H for an unknown reason. F is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ef or eff (ɛf 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. Alexander the Great ( or, Mégas Aléxandros; July 20 356 BC June 10 or June 11 323 BC also known as Alexander III of Macedon (el Ἀλέξανδρος Γ' 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 letter Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Z is the twenty-sixth and last letter of the modern Latin alphabet.

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. For their language see Anglo-Saxon language. Anglo-Saxon is the term usually used to describe the invading Tribes in the south Augustine of Canterbury OSB (born c first third of the 6th century - died 26 May 604 was a Benedictine Monk who became the first Archbishop 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 by V. W is the twenty-third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled double-u (ˈdʌbljuː V is the twenty-second letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled vee or occasionally ve (viː 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. U is the twenty-first letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled u (juː U is the twenty-first letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled u (juː V is the twenty-second letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled vee or occasionally ve (viː V is the twenty-second letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled vee or occasionally ve (viː 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. J is the tenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet; it was the last of the 26 letters to be added I is the ninth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its English name is i (aɪ I is the ninth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its English name is i (aɪ 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. J is the tenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet; it was the last of the 26 letters to be added I is the ninth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its English name is i (aɪ

Letter Names and Sequence of Some Alphabets

The order of the letters of the alphabet is attested from the fourteenth century BCE, in a place called Ugarit located on Syria’s northern coast. Ugarit ( Ugaritic: ʼugrt; Hebrew:; Arabic:) (modern Ras Shamra رأس شمرة ("top/head/cape of the wild Fennel Syria ( سوريّة or) officially the Syrian Arab Republic (Arabic ar الجمهورية العربية السورية ^[15] 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 which is nearly identical to the order used for Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and a second order very similar to that used for Ethiopian. The Hebrew alphabet (אָלֶף-בֵּית עִבְרִי alephbet ’ivri) consists of 22 letters used for writing the Hebrew language. The Greek alphabet (Ελληνικό αλφάβητο is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early Ge'ez (gez ግዕዝ) also called Ethiopic, is an Abugida script that was originally developed to write Ge'ez, a Semitic language ^[16]

It is not known how many letters the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet had, nor what their alphabetic order was. The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar Undeciphered scripts dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE and believed to be ancestral Among its descendants, the Ugaritic alphabet had 27 consonants, the South Arabian alphabets had 29, and the Phoenician alphabet was reduced to 22. The Ugaritic alphabet is a Cuneiform Abjad (alphabet without vowels used from around 1500 BCE for the Ugaritic language, an extinct The ancient South Arabian alphabet (also known as musnad المُسند branched from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet in about the 9th century BC. The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BC These scripts were arranged in two orders, an ABGDE order in Phoenician, and an HMĦLQ 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 many descendants of Phoenician, including Samaritan, Aramaic, Syriac, Hebrew, and Greek alphabet. The Samaritan alphabet is a direct descendant of the paleo-Hebrew variety of the Phoenician alphabet. The Aramaic alphabet is an Abjad, a Consonantal Alphabet, used for writing Aramaic. The Syriac alphabet is a Writing system used to write the Syriac language from around the 2nd century BC. The Hebrew alphabet (אָלֶף-בֵּית עִבְרִי alephbet ’ivri) consists of 22 letters used for writing the Hebrew language. The Greek alphabet (Ελληνικό αλφάβητο is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early However, they were abandoned in Arabic and Latin. The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa such as Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. 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 Armenian alphabet is an Alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. This article is about the 4th century alphabet of the Gothic bible The Cyrillic alphabet (səˈrɪlɪk also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters is actually a family of Alphabets, subsets of which are used by The Abjad numerals are a decimal Numeral system in which the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet are assigned numerical values

The table is a schematic of the Phoenician alphabet and its descendants.

nr.	Proto-Canaanite	IPA	value	Ugaritic	Phoenician	Hebrew	Arabic	other descendants
1	ʼalp "ox"	/ʔ/	1	𐎀 ʼalpa	ʼālep	א	ﺍ	Α A А ᚨ
2	bet "house"	/b/	2	𐎁 beta	bēt	ב	ﺏ	Β B В-Б ᛒ
3	gaml "throwstick"	/g/	3	𐎂 gamla	gīmel	ג	ﺝ	Γ C-G Г ᚲ
4	dalet "door" / digg "fish"	/d/	4	𐎄 delta	dālet	ד	ﺩ	Δ D Д
5	haw "window" / hll "jubilation"	/h/	5	𐎅 ho	hē	ה	هـ	Ε E Е-Є
6	wāw "hook"	/β/	6	𐎆 wo	wāw	ו	و	Ϝ-Υ F-V-Y У ᚢ
7	zen "weapon" / ziqq "manacle"	/z/	7	𐎇 zeta	zayin	ז	ز	Ζ Z З
8	ḥet "thread" / "fence"?	/ħ/ / /x/	8	𐎈 ḥota	ḥēt	ח	ح	Η H И ᚺ
9	ṭēt "wheel"	/tˁ/	9	𐎉 ṭet	ṭēt	ט	ط	Θ Ѳ
10	yad "arm"	/j/	10	𐎊 yod	yōd	י	ي	Ι I ᛁ
11	kap "hand"	/k/	20	𐎋 kap	kap	כ	ك	Κ K К
12	lamd "goad"	/l/	30	𐎍 lamda	lāmed	ל	ل	Λ L Л ᛚ
13	mem "water"	/m/	40	𐎎 mem	mēm	מ	م	Μ M М
14	naḥš "snake" / nun "fish"	/n/	50	𐎐 nun	nun	נ	ن	Ν N Н
15	samek "support" / "fish" ?	/s/	60	𐎒 samka	sāmek	ס	-	Ξ
16	ʻen "eye"	/ʕ/	70	𐎓 ʻain	ʻayin	ע	ع	Ο O О
17	pu "mouth" / piʼt "corner"	/p/	80	𐎔 pu	pē	פ	ف	Π P П
18	ṣad "plant"	/sˁ/	90	𐎕 ṣade	ṣādē	צ	ص	Ϡ
19	qup "cord"?	/kˁ/	100	𐎖 qopa	qōph	ק	ق	Ϙ Q Ҁ
20	raʼs "head"	/r/ / /ɾ/	200	𐎗 raša	rēš	ר	ر	Ρ R Р ᚱ
21	šin "tooth" / šimš "sun"	/ʃ/	300	𐎌 šin	šin	ש	س	Σ S Ш ᛊ
22	taw "mark"	/t/	400	𐎚 to	tāw	ת	ت	Τ T Т ᛏ

These 22 consonants account for the phonology of Northwest Semitic. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic is the reconstructed name of the first letter of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, continued in descended Semitic alphabets as Phoenician is the reconstructed name of the first letter of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, continued in descended Semitic alphabets as Phoenician Alpha (uppercase Α, lowercase α; Αλφα is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is a (eɪ plural A (А а is the first letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It arose directly from the Greek letter alpha. Bet, Beth, or Vet is the second letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Beta (uppercase Β, lowercase β, internal ϐ; Βήτα Vita is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. B is the second letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled bee or occasionally be (biː plural bees. Ve (В в is the third letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the sound /v/ *Berkanan is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the b Rune, meaning " Birch " Gimmel redirects here for the musical group see Gimmel (music group. Gamma (uppercase &Gamma, lowercase γ Γάμμα is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. C is the third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cee or occasionally ce (siː G is the seventh letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled gee or occasionally ge (dʒiː Ge or He (Г г italics Г, г) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing /g/ or /ɦ/ in different languages The k - Rune (Younger Futhark, Anglo-Saxon futhorc) is called Kaun in both the Norwegian and Icelandic Rune poems meaning " Dalet ( also spelled Daleth or Daled) is the fourth letter of many Semitic alphabets including Phoenician, Aramaic Delta (uppercase Δ, lowercase δ; Δέλτα Thelta is the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet. D is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled dee or occasionally de (diː De (Д д italics Д д) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. He is the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac ܗ and Arabic Hallel (הלל "Praise" is a Jewish prayer &mdasha verbatim recitation from Psalms 113-118 which is used for praise and thanksgiving that is recited Epsilon (uppercase Ε, lowercase ε; Έψιλον is the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet, corresponding phonetically to a Close-mid front unrounded E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled e (iː plural es or ees (also written E's E For the Ukrainian alphabet letter Ye (Є є see Ukrainian Ye. Ye (Є є is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, used in Ukrainian and Rusyn languages to represent the iotated vowel sound /je/ Waw ( also spelled vav or vau) (In Hebrew Vav) is the sixth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic Digamma (uppercase Ϝ, lowercase ϝ) is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet, used primarily as a Greek numeral. Upsilon (uppercase &Upsilon, lowercase υ Ύψιλον is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. F is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ef or eff (ɛf V is the twenty-second letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled vee or occasionally ve (viː The letter Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. U (У у is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the vowel /u/ after non-palatalized (hard consonants The reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the Elder Futhark u rune is *Ūruz meaning " wild ox " or *Ûram Zayin (also spelled Zain or Zayn) is the seventh letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician 𐤆 Aramaic, Hebrew See also Principality of Zeta Zeta (uppercase Ζ, lowercase ζ; Ζήτα Zita is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet. Z is the twenty-sixth and last letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Ze (З з is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant /z/ or H̱et (also spelled Khet, Kheth, Chet, Cheth, Het, or Heth) is the reconstructed name of the eighth letter Eta (uppercase &Eta, lowercase η Ήτα) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet. I or Y (И и italics И, и) is a letter of almost all ancient and modern Cyrillic alphabets representing typically /i/ (in Old Slavonic *Haglaz or *Hagalaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the h - Rune, meaning " Hail " (the precipitation (also Teth, Tet) is the ninth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Tet, Theta (uppercase Θ, lowercase θ or ϑ; Θήτα is the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, derived from the Phoenician letter Teth For the acronym see FITA Fita (Ѳ ѳ is a letter of the Early Cyrillic alphabet, descended from the Greek Theta. A yad ( יד) literally "hand" is a Jewish ritual pointer used to point to the text during the Torah reading from the Parchment Iota (uppercase &Iota, lowercase ι Ιώτα Yota is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. I is the ninth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its English name is i (aɪ *Isaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the i - Rune, meaning " Ice " Iota (uppercase &Iota, lowercase ι Ιώτα Yota is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. K is the eleventh letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled kay (keɪ Ka (К к is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. It is derived from the Greek letter kappa (Κ κ Lamed or Lamedh is the twelfth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Lamed and Arabic Lambda (uppercase Λ, lowercase λ; Λάμβδα or el Λάμδα Lamda is the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet. L is the twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is el or occasionally ell (ɛl El (Л л is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant /l/ unless it comes before a palatalizing vowel when it represents /lʲ/ except in Serbian *Laguz or *Laukaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the l - Rune, *laguz meaning " Water " or " Mem (also spelled Meem or Mim) is the thirteenth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew The Greek alphabet (Ελληνικό αλφάβητο is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early M is the thirteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled em (ɛm Kje (Ќ ќ is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, used in the Macedonian language. Nun is the fourteenth letter of many Semitic Abjads including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet ar ن (in Nu (uppercase Ν, lowercase ν; Νι Ni is the 13th letter of the Greek alphabet. N is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled en (ɛn En (Н н is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It represents the consonant /n/ unless followed by ь or any of the Palatalizing vowels when it represents /nʲ/ Samekh or Simketh is the fifteenth letter in many Semitic alphabets including Phoenician, Hebrew, and Aramaic, representing /s/ The Greek alphabet (Ελληνικό αλφάβητο is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early For the village in Azerbaijan see Əyin. or is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Omicron or Omikron (uppercase Ο, lowercase ο, literally "small o": Όμικρον o mikron, micron meaning 'small' in contrast O is the fifteenth letter of the modern Latin Alphabet. Its name in English is spelled o (oʊ plural usually o's or os; sometimes O (О о is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the vowel /o/ word-initially and after hard consonants Pe is the seventeenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Pei, Persian alphabet Pe pr IMPORTANT NOTICE Please note that Wikipedia is not a database to store the millions of digits of π please refrain from adding those to Wikipedia as it could cause technical problems P is the sixteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled pee or occasionally pe (piː Pe (П п (formerly referred to by the mnemonic name pokoy) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant /p/ unless followed Tsade (also spelled Ṣādē or Tzadi or Sadhe or Tzaddik) is the eighteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Sampi (Ϡ is an obsolete letter of the Greek alphabet and has a numeric value of 900 when used as a mathematical character. Qoph or Qop (In modern Hebrew Kuf, Arabic Qāf) is the nineteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic Qoppa or Koppa ( Ϙ) is a letter that was used in early forms of the Greek alphabet, derived from Phoenician Qoph. Q is the seventeenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cue (kjuː The letter koppa in the Early Cyrillic alphabet for the town in Nepal see Resh Nepal Resh is the twentieth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician Rho (uppercase Ρ, lowercase ρ or ϱ) is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. R is the eighteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ar (ɑr pronounced or) Er (Р р is the eighteenth letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It was developed from the Greek letter Rho. *Raidô "ride journey" is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the r - Rune of the Elder Futhark. Shin (also spelled Šin or Sheen) is the twenty-first letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew For the Canaanite sun godess see Shemesh Shamash was the common Akkadian name of the Sun-god and god of justice in Babylonia Sigma (upper case Σ, lower case σ; Greek Σιγμα lower case in word-final position ς) is the eighteenth letter of the Greek S is the nineteenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ess or occasionally es (ɛs generally es- Sha (Ш ш italics Ш ш) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant sound /ʃ/ or /ʂ/ *Laguz or *Laukaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the l - Rune, *laguz meaning " Water " or " Taw or Tav is the twenty-second and last letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Tav Tau (uppercase Τ, lowercase τ; Ταυ) is the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet. T is the twentieth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled tee or occasionally te (tiː Te (Т т italics Т, т) is the letter in the Cyrillic alphabet corresponding to T in the Latin alphabet The Northwest Semitic languages form a medium-level division of the Semitic language family. Of the reconstructed Proto-Semitic consonants, seven are missing: the interdental fricatives ḏ, ṯ, ṱ, the voiceless lateral fricatives ś, ṣ́, the voiced uvular fricative ġ, and the distinction between uvular and pharyngeal voiceless fricatives ḫ, ḥ, in Canaanite merged in ḥet. Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical Proto-language of the Semitic languages. or H̱et (also spelled Khet, Kheth, Chet, Cheth, Het, or Heth) is the reconstructed name of the eighth letter The six variant letters added in the Arabic alphabet account for these (except for ś, which survives as a separate phoneme in Ge'ez ሠ): ḏ > ḏāl; ṯ > ṯāʼ; ṱ > ḍād; ġ > ġayn; ṣ́ > ẓāʼ; ḫ > ḫāʼ (but note that this reconstruction of 29 Proto-Semitic consonants is heavily informed by Arabic; see Proto-Semitic for details). The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa such as Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. Ge'ez (gez ግዕዝ) also called Ethiopic, is an Abugida script that was originally developed to write Ge'ez, a Semitic language Śawt ሠ is a letter of the Ge'ez abugida, descended from Epigraphic South Arabian, but representing ś like ESA. (ar ﺫ is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being,,,,) (ar ﺽ is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being,,,,) Ghain, ghayn, or (ar ﻍ is one of the six letters in the Arabic alphabet not in the twenty-two akin to the Phoenician alphabet (the others Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical Proto-language of the Semitic languages.

Graphically independent alphabets

The only 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. See also Dhivehi writing systems Thaana, Taana or Tāna (written in Tāna script is the modern writing system of the Arabic (ar الْعَرَبيّة (informally ar عَرَبيْ) in terms of the number of speakers is the largest living member of the Semitic language The Osmanya alphabet devised for Somali in the 1920s was co-official in Somalia with the Latin alphabet until 1972, and the forms of its consonants appear to be complete innovations. The Osmanya script (Somali cismaanya; Osmanya ҋҘ҈ґқҒҕҀ also known as far soomaali or Somali writing is a writing script created to write the Somali ( Af Soomaali, الصوماليه is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by ethnic Somalis The 1920s is sometimes referred to as the " Jazz Age " or the " Roaring Twenties " when speaking about the United States and Canada

Among alphabets that are not used as national scripts today, a few are clearly independent in their letter forms. The Zhuyin phonetic alphabet derives from Chinese characters. A Chinese character, also known as a Han character ( is a Logogram used in writing Chinese (hanzi Japanese ( 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 Ol Chiki script also known as Ol Cemetʼ ("language of writing" Ol Ciki, Ol (and sometimes as the Santali alphabet) was (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 the ancient world, 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. Ogham (ogam ˈɔɣam Modern Irish or, English) is an Early Medieval Alphabet used primarily to represent the Old Irish language (and The Old Persian language is one of the two attested Old Iranian languages (besides Avestan)

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. The Ugaritic alphabet is a Cuneiform Abjad (alphabet without vowels used from around 1500 BCE for the Ugaritic language, an extinct 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. Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letters of a Writing system, and sometimes Numeral systems using only the hands Several Manual alphabets in use around the world employ two hands for some or all of the letters French Sign Language (langue des signes française or LSF) is the Sign language of the Deaf in the nation of France. The American Manual Alphabet is a Manual alphabet that augments the vocabulary of American Sign Language when spelling individual letters of a word is the preferred Indian Sign Language (ISL or Indo-Pakistani Sign Language (IPSL is possibly the predominant Sign language variety in South Asia, used by at least The Korean manual alphabet is used by the Deaf in South Korea who speak Korean Sign Language. The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write Morse code is a Character encoding for transmitting telegraphic information using standardized sequences of short and long elements to represent the letters numerals The shapes of the English Braille and semaphore letters, for example, are derived from the alphabetic order of the Latin alphabet, but not from the graphic forms of the letters themselves. Modern shorthand also appears to be graphically unrelated. If it derives from the Latin alphabet, the connection has been lost to history.

See also

• Genealogy of scripts derived from Proto-Sinaitic
• History of writing
• List of inventors of writing systems
• List of languages by first written accounts
• History of the Latin alphabet
• History of the Arabic alphabet

References

Further reading

• Peter T. Daniels, William Bright (eds. ), 1996. The World's Writing Systems, ISBN 0-19-507993-0.
• David Diringer, History of the Alphabet, 1977, ISBN 0-905418-12-3. David Diringer, (1900-1975 was a British linguist, Palaeographer and Writer.
• Stephen R. Fischer, A History of Writing 2005 Reaktion Books CN 136481
• Joel M. Hoffman, In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language, 2004, ISBN 0-8147-3654-8.
• Robert K. Logan, The Alphabet Effect: The Impact of the Phonetic Alphabet on the Development of Western Civilization, New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. , 1986.
• Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet: an Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography (Magnes Press - Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1982)
• B. L. Ullman, "The Origin and Development of the Alphabet," American Journal of Archaeology 31, No. 3 (Jul. , 1927): 311-328.

External links

• Animated examples of how the English alphabet evolved
• BBC site for the Greek alphabet
• Site by a scholar about the Greek alphabet
• Article republished from an Athenian newspaper
• Information about the Georgian Script
• An alphabetic 'family tree'.
• "The Alphabet – its creation and development" on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time featuring Eleanor Robson, Alan Millard, Rosalind Thomas