An alphabet is a set of letters. Each letter stands for a sound in a language. The first alphabet writing used pictures. Each picture stood for the first sound of the word for that thing. This is called acrophony. The earliest alphabet writing used an ox head picture. It stood for the letter aleph. Some alphabets write only consonants. We call them abjads. The reader fills in the vowels. Hebrew is an abjad. So is Arabic.
Some early alphabet writing was found at Egyptian turquoise mines. Most of it was in or near the mines. They were at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai. A group of Semitic-speaking people borrowed some Egyptian hieroglyphs. They used them to write the sounds of their own language. Ugarit was an important seaport city. It once had its own alphabet of 30 letters. The Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters. Its letters were simple forms of Egyptian hieroglyph pictures.
Next, follow the letters west. Phoenicians sailed and traded around the Mediterranean Sea. Their letters were simple. Ordinary traders could learn them. They spread it there. They taught it to the Greeks around the 8th century BC. The Greeks added letters for vowels. The Romans got their alphabet from the Etruscans. The Etruscans used a Greek alphabet. The Roman alphabet had 23 letters. J, U and W were added in medieval times.
The Korean alphabet is now called Hangul. It was made in 1443 under King Sejong. Its letters were made to look like speech organs, such as the lips. Sequoyah worked alone for about 12 years. He made a writing system for the Cherokee language. In his writing, each symbol stands for a syllable of spoken Cherokee. Sequoyah finished his writing system in 1821. The Cherokee writing ended up with about 85 characters. Within a few years, many Cherokee people could read and write. In 1828 the Cherokee Nation began printing a newspaper. It was in New Echota, its capital.
Words to know
- alphabet: set of letters
- acrophony: first-sound rule
- abjads: consonant alphabets
- hieroglyphs: picture writing
- Phoenician: sea trader
