Writing was not always simple. Egyptian hieroglyphs were a hard script with hundreds of signs, and it took years to learn them. Some of the signs were logograms. A logogram stands for a whole word, not just a sound. An alphabet works in a different way. It is a set of letters, and each letter stands for a sound. In the early alphabet, each picture stood for the first sound of the word for that thing. This is called acrophony.
Most of the early alphabet inscriptions were found in or near the turquoise mines at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai. Flinders Petrie found some of them in 1904 and 1905. A group of Semitic-speaking people had borrowed some Egyptian hieroglyphs. They used them to write the sounds of their own language. Ugarit, a seaport city, had its own alphabet of 30 letters. It was written in cuneiform, with a simple stylus pressed into clay. Some alphabets, called abjads, write only consonants, so the reader fills in the vowels. Arabic and Hebrew are abjads.
The Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters. Its letters were simplified versions of Egyptian hieroglyph pictures. The alphabet was simple enough for ordinary traders to learn. The Phoenicians spread it around the Mediterranean Sea. The Greeks learned it from them around the 8th century BC. They added letters for vowels. The Greek word boustrophedon, for a way of writing, means ox turning, like an ox turning at the end of a row. The Romans got their alphabet from the Etruscans, who had used a Greek alphabet. The classical Roman alphabet had 23 letters. The letters J, U and W were added in medieval times.
Not every writing system is an alphabet. Chinese writing uses characters, and these mostly stand for words rather than single sounds. Some alphabets were made on purpose. The Korean alphabet, now called Hangul, was created in 1443 under King Sejong. It has 14 basic consonants and 10 vowels. Its letters were designed to look like the human speech organs, such as the lips. As of November 2026, the Khmer alphabet of Cambodia has 74 letters.
Sequoyah worked alone for about 12 years to make a writing system for the Cherokee language. He finished in 1821. In his writing, each symbol stands for a syllable of spoken Cherokee. It ended up with about 85 characters. Within a few years of its start, many Cherokee people could read and write. In 1828 the Cherokee Nation began printing a newspaper in New Echota, its capital. The Armenian alphabet was created in the early 400s AD. Sources say 404 or about 406.
The & sign was once treated as the 27th letter of the alphabet, right after Z. It came from joining the letters e and t of the Latin word et, which means and. Children who finished reciting the alphabet with & said and per se and. That phrase wore down into the word ampersand.
Words to know
- alphabet: set of letters
- logogram: word sign
- acrophony: first-sound rule
- cuneiform: wedge writing
- Hangul: Korean alphabet
