![Thumbnail of Who Really Invented the Alphabet?](https://www.asor.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Untitled-2.png)
updated 1y ago
updated 1y ago
The first alphabets in history were the family of scripts known as West Semitic that began to appear in the age of the biblical patriarchs in the region known as Canaan.19
These civilizations also invented forms of writing that became the precursors of modern scripts. The oldest writing systems in Mesopotamia date from the use of pictographs around 3500 BCE and then the great breakthrough to cuneiform around 2500 BCE. Hieroglyphics in the Nile River valley date from around 3100 BCE, possibly influenced by Sumerian wr
... See moreIn addition to creating a thick network of Mediterranean commerce, the Phoenicians created a twenty-two-letter consonantal writing system for their Semitic language that in turn was adapted by the Greeks in the eighth century BCE and later by the Romans. The Phoenician alphabet itself is assumed to have derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. The easter
... See moreThe Greeks, borrowing from the Phoenicians, altered the alphabet to suit their language, and made the important innovation of adding vowels instead of having only consonants. There can be no doubt that the acquisition of this convenient method of writing greatly hastened the rise of Greek civilization.
The five letters a–e–i–o–u in the Roman alphabet represent an enormous variety of vowel sounds in different languages. English, for example, uses them to express twelve distinct vowel sounds: those heard in beet, bit, bait, bet, bat, bot, bought, boat, book, boot, and but, plus the unstressed first syllable of baton.
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The Phoenician consonantal alphabet, probably conceived to meet the need for efficiency and flexibility among a people of merchants, simplifies writing drastically.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff added
The five letters a–e–i–o–u in the Roman alphabet represent an enormous variety of vowel sounds in different languages. English, for example, uses them to express twelve distinct vowel sounds: those heard in beet, bit, bait, bet, bat, bot, bought, boat, book, boot, and but, plus the unstressed first syllable of baton.
baja added