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# Alphabet

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An alphabet is a small set of letters--basic written symbols--each of which represents (roughly) a phoneme of a spoken language. This is distinguished from other writing systems such as ideograms, in which symbols represent complete ideas, and syllabaries, in which each symbol represents a syllable. Languages often evolve independently of their writing systems, and writing systems have been borrowed for languages they were not designed for, so the degree to which letters of an alphabet correspond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from one language to another and even within a single language. Languages like Finnish and Spanish, for example, have a very regular spelling system with close to a one-to-one correspondence between letters and phonemes. At the other extreme are languages like English and French, where the spelling of many words simply has to be memorized as they do not correspond to sounds in a rational way (though they may have at some earlier time in the language's evolution).

The first alphabet was probably developed by the Canaanites? around 1700-1500 BC (see early Semitic alphabet), and all subsequent alphabets are derived from it or inspired by it, directly or indirectly. Of special note among its descendants is the Greek alphabet, which was the first to have separate symbols for vowels (Semitic didn't need them). Most subsequent alphabets with vowels are derived from the early Greek alphabets. The most popular alphabet in use today is a modern 26-letter version of the Roman alphabet, used by the English language and most European languages. In modern linguistic usage, the term latin alphabet is usually used to refer to the modern derivations from the alphabet used by the Romans (i.e. the Roman alphabet).

>   A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M,
>   N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z

An alphabet also serves to establish an order among letters that can be used for sorting entries in lists, called collating?. Languages that use the roman alphabet have varying collating rules: In German and English, umlaut characters (Ä, Ö, Ü) are treated just like their non-umlauted versions, which makes the alphabetic order ARG, ÄRGERLICH, ARM. In Swedish, W is a foreign letter which is treated just like V, but the alphabet has three extra letters at its end (..., X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö), giving the order URBAN, WALTER, VILGOT, ÅKE, ÄRLIG, ÖSTEN. This order is different in Danish and Norwegian (..., X, Y, Z, AE, Å, OE). Some languages have more complex rules: for example, Spanish treats "ch" as a single letter, giving an ordering of CINCO, CREDO, CHISPA. In Icelandic, Þ þ is added, and d is followed by Ð ð. Both letters were also used by Anglo-Saxon scribes who also used the Runic letter Wynn to represent /w/. Þ (thorn) is also a Runic letter, some scholars derive it from Latin D. Ð is the letter D with an added stroke.

Other alphabets: Runic - Tifinagh - Old Turkic alphabet - Iberian alphabet - Ogham - Meroitic - Gothic alphabet - Glagolitic alphabet - Cyrillic alphabet - Deseret alphabet -

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Last edited July 25, 2001 11:51 am (diff)
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