The Evolution
of the Alphabet
Sometime before 1400 BC a new syllabic writing originated which was destined to have world-shaking influence upon the subsequent evolution of writing. This writing was created by the Phoenicians possibly out of a need to more efficiently communicate with their colonies and neighbours so as to facilitate trading. These ancient Lebanese acquired the basis for their system from Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Phoenicians picked some of these signs, modified them, gave them Semitic names, added others and evolved what we know as the Alphabet.
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Phoenician: |
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After 1000 BC the Phoenician writing spread in all directions. The Phoenicians carried it with them on their seafaring activities along the Mediterranean coast and into Asia. A form of the Phoenician system was used in Palestine by the old Hebrews and their neighbours. Another branch developed among the South Arabs, who lived in an area which corresponds roughly to modern Yemen. From the South Arabs this writing spread to Ethiopia, where it is still in use today. One of the most important branches of the Phoenician writing is Aramaic. A form of this writing was adopted by the Hebrews. It replaced their older system, which was derived directly from the Phoenician. This new Hebrew writing is still used among the Jews of today. It is called "the square writing," after the square shape of its characters. The North Arabs took over a form of the Aramaic system.
The most important writing derived from the Phoenician is Greek, the forerunner of all the Western alphabets. During 9th century BC the Greeks started to use Phoenician writing, they used Phoenician shapes and names of signs, the order of the signs in the alphabet, and the direction of the writing. They made some changes and over time this evolved into the Latin alphabet:
The older Greek writing resembles the Phoenician very closely. Anyone who has had practice with the Phoenician writing would have no difficulties in reading correctly the individual signs of the Greek system. The later Greek forms changed considerably. They resemble more the forms of Latin, and consequently English, writing. The names of the Greek signs were taken over, with very slight changes only, from the Phoenician. For example, the Greek names alpha, beta, gamma, and delta correspond to the Phoenician 'aleph, beth, gimel, and daleth. The orders of the signs in the Phoenician and Greek systems were originally identical. The Phoenician signs waw, sade, and qoph were used by the Greeks under the names digamma, san, and koppa in the earlier periods but were later dropped. The three signs are still used for the numbers 6, 900, and 90 in the scheme of writing numbers by means of the letters of the alphabet. Two changed their original values, namely the Phoenician 'tsubdot' and 's', which became 'th' and 'x'; and five new signs, called upsilon, phi, chi, psi, and omega, were added.
Phoenician, like other West Semitic writings, consisted of syllabic
signs beginning with a consonant and ending in any vowel. In this system
the name Dawid (David) could have been written by means of three signs,
d-w-d. Because the vowels in these signs were not indicated, this writing
could stand also for di-wi-di, du-wi-di, da-wa-du, and so on. In most cases
people who were familiar with the common words and names of their language
had no difficulties in reading such a writing:
Y cn fnd prf fr ths sttmnt n ths sntnc. In cases where two readings
were possible, however, for example, in Dawid or Dawud, new ways had to
be found in order to insure the correct reading. They were found in the
use of some weak consonants, such as y and w. In the writing of da-wi-yi-d(i)
for Dawid the sign yi did not stand for an independent syllable; its sole
function was to make sure that the preceding syllabic sign, wi, would be
read as wi and not as wa, we, wo, or wu.
While the Phoenicians only occasionally employed such full spellings, the Greeks used them systematically after each syllabic sign. They used for this purpose six signs with weak consonants which they inherited from the Phoenicians. Since most of these sounds were used only in the Phoenician, the Greeks had no use for them as consonants. They turned them into the vowels a, e, u, e, i, and o.
Once the six signs developed their values as vowels in Greek, the natural step was to reduce the remaining syllabic signs to consonants. If, in the writing of da-'a-wi-yi-d(i), the second sign, 'a, is taken as a vowel a to help in the correct reading of the first sign as da (not de, di, do, or du), and if the sign yi is taken as i to indicate wi, then the value of the signs da and wi must be reduced from syllables da and wi to consonants d and w. Once this was done the Greeks developed for the first time a full alphabet, composed of both vowels and consonants.
From the Greeks the alphabet passed on to the Etruscans of Italy; to the Copts of Egypt (where it replaced their old Egyptian hieroglyphic writing); and to the Slavonic peoples of Eastern Europe. The Latin writing of the Romans was derived from that of the Etruscans.
Like the earlier Greek, the Latin writing consisted of 24 signs; but the similarity in number was coincidental, for Latin underwent a different set of changes and replacements. The Greek digamma sign of w became f in Latin, and the Greek eta became h. The Greek sign gamma for g was used in older Latin for both c and g. Later the g sign was differentiated from c by the addition of a small horizontal bar (recognizable in the English capital letter G).