Alphabet
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Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2007)
For other uses, see Alphabet (disambiguation).
A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia.
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Writing systems
History
Grapheme
List of writing systems
Types
Featural alphabet
Alphabet
Abjad
Abugida
Syllabary
Logography
Related topics
Pictogram
Ideogram
An alphabet is a standardized set of letters — basic written symbols or graphemes — each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic unit, and syllabaries, in which each character represents a syllable. Alphabets are classified according to how they indicate vowels:
* the same way as consonants, as in Greek (true alphabet)
* abbreviation of consonants, as in Hindi (abugida)
* not at all, as in Phoenician (abjad)
The word actually originates from the first two letters in the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph and Bet.[citation needed] However, some believe that word "alphabet' came into Middle English from the Late Latin word Alphabetum, which in turn originated in the Ancient Greek Αλφάβητος Alphabetos, from alpha and beta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet.[1] Alpha and beta in turn came from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet, and meant ox and house respectively. There are dozens of alphabets in use today. Most of them are composed of lines (linear writing); notable exceptions are Braille, fingerspelling, and Morse code.
"Alphabet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2007)
For other uses, see Alphabet (disambiguation).
A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia.
Writing systems
History
Grapheme
List of writing systems
Types
Featural alphabet
Alphabet
Abjad
Abugida
Syllabary
Logography
Related topics
Pictogram
Ideogram
An alphabet is a standardized set of letters — basic written symbols or graphemes — each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic unit, and syllabaries, in which each character represents a syllable. Alphabets are classified according to how they indicate vowels:
the same way as consonants, as in Greek (true alphabet)
abbreviation of consonants, as in Hindi (abugida)
not at all, as in Phoenician (abjad)
The word actually originates from the first two letters in the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph and Bet.[citation needed] However, some believe that word "alphabet' came into Middle English from the Late Latin word Alphabetum, which in turn originated in the Ancient Greek Αλφάβητος Alphabetos, from alpha and beta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet.[1] Alpha and beta in turn came from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet, and meant ox and house respectively. There are dozens of alphabets in use today. Most of them are composed of lines (linear writing); notable exceptions are Braille, fingerspelling, and Morse code."
- Alphabet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (view on Google Sidewiki)
