Finding the Beginning of the Alphabet

     Every time you write a word you are practicing the skill of writing. This skill is based on words that transfer thoughts from the writer to the reader, but the question is.....where did we get this alphabet that helps us communicate in the written word?

    Most European languages such as English, French, Spanish etc. all have the same or very similar letters. The reason for this is because they come directly from Latin. The Latins developed this form of the alphabet sometimes around the 5th century BC and spread it from Italy throughout the Mediterranean world as far England in the west to modern day Iraq in the east.  However, the alphabet itself is far older. When we go back as far as we can, we find the earliest form of the alphabet we use being practiced by a group of people called the Phoenicians.  These people were sea-faring merchants (related to the Canaanites of the Bible) who used the alphabet to keep records of their goods. As they expanded across the Mediterranean Sea they came into contact with the Greeks. Now the Greeks were interested in this language but they had a problem with it. There were no vowels. A Phoenician would just know where the vowels belong because he grew up speaking it, but it didn't work the same when the alphabet was used by another language. For example: "Whr d th vwls blng n ths sntnc?"  Makes for a head ache. Even if you can figure it out, it still causes issues like "should this be an 'a' or an 'e' here?"

     The Greeks then took this alphabet and added vowels to the 22 Phoenician letters and merged some of the others into a 24 letter system. Also as a consequence of the Greek tinkering the first two letters "Alpha" and "Beta" were used to name the "Alpha-bet(a)". [ If you were wondering, the Hebrew alphabet is actually called the "Alefbet" after its first two letters "Alef" and "Bet".]   From there a people from northern Italy called the Etruscans took the alphabet and changed it a little more and passed it on to the Romans who set the modern day alphabet into its primary form.

 This is the Greek alphabet, notice the similarities between it and English are there despite the odd looking letters.

     Keep in mind that Arabic does not follow this pattern. Arabic's roots come out of the Semitic languages, such as Hebrew, Phoenician and Canaanite etc. While our alphabet was making its way through the Greek and Latin languages, Arabic and Hebrew were on a completely different path.This shows us that alphabets that look as different as English and Arabic can in fact have the same basis.  Finally another path to consider is Russian. While the Russian alphabet also went from Phoenician into Greek it never made its way through Rome. Somewhere in the 900s A.D. the Christian church in Constantinople sent a missionary named Cyrus to Russia. There he found the people had no written language and he wanted to teach them the Bible in their own tongue. To accomplish this Cyrus formed a new alphabet based on Greek that was its own unique style. This was later dubbed the Cyrillic Alphabet and it explains why Russian looks so foreign to western eyes, but in reality it is pretty close to Greek.

 This is the Hebrew alphabet, which is very close to what the ancient Phoenician would have been like, although languages do tend to change over 4,000 years. Also, the reason the A is on the right is because Hebrew is read from right to left.

I hope you enjoyed our little tour of the alphabet, I have opened up the comments section where anyone can post now as long as you tell the drop down menu "Anonymous". Don't use that as an excuse to not leave your name however. Also feel free to leave questions or thoughts as well.

-Jason
Picture 1 Source      Picture 2 Source