There are many different theories on how the English alphabet came to be the way it is now in 2016. Throughout hundreds of years the English alphabet has evolved in thousands of new ways. The alphabet started out as very simple and less complex system than it has came to be. The alphabet we have come to know now with the basic letters A-Z have not always been around. A lot of people might wonder why or how the alphabet came to be but it is quite simple, over time the way the language and letters are written have evolved. A lot of people do not appreciate the unique qualities about the English alphabet. The Greek alphabet has roots into the alphabet we have came to know. The original alphabet did not originate in Greece because a lot …show more content…
The Cuniform writing system had around three to four hundred signs. Egyptian hieroglyphics is a completely different type of writing that had around six hundred basic signs in their writing system that they used daily. ( Wilker and Mulroy . ) The Greeks went back and borrowed the Phoenician signs as consonants in their writing system and alphabet. With the remaining signs from the alphabet, the Greeks used them to represent the pure vowel sounds. There types of writing and alphabet in these countries had a great impact on the way the English alphabet has came to be. …show more content…
This is believed to be the root of the beginning of the formation of the alphabet. By early times the ancient Egyptian writing system has 22 sets of hieroglyphics that represented syllables. This type of alphabet was never actually used to encode Egyptian speech though. The first form of a true alphabet in Egypt began in the Bronze Age. It was called Proto-Sinitic and was originally thought to be developed in central Egypt. The Proto-Sinitic script branched off to created hundreds of alphabet systems in surrounding areas. This includes the Phoenician, Arabic, South Arabian, Greek, Hebrew and Syriac alphabet system. All of those languages have some route back to the old Egyptian script. The Cumae form of the Greek alphabet was carried over from Greek continents to the European areas of the world. It was brought to the Italian Peninsula. This caused many new italic languages to form in these places. One of these main alphabets that were formed was the Latin Alphabet which was spread across Europe as the Romans expanded their empire. Even after the fall of the Roman Empire this language stayed strong through intellectual & religious works. This language became used as the descendant languages of Latin. In our English alphabet that we use now there are things called capital and lowercase letters. They have actually not been around that
For example, In English, the word 'be' would be written as one letter word in Ge'ez but they still make the same
Introduction The introduction of the printing press changed society permanently. Along with this invention came the emergence of mass production of texts. Suddenly, information could be efficiently replicated, thus facilitating the dissemination process. Widespread alphabetic literacy, as Havelock states, could finally become a reality.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were carved in stone, and later hieratic script was written on papyrus. However, Olmec glyphs was discovered on cylinders. Hence, Egyptians and Olmec had different types of writing, and different places to write.
civilization. They started the Olympic games. Greeks come up with the idea of an alphabet
1. Budge, Sir E.A. Wallis. Egyptian Language- Easy Lessons in Egyptian Hieroglyphs. New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1991.
It was no longer enough for the 26 letters of the alphabet to function only as phonetic symbols. The industrial age transformed these signs into abstract visual forms projecting a variety of shapes to be consumed by the public eye.
The first symbol pictures "gal," or "great," and the second pictures "lu," or "man." Eventually, this pictorial writing developed into a more abstract series of wedges and hooks. These wedges and hooks are the original cuneiform and represented in Sumerian entire words (this is called ideographic and the word symbols are called ideograms, which means "concept writing"); the Semites who adopted this writing, however, spoke an entirely different language, in fact, a language as different from Sumerian as English is different from Japanese. In order to adapt this foreign writing to a Semitic language, the Akkadians converted it in part to a syllabic writing system; individual signs represent entire syllables. However, in addition to syllable symbols, some cuneiform symbols are ideograms ("picture words") representing an entire word; these ideograms might also, in other contexts, be simply syllables. For instance, in Assyrian, the cuneiform for the syllable "ki" is written.
We chose to do the history of alphabets, focusing on a specific three- those being the Egyptian alphabet, the Ancient Latin alphabet, and the Cyrillic alphabet. We chose to do it as there are plenty of alphabets currently in use in the world that are all extremely different. There have been a total of 59 total alphabets in the world, with 18 currently in use, 9 used to a limited extent and 29 currently unused. We thought it would be very interesting to know of their origins, how they r...
In 400 A.D. the Armenian alphabet it consisted of 36 letters but added 2 more after 800 years ago. When Dr. Jendian was pronouncing the Armenian letters, it sounded similar to the U.S., english pronunciation. This sort of alphabetical was potentially used to transliterate any language spoken on earth because it has bunch of letters, it can capture the sounds from all of the different languages that exist. Armenians has been on the crossroads since civilization, Armenian has been in the wrong place at the wrong time nearly throughout history. Armenia were in the crossroad from north to south and east to west where foreign countries were passing through the Silk Road, Black sea, Medit sea and the Caspian Sea therefore, they have been subjugated
Word order also changes, though this process is much slower. Old English word order was much more 'free' than that of Modern English.
What was the Greek alphabet? The ancient Greek language was invented by Socrates and Plato. (The Independent., 2013.) Scientist first discovered this ancient language by finding a tablet they call the Linear B Tablet. Linear B is a writing used in Greece in the 13th century. Scientist found a tablet with Linear B writing that was from the Bronze Age. That means this tablet was from somewhere around 1200 B.C. ("Greek Alphabet.", 2013.) The Greeks traded with a group called the Phoenicians. When they traded, the Phoenicians wrote down what they received to keep track. The Greeks saw this writing useful and decided to start writing. They used the Phoenicians alphabet but changed it in some ways. ("The Greek Alphabet - Ancient Greece for Kids." , 2013.) When the Greek language was spoken they called it Koine. There were many other forms of spoken Greek but Koine was the most common. ("Greek Alphabet." , 2013.) The first two words in the Greek alphabet are Alpha and Beta. Look familiar? It should. If you put Alpha and Beta together, they form the word alphabet. So, the Greeks came up with the word “alphabet”. The Greek language is over 2500 years old bu...
The runic alphabet is an ancient Germanic alphabet that was used throughout Northern Europe, Scandinavia, the British Isles, and Iceland from the first century C.E. well into the Middle Ages. This alphabet, used by the Anglo-Saxons and shared with other Germanic peoples, was brought to England at the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasions . While runes enjoyed widespread usage among the peoples of the area, there is no concrete agreement as to the origin of this writing system. Runes fell into disuse as the Roman alphabets became the preferred script of most of Europe, but their forms and meanings were preserved in inscriptions and manuscripts. The alphabet is referred to as the (Old English) futhorc or (Germanic) futhark, after the first six letters . Runic letters consisted mostly of intersecting straight lines and were designed to be engraved on stone, wood, metal or bone. Their essential purpose was to serve as a simple means of communication or a practical method of correspondence.
A number of letters were designed to be more consistent and more harmonious
Have you ever wondered where the names of the different items you use daily came from? Or listened to people talk and find a particular word interesting or odd and wonder why it has become part of our English language? The English language that we speak today has developed as a result of many different influences and changes over thousands of years. The resulting changes to the English language can be split into three time periods that include, Old English or Anglo-Saxon, Middle English and Modern English which is commonly used today
To understand how English became the lingua franca for the world one must begin by understanding the colonization influence of the British Empire, beginning with the Americas in the early 1600’s. Once the language itself had been somewhat established in Great Britain, although not necessarily agreed upon, the next obvious step was to take the language and the culture to new parts of the world and colonize. The British Empire set out to the Americas in two vastly different manners, yet both had major influences on the language of what soon would become America.