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ALPHABET definition: 1. a set of letters arranged in a fixed order, used for writing a language: 2. a set of letters…. Learn more.
- Traditional
ALPHABET translate: 字母表. Learn more in the Cambridge...
- English (US)
ALPHABET meaning: 1. a set of letters arranged in a fixed...
- Znaczenie Alphabet, Definicja W Cambridge English Dictionary
alphabet definicja: 1. a set of letters arranged in a fixed...
- Alphabet: Thai Translation
ALPHABET translate: ตัวอักษร. Learn more in the Cambridge...
- Alphabet: Catalan Translation
alphabet translate: alfabet. Learn more in the Cambridge...
- Alphabet in Spanish
ALPHABET translate: abecedario, alfabeto [masculine]. Learn...
- Traditional
The meaning of ALPHABET is a set of letters or other characters with which one or more languages are written especially if arranged in a customary order. How to use alphabet in a sentence.
- Overview
- Theories of the origin of the alphabet
An alphabet is a set of graphs or characters used to represent the phonemic structure of a language. In most alphabets, the characters are arranged in a definite order or sequence (e.g., A, B, C, etc.).
Where does the word alphabet come from?
The word alphabet comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha and beta. It was first used, in its Latin form, alphabetum, by Tertullian during the 2nd–3rd century CE and by St. Jerome. The Classical Greeks customarily used the plural of to gramma (“the letter”); the later form alphabētos was probably adopted under Latin influence.
How many letters are there in the Hebrew alphabet?
The Hebrew alphabet consists of 22 letters. All are consonants, though four of them (alef, he, waw, and yod) are also employed to represent long vowels.
When was the Arabic alphabet developed?
The evolution of the alphabet involved two important achievements. The first was the step taken by a group of Semitic-speaking people, perhaps the Phoenicians, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean between 1700 and 1500 bce. This was the invention of a consonantal writing system known as North Semitic. The second was the invention, by the Greeks, of characters for representing vowels. This step occurred between 800 and 700 bce. While some scholars consider the Semitic writing system an unvocalized syllabary and the Greek system the true alphabet, both are treated here as forms of the alphabet.
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Languages & Alphabets
Over the centuries, various theories have been advanced to explain the origin of alphabetic writing, and, since Classical times, the problem has been a matter of serious study. The Greeks and Romans considered five different peoples as the possible inventors of the alphabet—the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Cretans, and Hebrews. Among modern theories are some that are not very different from those of ancient days. Every country situated in or more or less near the eastern Mediterranean has been singled out for the honour. Egyptian writing, cuneiform, Cretan, hieroglyphic Hittite, the Cypriot syllabary, and other scripts have all been called prototypes of the alphabet. The Egyptian theory actually subdivides into three separate theories, according to whether the Egyptian hieroglyphic, the hieratic, or the demotic script is regarded as the true parent of alphabetic writing. Similarly, the idea that cuneiform was the precursor of the alphabet may also be subdivided into those singling out Sumerian, Babylonian, or Assyrian cuneiform.
Among the various other theories concerning the alphabet are the hypotheses that the alphabet was taken by the Philistines from Crete to Palestine, that the various ancient scripts of the Mediterranean countries developed from prehistoric geometric symbols employed throughout the Mediterranean area from the earliest times, and that the proto-Sinaitic inscriptions (discovered since 1905 in the Sinai Peninsula) represent a stage of writing intermediate between the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the North Semitic alphabet. Another hypothesis, the Ugaritic theory, evolved after an epoch-making discovery in 1929 (and the years following) at the site of the ancient Ugarit, on the Syrian coast opposite the most easterly cape of Cyprus. Thousands of clay tablets were found there, documents of inestimable value in many fields of research (including epigraphy, philology, and the history of religion). Dating from the 15th and 14th centuries bce, they were written in a cuneiform alphabet of 30 letters.
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the alphabet, a system of writing, developed in the ancient Middle East and transmitted from the northwest Semites to the Greeks, in which each symbol ideally represents one sound unit in the spoken language, and from which most alphabetic scripts are derived.
An alphabet is a set of all the letters in a written language. The letters in an alphabet represent the different sounds in that language. When you sing the A, B, C song, you are singing the English alphabet.
An alphabet is a standard set of letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from another in a given language. [1]
the letters of a language, arranged in a traditional order. 2. a system of characters, signs, or symbols used to indicate letters or speech sounds. 3. the first elements or principles, as of a branch of knowledge.
