Alphabet

al'fa-bet, the letters of a language arranged in a fixed order. Prior to the invention of characters to represent sounds, pictures were used to convey ideas. Such systems are still in use. The present writer has seen a representation of this sort on the body of a pine tree at Lake Itasca, stating in a pictorial way that a certain number of Chippewa hunters, with so many tents and guns, had encamped on the spot, and that they had killed a certain number of moose, deer, and small game.

The pictorial writing of Egypt gave rise, it is thought, to the earliest alphabet of which we have any record,--that of the Phoenicians. The Greek, the Latin, the Arabic, and, so far as we know, all eastern alphabets are derived from it. The word alphabet is derived from the Greek names for the first two letters, alpha and beta. In shape the various letters have undergone changes. The printed alphabets of different nations vary less than their script. That which we use is called the Roman alphabet. Its letters have the simplest shape of any, and are therefore the easiest to read. Early English was printed in an alphabet more nearly resembling that still in use by the Germans. If present indications are a guide, it is safe to assume that the Roman alphabet, with possibly further modifications, will one day become universal. It is used already for nine-tenths of the printed matter now issuing from the press. It is used in both Americas, in England, and her colonies, including India and Australia, and in the so-called Latin countries of the Mediterranean. In Scandinavia and especially in Germany, scientific books are printed in Roman letters.

An ideal alphabet has a separate letter, and one only, for each sound, but no such alphabet is in general use. The Phoenician alphabet contains twenty-two letters; Greek, twenty-four; modern Russian, thirty-five; Arab, twenty-eight; Sanscrit, forty-seven. Our alphabet has twenty-six characters to represent about forty-two sounds. We supply the deficiency in a clumsy way by diacritical marks. In that way the first letter, a, is made to represent no less than eight sounds. The result is that there are a dozen possible ways of spelling the syllable new.

See Runes; Hieroglyphics; Shorthand