Alphabet
so called from alpha and beta, the first two Greek letters, is the name given to a set of graphic signs, called letters, denoting elementary sounds, by the combination of which words can be visibly represented. Nearly 200 alphabets, ancient and modern, are known, of which about 50 are now in use. Most of them are developments from the primitive Phoenician alphabet, which was itself ultimately derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphic picture-writing.
All writing was in its origin pictorial.
It began with ideograms, which developed into phonograms. Ideograms are pictures or symbols intended to represent either things or abstract ideas. Phonograms are the graphic symbols of sounds.
Five independent systems of ideographic writing have been invented: (1) The Cuneiform, which arose in the valley of the Euphrates, and developed into the Achæmenian syllabaries. (2) The Chinese, out of which the Japanese syllabaries have arisen. (3) The Hittite, which was the probable source of the Cypriote syllabary. (4) The Mexican ALPHABET HEBREW GREEK HEBREW NAMES NAMES ALEPH ALPHA B BETH BETA C GIMEL GAMMA 27 PHOENICIAN GREEK LATIN ARABIC UNCICALS RUSSIAN ALPHABET IRISH 6TH.CENT.
C A 7. d Б D C で C T DALE TH DELTA D d HE EPSILONE E ४ e E WAW DIGAMMA Y F , F DIGAMMA 7 T Z Z ز 5 Z CHETH ETA H H H てん Э TETH THETA II 1 ط Iuů IOD D , 1 K CAPH KAPPA LAMED LAMDA し Z Λ 3 K K L て Л MEM MU ^ 1 M M NUN MU NU y M N ن ก H N س X C AYIN OMICRON S y Ο Ο C 0 Ο PE PI ZADE פ O フ Π O É Π AYIN OMICRON J C. وت Q RESH PI P R j 9 SHIN SIGMA Σ Q j r TAU TAU ת X T T R iv r UPSILON Y V น Y PHI Φ T Ф CHI X X PSI Ψ OMEGA Ω ALPHABET CHARACTERS ALPHEUS ALPS picture writing. (5) The Egyptian the famous Olympia westward into the hieroglyphics, from which the Phoenician Ionic Sea. In its passage through Aralphabet was derived.
The Egyptian hieroglyphic picture writing may be traced back, by means of inscriptions, for more than 6,000 years, to the time of the second Egyptian dynasty. Of the 400 Egyptian phonograms, about 45 attained an alphabetic character-that is, they either denoted vowels, or could be associated with more than one vowel sound. Out of these alphabetic signs our own letters have grown. The transition to a pure alphabetic writing was made when the Phoenicians rejected the unnecessary portions of the complicated Egyptian system, the ideograms, the verbal phonograms, and the syllabic signs, and selected from the 45 variant symbols of elementary sounds a single sign for each of the 22 consonants found in Semitic speech.
A knowledge of alphabetical writing must have been obtained by the Greeks from the Phoenician trading settlements in the Ægean as early as the 10th century B. C.
By the middle of the 6th century, the Greek alphabet had in all essential respects attained its final development. About the 3d century B. C., the lapidary characters, corresponding to the capitals in Greek printed books, began to be replaced by more rounded forms, called uncials, while cursive forms were used for correspondence. Finally, between the 7th and 9th centuries A. D., the minuscules, which are the small letters of our printed Greek books, were evolved from a combination of uncials and cursives.
The Greek alphabet was the source, not only of the Latin, but of the other national alphabets of Europe.
The Runes, which formed the alphabet of the Scandinavian nations, were based on early forms of the Greek letters, which, as Dr. Isaac Taylor has shown, were obtained about the 6th century B. C. from Greek colonies on the Black Sea, by Gothic tribes who then inhabited the region. In our own alphabet, the order of the letters does not differ very greatly from the Phoenician arrangement. Our letters are named on the same principle as in the Latin alphabet. The vowels are called by their sounds; the consonants, by the sound of the letter combined with the easiest vowels, which, for convenience of utterance, precedes the continuants and follows the explosives.
ALPHEUS (al-fē'us), the principal river of Peloponnesus (Morea), rising ri in the S. E. of Arcadia, and flowing past cadia, a country consisting of cavernous limestone, it repeatedly disappears underground and rises again. With this fact was connected a remarkable myth. The river god Alpheus was said to have become enamored of the nymph Arethusa while bathing in his stream. To escape him, she prayed to Artemis, who changed her into a fountain, and opened up an underground passage for her to Ortygia, a small Sicilian island in the harbor of Syracuse. The river still pursued the nymph, passing from Greece to Sicily below the sea, without mingling his waters with it, and appearing in the spring that bubbles up by the shore, close by the fountain of Arethusa.
ALPHONSO. See ALFONSO.