Alphabet
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Alphabet. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
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 Phœnician 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 BETH GIMEL DALE TH HE WAW ZAYIN CHETH TETH IOD CAPH LAMED MEM NUN SAMECH AYIN PE ZADE KOPH RESH SHIN TAU 6TH.CENT. AA A 29 B BB BETA Б 27 GAMMA Γ C で C T DELTA d D EPSILONE E e ४ E ٦٢ DIGAMMA F F , T I ZETA ز Z 5 Z ΠHH ETA H てん Э 日田口 THETA ф ط , I Juй 1 IOTA コK KAPPA K K 3 LAMDA し て Λ レ Л MMC M MU M y NU N ก N H ن ( X1) 三 س X C S OMICRON O O C O 0 O פ PP フ Π PI Π ۱۳ ہیں ( KOPPA) وت Q P P R RHO rP مشی Σ SIGMA ш ת X TAU T T τ ت T Y น UPSILON V Y Φ Ф PHI X X CHI X Ψ PSI Ω OMEGA ALPHABET CHARACTERS alphabet 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 Phœnicians 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 have been obtained by the Greeks must 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 Phœnician 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.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
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 2026 Editor's Note: Every alphabet in the Western world — Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic — descends from a single ancestor, a Semitic script of about 1800 BC. And the picture-writing this entry calls primitive has staged a comeback: the emoji , humanity's return to the pictograph, on every phone. (Ed: BR 2026-07-08)