Blog 1

To start my research for 'History of the Original Alphabet', I began with a google search. I used the term 'original alphabet' which came back with about 30,300,000 results.

The first item that came up was Wikipedia. Due to the fact that I know that Wikipedia is sometimes unreliable because anyone can amend the information if the subject/page has not been locked, I simply used ‘external links’ that they provided. From here they offered 5 links.

• Animated examples of how the English alphabet evolved by Robert Fradkin, University of Maryland
• The Greek alphabet on h2g2
• The Development of the Western Alphabet on h2g2
• Site by Micheal W. Palmer about the Greek alphabet
• "The Alphabet – its creation and development" on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time featuring Eleanor Robson, Alan Millard, Rosalind Thomas

After perusing these links, I realised that I had to make a decision about what area I was going to focus on.

The second link went into information about how they wrote using this alphabet (right to left and then then every second line in the opposite direction) and also about how they pronounce blends and accents, but this isn’t the history of the alphabet per say, that is more about the history of writing or reading. They also discussed breathing marks and iota subscripts.

 With this being said, I have decided that at this point,  I will be focusing on strictly the original alphabet and comparing it to the alphabet we use today, rather than how it is written, read and pronounced. Some information within graphs and what not, may go into detail regarding these parts of the alphabet. But I will be predominately focusing on comparison of the symbols only.

From the link Animated examples of how the English alphabet evolved by Robert Fradkin, University of Maryland, I found out that the Phoenician characters were rotated 90 degrees for the greek alphanet  or with the non-symmetrical characters, they were flipped horizontally when the direction of Greek switched from left to right.

From the link The Greek alphabet on h2g2, I found out that ‘The Greek alphabet was developed in about 1000 BC. It was a modification of Northern Semitic, the alphabet which Hebrew is also derived. In Semitic languages (which include Hebrew and Arabic), vowels are relatively unimportant and have a lot of consonantal sounds. Therefore their alphabet had no symbols for vowels. The Greeks changed the alphabet so that consonantal signs which represented sounds not used by the Greeks were re-used for vowel sounds. Therefore Greek alphabet was the first in the world with signs for both vowels and consonants.’ ‘Most of the alphabets used today are direct descendants of the Greek alphabet. The word alphabet itself is derived from the names of the first two Greek letters, Alpha and Beta.’

I found a table on this link that shows the letters symbol, its name as well as its pronunciation. You can see that some of the symbols are very similar to the ones we still use today, such as A, B, E, H, I, K, M, N, O, P, T, Y, and X.

Capital	Lower Case	Name in English	Name as Pronounced in Greek	Modern Pronunciation	Ancient Pronunciation
Α	α	alpha	alfa	a as in bath
Β	β	beta	veeta	v	b
Γ	γ	gamma	ghamma	Before A or O, this is a sound that does not occur in English, like a soft g, the voiced version of the kh below. Before E, I or Y it is pronounced y as in yet.	g
Δ	δ	delta	dhelta	dh represents the voiced th sound in this and that	d
Ε	ε	epsilon	epsilon	e as in pet
Ζ	ζ	zeta	zeeta	z	dz
Η	η	eta	eeta	ee as in feet	ay as in day
Θ	θ	theta	theeta	th unvoiced as in thin and thanks
Ι	ι	iota	yotta	ee as in feet; like y in yes when before vowel	i as in fit
Κ	κ	kappa	kappa	k
Λ	λ	lambda	lamdha	l
Μ	μ	mu	mee	m
Ν	ν	Nu	nee	n
Ξ	ξ	Xi	ksee	ks as x in fox, never as x in xylophone
Ο	ο	omicron	omicron	o as in got
Π	π	Pi	pee	p
Ρ	ρ	rho	ro	r trilled as in Spanish or Italian
Σ	σ or ς	sigma	sighma	s unvoiced as in sauce, not vase. The first lower-case form is for the start or the middle of words, the second for the last letter of words.
Τ	τ	tau	taf	t
Υ	υ	upsilon	eepsilon	ee as in feet	slender u as in French tu or German fünf
Φ	φ	phi	fee	f
Χ	χ	chi	khee	kh represents ch sound in Scottish word loch
Ψ	ψ	psi	psee	ps as in copse. The p is pronounced even at the start of words.
Ω	ω	omega	omegha	o as in got	o as in pole

This link also went into information about how they wrote using this alphabet (right to left and then then every second line in the opposite direction) and also about how they pronounce blends and accents, but this isn’t the history of the alphabet per say, that is more about the history of writing or reading. They also discussed breathing marks and iota subscripts.

In the link The Development of the Western Alphabet on h2g2, I found out that ‘The first alphabet was the direct ancestor of all the alphabets in use in the world today, including our familiar Roman one, the Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabets.’ ‘The first alphabet was North Semitic, and it was invented sometime between 1000-2000 BC somewhere in the Middle East. It is far from clear exactly how, when or even where this happened. The North Semitic people had a working alphabet of 22 letters by about 1200 BC.

'The alphabet was probably inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs, which had already been used for 2000. It had 24 symbols for consonants, but they were always mixed in with hundreds of other symbols. Therefore, the system was complex and difficult. They decided to reduce the number of symbols to 22, making it simpler to draw/write. Also, the hieroglyphs were designed for the Egyptian language, the new alphabet was custom made by the Semites for their language, which, as mentioned above, is the ancestor of both Hebrew and Arabic.’

‘By about 1100 BC, the North Semitic alphabet had settled into a form known as Phoenician, (as it was used by the Phoenicians, the great Semitic traders who lived in the land to the east of the Mediterranean).

Phoenician evolved into three major alphabets over time: the Hebrew, the Arabic and the Greek. 

Western Greek

The earliest Greek alphabet was developed either directly from Phoenician itself or from an almost identical version of North Semitic. The Greek language places much more emphasis on vowels than the Semitic languages (Phoenician, Arabic, Hebrew etc), so the Greeks adapted the alphabet. Due to the fact that these changes were not carried out uniformly across the Greek speaking world, two slightly different varieties of alphabet evolved, Western Greek, also known as Chalcidian  and Eastern Greek (now used by all the Greek-speaking world). It is Western Greek which our alphabet is derived from.

Most of the names of the letters were carried straight over from Phoenician into Greek, with slight changes to make them suit the language, even those letters whose sounds changed such as 'Alf.

	Phoenician	W Greek name	W Greek sound
1	'Alf	Alpha	a
2	Bét	Beta	b
3	Gaml	Gamma	g
4	Delt	Delta	d
5	Hé	Epsilon	e
6	Wau	Digamma	w
7	Zai	Zeta	zd
8	Hét	Heta	h
9	Thét	Theta	th
10	Yód	Iota	i
11	Kaf	Kappa	k
12	Lamd	Lambda	l
13	Mém	Mu	m
14	Nún	Nu	n
15	Semk
16	'Ain	Omicron	o
17	Pé	Pi	p
18	Sádé	San	s
19	Qóf	Koppa	k
20	Rósh	Rho	r
21	Shín	Sigma	s
22	Tau	Tau	t
	Wau	Upsilon	u
		Phi	ph
		Ksi	ks
		Chi	ch