Talk:History of the alphabet

Confused

In the article on the Phoenician alphabet it is stated that scholars could not find any link between the Phoenician alphabet and the Egyptian hieroglyphs. This article states that most alphabets in the world, including the Greek alphabet, descended from the hieroglyphs. However, according to the article on the Phoenician alphabet the Greek alphabet was a descendant of the Phoenician. I am confused. Could some scholar please clear up the matter for me and e-mail me at dugeot at iafrica dot com? I will thank thee very, very, very much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.243.57.59 (talk) 23:48, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Old Italic & runes

According to the box, Old Italic and Latin are basically independent derivations from Greek, but isn't Latin an evolution of the Old Italic alphabet? I'd say this would look better:

• Old Italic
  • Latin
  • Runes

Comments?

I'm not sure we should even retain Old Italic, but of course you're correct. Runes, however, are only attested many centuries after Old Italic ceased to be used, and should probably be derived from Latin. kwami 18:46, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

There seems to be a quite common theory that Old Italic was the source of the runes, even though they are not attested until much later, and appear quite primitive compared to the Latin inscriptions of the same age...

merge?

See Talk:Middle Bronze Age alphabets

comments

I'm a novice on this topic, but it seems to me that there are several written communcation systems that should be mentioned here, if only to dispel the myth that they developed independently.

First of all, I've read that Mayan writing on monuments and in inked codices was in many ways alphabetic, and it doesn't seem possible that it was derived from a semitic source.

Mayan was not alphabetic, and the article doesn't claim it's related to the Semitic abjad. kwami

Second, I've heard stories that the Korean script, Hangul, was invented by a single individual, and that many of the forms were based on the shape made by the tongue when pronouncing a given consonant. I've heard this story from several sources, so it seems worth dispelling the myth if it is indeed a myth.

Dannya222

That's covered in the Hangul article. Hangul has been traced to Tibetan, but not everyone accepts it. The tongue-shape idea is what was written in court records. kwami 22:55, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

What evidence is there of this? The article mentions one scholar's hypothesis, but similarities between the characters suggested to be related are vague at best. I would be very interested in additional supporting evidence that leads to this conclusion. Upthorn (talk) 09:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Name of origination alphbet

Phoenician is no longer polictally correct. IS the ancient Paleo-Midddle-Eastern adjad. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.38.144.241 (talk) 06:02, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

This article needs definition

Often in the discussion of the history of the alphabet, some terms are used with some flexibility in meaning. First, the term "the alphabet" often refers in western usage to the 26-letter Latin alphabet. In fact, the term "alphabet" refers to any writing system that denotes both vowels and consonants. The Latin alphabet is derived from Etruscan and Greek alphabets. The term "alphabet" first applies historically -- in the strictest definition of the term -- to the Greek Alphabet. The Greek alphabet was adopted and adapted from the Phoenicians' writing system which denoted primarily consonants. While the Phoenician writing system is often called the Phoenician Alphabet, some scholars, who insist it lies outside the category of alphabet, refer to it as the Phoenician abjad. The Phoenician abjad developed from early Semitic abjads. The origin of these Semitic abjads has been the source of much speculation and debate. Evidence and consensus points to a borrowing of Egyptian symbols which were re-assigned consonantal values by Semitic writers. In the sense that the history of alphabetic writing begins with the Egyptians, it is significant that the Egyptians had phonetic symbols. These phonetic symbols, however, were a very small subset of a vast, complex writing system.

The history outlined in this article, then, traces the idea and usage of PHONETIC writing that LEAD to the development of alphabetic writing.

This article is misleading in its title – implying the existence of one "the alphabet" – and in its content by not carefully defining the object of its discussion. (This article might be better titled "The development of phonetic writing.")

All writing is phonetic, including Chinese, Mayan, and Cuneiform. The term 'alphabet' has two meanings: a broader meaning of a segmental script, and a narrower meaning of a segmental script that indicates vowels and consonants equally. Both meanings have a long history. The alphabet/abjad/abugida distinction is useful for the academic who likes making fine distinctions. However, the restriction of the word 'alphabet' to Greek-like systems has a distasteful anti-Semitic history, and the term was purposefully broadened to counter this. The ambiguity is inherent in the word, but the common phrase "history of the alphabet" is not ambiguous. It is understood to mean the history of the family, from proto-Sinaitic on. Any other usage would require specification, such as 'the history of the Latin alphabet'. kwami 02:22, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you (more-or-less) completely. But the ARTICLE itself should address what you just addressed: It should begin by defining what is "meant" by alphabet when we say it; speak of its place among phonetic writing; speak of issues involved in the abjad/alphabet debate! That would be great.

I still disagree that the article should include Egyptian phonetic writing. Those few symbols were part of a vast, complex writing system. It was clearly NOT an alphabet though the very first sentence of this article may read otherwise.

number of consonants

Dbachmann, if we're going to cite 22 consonants and the ABC alphabetic order, we should restrict ourselves to Phoenician and the subset of alphabets that descend from it. If we're going to talk about the history of the alphabet, then we should acknowledge all the alphabets in the family, which reflect 27 (Ugaritic) or 29 (S. Arabic) consonants, that were reduced to 22 in Phoenician, and also acknowledge both alphabetic orders. The latter is much more encyclopedic. I added it in, but was reverted. Will add again unless you wish too. kwami 19:58, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Please change the table

Please split the final column into "Greek", "Latin", and "Cyrillic". Georgia guy 01:14, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Greek, Anatolian, Old Italic

I am not going to insist on the passage, but I am not sure I am "flying in the face of mainstream scholarship". The earliest evidence for Greek alphabets date to the (early) 8th century. The earliest evidence for Old Italic or Anatolian alphabets, to the (late) 8th century. I.e. their temporal separation is a matter of decades. At such early times, it is a matter of terminology if you still speak of local variants of the Phoenician alphabets, or of early variants of the independent descendants. The Masiliana abecedarium is practically identical to the Phoenician alphabet, it is an academic question if it is a nascent Greek alphabet or a local variant of the Phoenician one. The Carian alphabet went undeciphered for many decades because people assumed it was derived from Greek. It was only deciphered when it was re-evaluated as independent from Greek. dab (ᛏ) 19:56, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

And some sources date the Anatolian alphabets even before that, see also my comments at Talk:Neo-Hittite... ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 20:02, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

The Carian script obviously has many elements that are not Greek, but Phrygian is clearly Greek: it has Greek but non-Phonecian features such as vowels, a split between F and Y, and the aspirates. Same goes for Etruscan/Old Italic. Note that the oldest forms of Greek had vowels and F vs. Y but not the aspirates, so the direction of borrowing is pretty clear: Greek → Phrygian and Greek → Etruscan. This is the standard understanding. Given the inherent uncertainties in dating, a few decades here or there are not significant. If Carian is independent from Greek, it would appear that it's independent of the other Anatolian alphabets as well. kwami 21:02, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

PS. Your sources for Carian would be interesting. kwami 21:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

you are right (and there is no need for edit warring between good faith editors, I apologize, let's talk this over). Yes, Phrygian is from Greek, no doubt. Classical Etruscan is certainly influenced by Greek, but archaic Etruscan (7th c.) seems also directly influenced by Phoenician. I'll get you some Carian references; the Anatolian alphabets are grouped together geographically, I suppose, but without necessarily claiming that they form a genetic unity. dab (ᛏ) 08:03, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay, a unitary family of Anatolian alphabets completely divorced from Greek seemed a bit much, but of course oddballs like Carian might have something interesting in their history.

As for Etruscan, the earliest ABC I'm aware of is the one from Marsiliana mid 7th century. It looks like a typical early Greek alphabet, even having the letters Β Δ Ξ Ο which where not used in writing and disappeared soon after. And it has the vowel usage, F-Y distinction, and Χ Φ Ψ also found in the Greek of its time. The only Greek innovation it lacks is Ω, which wasn't found in many epichoric Greek scripts anyway. kwami 09:32, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

A different question. Under "Transmission to Greece", the article says "separate letters for vowels would have actually hindered the legibility of Egyptian, Phoenician, or Hebrew." At the very least, I think this needs a citation; better would be an explanation of this putative fact. (I happen to think it's wrong, the vowels are no less relevant in Semitic than they are in Greek; but that's just a personal opinion and not worth mentioning.) Mcswell (talk) 21:46, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with a citation. Don't know if I can dig anything up. Thought I'd read of studies demonstrating this with Hebrew, but it's been years. The idea is that vowels, often being transfixes, muck of the shapes of Semitic words, hampering quick recognition, whereas the functional equivalent in Greek, adding suffixes, is not a problem. (Fluent reading does not go by sound or letters, but by word shapes, and maintaining a constant shape for roots aids their recognition. Greek ablaut would also cause a problem, but to a much lesser degree.) On the other hand, not writing vowels causes problems with Greek, because they so often distinguish unrelated roots.

This ties in with nationalist or anti-Semitic claims that the Semites had a functionally defective script that required the genius of Greece to correct. Different language typologies might motivate different solutions to writing. You get similar issues when writing tone--tones can be left out almost entirely with some languages, such as Ndyuka, are addressable with diacritics in others, such as Bambara, but for fluency might require full letters for a heavily tone-dependent language like Hmong. That doesn't mean that Ndyuka writing is deficient. kwami (talk) 23:51, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Very cool picture

THIS pic

Check that out, evolution of the alphabet. Comments? Fresheneesz 08:38, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Adding nabatean before arabic?

Instead of having arabic alone, I really think that nabatean should be before it and have arabic come out of it. Eshcorp

Hangul alphabet not in common line of inspiration?

The article claims that the Hangul alphabet is *not* inspired in some way by the alphabet of the Egyptians. Reading the Hangul article, it says "some aspects of Hangul reflect a shared history with the Phagspa alphabet". Reading the Phagspa alphabet article, I can find "adapted the Uyghur alphabet — a descendant of the Syriac alphabet, via Sogdian — to write Mongol". The Syriac alphabet is surely in the line of inspiration from the Egyptian alphabet. I therefore have removed the stated Hangul exception. Hangul may be unique in other ways, but it apparently wasn't a tabula rasa re-invention of alphabetic principles. Martijn Faassen 21:22, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Reading more, I found that some debate about independent invention surrounding Hangul is described in the article. The article was claiming there was not even a line of *inspiration* before though, which seems unlikely. Descent from other alphabets is an open debate; independent inspiration in the 15th century is less plausible. Martijn Faassen 21:27, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Abjads

I removed the paranthesis about abjads ("...earliest alphabets (properly, 'abjads'..." because according to the article on abjads, "abjad", as used here, isn't a generally accepted term. And in any case, an abjad is a type of alphabet which means that "alphabet" is not at all incorrect by anyone's standards.

The term "abjad" seems to be cropping up in inappropriate places on wikipedia (e.g. a link from Proto-Semitic to this page is labelled "Semitic abjads", although this will be corrected by the time you read this). This is gratuitous obscurantism and it makes me suspect that an academic turf war may be being fought here. Ireneshusband 00:43, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

small rewrite in 'Descendants of the Semitic abjad' - check I didn't change the meaning

I made a small rewrite. But want to make sure you I didn't change the meaning.

I belive the rewrite is clearer, mainly for the less read in alphabet history. Pablo2garcia 13:56, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

-- OLD LINE From it can be traced nearly all the alphabets ever used, most of which descend from the younger Phoenician version of the script.

-- INTRODUCED REWRITE From it can be traced nearly all the alphabets ever used, most of which descend from the Phoenician, an early version of the Canaanite script. --

Abjadi Order

I removed the "citation needed" from the sentence about abjadi order surviving or being reintroduced in alphabets which switched orders. The original abjd hwz hty klmn s`fs order is the basis for the traditional Arabic number system, just as in Greek and Hebrew, and is well known. the "abjadi order" article linked to in the sentence provides sufficient documentation. There is no need for further references here. IQAG1060 (talk) 03:03, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Maldivian and Hangul

The only modern national alphabet that has not been graphically traced back to the Canaanite alphabet is the Maldivian script [...]

This needs to be fixed. Hangul is currently in use, and it's unrelated to the Canaanite alphabet. --Kjoonlee 03:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

There's good reason to think that Hangul derives from Phagspa, which is a Brahmic script, and that Brahmic derives from Aramaic. kwami 07:14, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Canaanites are not Semitic

Canaanites are not Semitic!, there Afro/Hamitic. They adopted Syriac Aramiac. The evidence most frequently used to support them as semitic which their not is the texts found at Ras Shamra Ugarit, written in a Semitic language/dialect & circa. 14th cent. B.C.E. However, Ugarit apparently did not come within the Biblical boundaries of Canaan. “it is now clearly a misnomer to call Ugarit a ‘Canaanite’ city” said, A. F. Rainey. One source says “the Amarna Letters contain evidence for the opinion that non-Semitic ethnic elements settled in Palestine & Syria at a rather early date, for a number of these letters show a remarkable influence of non-Semitic tongues.” The facts are that there is still uncertainty as to the original language spoken by the first inhabitants of Canaan. Such a change would be no greater than that of other ancient nations, such as the ancient Persians, who, though of Indo-Europeanc origin, later adopted the Semitic Aramaean language & writing. [unsigned by 72.38.211.144, 20:32, 2007 November 15]

Since Hebrew was a dialect of the language we call Canaanite, I'm not sure what you mean, unless it's that Hebrew is not Semitic. There's also no such thing objectively as "Afro-Hamitic". kwami 09:36, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

God probably just gave the alphabet to Moses, since otherwise it's just an amazing coincidence that the commandments and torah were written down at the same time the first writing system came into being. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.72.21.221 (talk) 06:55, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Tradition shows is that Moses recorded Job expirences basically his lifestory, the book of Job dates to possibly 1473 B.C.E. It is accurate it would mean that even 40 years before the Exodus there an alphabet. Some suggest the sign given to Cain was a letter.

Actually as far as we know, Canaanites were Semites, with Canaanite being a Semitic language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Melchiord (talk • contribs) 00:20, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Words like "Canaanite" and "Semite" have two meanings here, the biblical and the linguistic. Lots of Jews insist that the Arabs aren't Semitic, for example, despite the similarity of the languages. kwami (talk) 17:42, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, not all so-called "arabs", are Canaanite descend. Genesis 10, shows the ancestor of the Canaanites, are Canaan son of Ham. Most of Arab people come from Joktan, or Ishmael, both descenants of Shem.

linguistic speaking there no evidence a Canaanite language father the Hebrew language period. It show a similar language exist in the area Hebrew migranted to and only that.

Canaanite formed their own adopted and adapted language, Languages around them were, Akkadian, Aramaic, Urgatic, Arabic, Israelite Hebrew, non-Israelite Hebrew as Edomite, Moabite, Ammonite. Abraham children Zim′ran, Mid′i·anite, Me′dan, Shu′ah, Jok′shan father of Sheba and Dedan, Ish′bak - Genesis 25:1-3; 1Ch 1:32. See a picture Semite influence their language not the other around.

Quoting one refenece book, The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (edited by G. A. Buttrick, 1962, Vol. 1, p. 495) that “the Amarna Letters contain evidence for the opinion that non-Semitic ethnic elements settled in Palestine and Syria at a rather early date, for a number of these letters show a remarkable influence of non-Semitic tongues.” (Italics ours.)

Need for diverse opinion

It appears from the article, that the perspective is basically european/middle-east centric (ie. areas influenced by various abrahamic cultures). There is an urgent need to cover other scripts that have not originated from Middle east, Greek, Latin. 129.118.38.222 (talk) 19:08, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

This article is about alphabets, not writing systems in general, and all true alphabets are "descendants" in some sense (whether by direct borrowing or "stimulus diffusion") of the original early Semitic consonantal alphabet as developed by Semitic-speaking peoples (influenced by the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system) ca. 1500 B.C. or earlier. Not sure what "Abrahamic" has to do with it, since alphabets were already spreading far and wide before Christianity or Islam existed, and when Judaism was a semi-obscure local religion. AnonMoos (talk) 23:31, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

True, but anon. has a point: we give very little room to the Brahmic family, for example. kwami (talk) 01:53, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Comments

Latest findings prove that the history of alphabet comes from variations of the greek alpabet. Please take a look at this wiki - page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispilio_Tablet. In the last twelve years there are findings basically from to archaelogists n.sampson and g.hourmouziadis that testify that there have been written texts from 5000 - 6000bc.

Please update the article —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.75.239.19 (talk) 15:02, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

The article doesn't say, let alone prove, that the writing on the tablet is Greek. In fact, it doesn't say what it is at all. Meanwhile, an image of the glyphs on the tablet shows that they aren't the slightest bit Greek. —Largo Plazo (talk) 15:39, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Why the sequence A-B-C...

Why is it in the current order it is right now?Petrarch1603 (talk) 18:45, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

No-one knows, but it's over 3000 years old. See Ugaritic alphabet. kwami (talk) 18:55, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Dates of the alphabets

The greek alphabet is said to have started in early 8th century BCE (cf its wikipedia entry). But the summary box on the right side of the page has 9th century BCE. Shouldnt it be changed to 8th century BCE ?

Same thing with the hebrew alphabet, the modern version based on the "square script" was adopted in the 6th century BCE, but the summary box has 3rd century BCE. Any objections if I change it to 6th century BCE ? --Squallgreg (talk) 13:18, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, 8th c for Greek. People mess with the dates to push their agenda.

A Judean variant of the Aramaic script didn't emerge until the 3rd c BCE, so no, 6th would be wrong. Before that, it was simply Imperial Aramaic. kwami (talk) 16:13, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Kwami. Also, all dates are start dates so I changed the Phoenician date to "12th c. BCE" (see [1]its history) from "11-14th c. BCE". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Squallgreg (talk • contribs) 22:36, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Unicode vs images

Please use images as much as possible instead of unicode characters for scripts that are not very common world-wide. How many people visiting this page will have a Phoenician font installed? Probably almost none. And how many will be able to display Tibetic? It's a contemporary script, but WinXP, which is the most common OS, doesn't support it. I don't want to have to install fonts just to see a few symbols on one single page... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.177.48.48 (talk) 08:52, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Alleged hindering

In the paragraph entitled "Greek alphabet", we are told that vowel letters actually hindered Egyptian, Hebrew and Arabic. Maltese has been written with vowel letters for centuries and so has Coptic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.254.83 (talk) 08:27, 15 May 2010 (UTC) A call for explanation has been in the text for some time with no answer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.254.83 (talk) 08:29, 15 May 2010 (UTC) Maltese is a dialect of colloquial Arabic and Coptic is a later form of Ancient Egyptian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.254.83 (talk) 08:34, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

There have been studies with Arabic and Hebrew that adding vowels make reading more difficult, because they mess up root recognition. Turkish, on the other hand, is a pain to read without vowel letters. That's not to say there aren't counterexamples: Persian continues to be written without many vowels (though more than Arabic), and Maltese as you point out has them (but also large numbers of non-Semitic loan words). As Peter Daniels put it, "there are languages for which an alphabet is not an ideal writing system. The Semitic abjads really do fit the structure of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic very well, [more] than an alphabet would be, since the spelling ensures that each root looks the same through its plethora of inflections and derivations." In any case, the point isn't "idiotic". — kwami (talk) 11:03, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to need to clean this up again. There was more of that silly claptrap about Greek being more "mature" than Phoenician, rather than simply adapted to a differently structured language, and that it was the first script with letters for "discrete sounds" (!). — kwami (talk) 11:45, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Kwamikagami does not mention Coptic. He speaks of "studies" but only one is mentioned.

The "study" of Daniels seems to be the personal opinion of Daniels. I not sure that

the first person you meet in the street has less right to speak than Daniels on vowel letters

and their alleged hindering process. Babylonian, a Semitic language, was

written for centuries with vowels and no one noticed the way they hindered anything.