Meaning of ALPHABET

List of the elementary phonemes of a language. It is characterized by the order and shape of the signs that compose it.

More rigorously, it is the Greek list of signs that begin with alpha, beta..., and from which most of the European alphabets are derived.

The Greek alphabet, for its part, comes from the Phoenician, or Canaanite, alphabet, used in Palestine ten centuries before Jesus Christ. Origin:

At first, language was written using images, simple mnemonic illustrations, which facilitated the work of memory (something similar to the current symbols used to organize circulation); This is called the pictographic stage.

Then certain schematized images were chosen to represent the syllables, as happens with Egyptian hieroglyphics, Sumerian cuneiform writing, and other forms of writing; This is called the syllabic stage.

Next, some characters were taken to represent the fundamental sounds of articulate language, either those produced by the mouth or throat (consonants) or those produced by the vocal cords (vowels).

In principle, each sign corresponds to a sound, and this is the alphabetic stage. The origin of the Hebrew alphabet (modified and adopted by the Greeks) remains a mystery.

It has long been assumed that it came from the hieratic writing of Egypt (derived from hieroglyphics); Other diverse origins have also been thought of; certain characters would come from Mesopotamia, others from Crete, and in some cases signs from Neolithic caves would even have been taken.

However, many Hebrew letters seem to remember by their shape the object that gave them their name; thus, Aleph is the head of an ox ("alef"), Ayin is an eye, and Resh is a man's head.

Hebrew has 22 characteristic consonants (the nuances are numerous), while Greek has only 17.

In Hebrew, vowels are not represented, while Greek has 7 (adding its alphabet, therefore, 24 letters). The order of the letters (attested from very ancient times by the acrostic poems: Ps. 111; 112; 119; Pr. 31:1031; Lm. 1; 2; 3; 4; etc.), is practically immutable.

There is an archaic form of the Hebrew letters (Moab Stone, Louvre, Paris, from around 850 BC; Siloam Inscription, 750 BC, etc.), and an elegant form, called square, used from the first or second century BC