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The Phoenician alphabet, 22 letters that wrote only consonants, is the ancestor of most alphabets used today. Greeks adapted it around the 8th century BC and added vowels, leading to Latin and Cyrillic; Aramaic scribes adapted it separately, leading to Hebrew and Arabic.

Historical writing-system development

LanguageHistory

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The Phoenicians were traders from cities such as Tyre and Byblos on the coast of today's Lebanon, and their alphabet travelled with them around the Mediterranean. Greek writers reused signs for sounds Greek did not need as vowels: aleph, 'ox', became alpha. The Latin alphabet reached Rome through the Etruscans, who had borrowed it from Greek settlers in Italy. Cyrillic was created in the late ninth century by followers of the missionaries Cyril and Methodius, mostly from Greek letters. Aramaic, the everyday language of the Persian Empire, carried its version east: it became the square Hebrew script and, through the Nabataean script, Arabic. Even the word 'alphabet' comes from alpha and beta.

Türkçe oku
Yalnızca ünsüzleri yazan 22 harfli Fenike alfabesi, bugün kullanılan alfabelerin çoğunun atasıdır. Yunanlılar onu MÖ 8. yüzyıl dolaylarında alıp ünlüleri ekledi; Latin ve Kiril alfabeleri bu koldan doğdu. Aramiler de onu ayrıca uyarladı; İbrani ve Arap alfabeleri de oradan türedi.

Fenikeliler bugünkü Lübnan kıyısındaki Sur ve Biblos gibi kentlerden çıkan tüccarlardı; alfabeleri de onlarla birlikte Akdeniz'e yayıldı. Yunanlılar, kendi dillerinde gerekmeyen bazı ünsüz işaretlerini ünlü olarak kullandı: “Öküz” anlamına gelen alef, alfa oldu. Latin alfabesi Roma'ya Etrüsklerden geçti; Etrüskler de onu İtalya'daki Yunan yerleşimcilerden almıştı. Kiril alfabesi ise 9. yüzyılın sonunda, misyoner Kiril ile Metodiy'in izinden giden din adamlarınca, çoğunlukla Yunan harflerinden yararlanılarak oluşturuldu. Pers İmparatorluğu'nun gündelik dili Aramicenin yazısı doğuya yayıldı: İbranicenin köşeli yazısı ondan doğdu, Arap yazısı da Nebati yazısı üzerinden ondan geldi. “Alfabe” sözcüğü bile alfa ile betanın birleşiminden gelir.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: History of the alphabet
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