Here is something to think about. Would you agree if I said that alphabets are some of the most significant inventions in the history of human civilisation?
We use the 26 letters of the English language every day in some way or the other. We write notes, headlines, letters, stories, poems. Using these symbols with sounds. Have we ever stopped to wonder where these letters (or symbols) came from? And why do they look like this (example – “A”) and not like something else? I read an interesting piece on the English alphabet by Richard Nordquist in ThoughtCo.com, where the author gives us quick facts about the English alphabet. Like many of the words we use, the word alphabet comes from two Greek words, ‘alpha and beta’. ‘Alpha’ and ‘beta’ are the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet. These words were taken from Semitic names for the symbols ox (aleph) and house (beth). That makes Semitic one of the oldest languages in the world.
Semitic, Greek, Roman
The original Semitic language had a set of 30 signs. All these were consonants. This alphabet was used in ancient Phoenicia around 1600 B.C. Most scholars believe it is the ancestor of all later alphabets. One exception was perhaps the Korean Hangul script, created in the 15th Century.
Around 1000 B.C., the Greeks adopted the Semitic alphabet. When they found no vowels in it, they converted some of the symbols in the Semitic alphabet into vowel sounds.
Later, the Romans developed their own version of the Greek (or lonic) alphabet. Historians tell us that the Roman alphabet was adopted by the Irish and then reached England sometime during the early period of Old English (5th Century to 12th Century).
In the last 1,000 years, the English alphabet has changed a little. Some of the letters have been deleted, and new functions have been given to some of the old letters.
If you ignore these alterations, our modern English alphabet remains quite similar to the Roman alphabet we inherited from the Irish.
Languages that use the Roman Alphabet
According to Richard Nordquist, some 100 languages have adopted the Roman alphabet. That means nearly 2 billion people across the world use it. Well, it is the world’s most popular script.
In 2004, David Sacks wrote in his book “Letter Perfect”: “There are variations of the Roman alphabet: For example, English employs 26 letters, Finnish, 21: Croatian, 30. But at the core are the 23 letters of ancient Rome. (The Romans did not have J, V, and W.)”
That brings us to the number of sounds. How many sounds are there in the English language? There are more than 40 distinct sounds. These are called phonemes. Forty sounds and 26 letters to represent them? The math doesn’t work out right? So, most letters stand for more than one sound
For example, you know how the consonant “C” works. It is pronounced in three different ways. Check out these words: case. cider, cherish (the last when combined with “h”).
Majuscules and minuscules
The use of capital and small letters (upper and lower case letters) is a unique concept in English. Capital letters are called Majuscules (from Latin ‘majusculus, meaning large). Small or lower-case letters are called Minuscules (from the Latin minusculus’, meaning small).
The combination of majuscules and minuscules in a single language system (the dual alphabet) first appeared in a form of writing named after Emperor Charlemagne (742-814), the “Carolingian minuscule.”
Have you come across a sentence that contains all the 26 letters? Can you form one? If you can, did you know that such sentences have a name? They are called pangrams. The best-known example of a pangram is: ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
Another interesting fact about the English alphabet is that a sentence or a paragraph can be written after deliberately excluding a letter of the alphabet. For example, try writing a short paragraph without the letter “d”. If you do that, the text is called a lipogram.
The best-known example of a lipogram in English, is Ernest Vincent Wright’s novel “Gadsby: Champion of Youth”, published in 1939. It is a story of more than 50,000 words in which the letter “e” does not appear at all. Amazing! And I thought “e” was the most frequently used letter in the English language!
Zed or Zee?
We definitely want to know why the last letter ‘Z” is pronounced in two different ways. Americans say “Zee” and the English, Canadians, Australians and those who speak English in other countries prefer to say “Zed” when they read “Z”.
Here is why. “Zed” is the older pronunciation for the letter “Z”. It came from the older version of the French language. The American “zee” is a dialect form heard in England during the 17th century (perhaps to rhyme with bee (B), dee (D), etc.). It was recognised by Noah Webster in his American Dictionary of the English language (1828).
Why is Z’ the last letter?
No, it wasn’t always pushed to the end. In the Greek alphabet, it came in at a respectable position – number seven. According to Tom McArthur in “The Oxford Companion to the English Language” (1992): “The Romans adopted z later than the rest of the alphabet, since /z/ was not a native Latin sound, adding it at the end of their list of letters and using it rarely.” The Irish and English simply followed the Roman practice of placing “z” last.
Picture Credit : Google