Who first came up with the alphabet? Detailed answer

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Who first came up with the alphabet? Detailed answer

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Who first came up with the alphabet?

The letters of the alphabet are actually symbols of sounds. The letters of the English alphabet are based on the Roman alphabet, which is about 2500 years old. The capital letters almost exactly resemble the Roman letters used in the XNUMXrd century BC. e.

Before the invention of the alphabet, people used drawings to record events or convey messages. The image of several antelopes could mean "here is a good hunt", that is, it was a form of writing. Such "pictorial writing" was widespread in ancient Babylon, Egypt and China.

Over time, pictorial writing has changed. The drawing, instead of just a depiction of the object, began to represent the idea associated with the indicated object. For example, a drawing of a foot could represent the verb "to go." This period of writing is called "ideographic" or "idea-transmitting".

But the problem with such a letter was that the message could be understood differently by different people. Gradually this method changed. The symbols began to correspond to the combination of sounds. For example, if the word "id" meant "hand", the drawing of the hand began to mean the sound "id". Therefore, whenever they wanted to convey the sound "id", they used a drawing of a hand. This stage of writing can be called "syllabic writing".

In Babylon and China, the development of writing did not cross this threshold. The Egyptians created a kind of alphabet by including 24 characters in the drawings, denoting individual sounds or words consisting of one consonant. However, they did not understand the significance of their invention.

About 3500 years ago, the peoples who inhabited the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea made a discovery that brought them closer to creating an alphabet. They realized that the same sign can be used for the same sound in all combinations, so they used a limited number of signs for this purpose. Such signs became the alphabet.

The alphabet began to be used by the ancient Jews and the Phoenicians. The latter passed the alphabet to the Greeks. The ancient Romans adopted the Greek alphabet with some changes and additions. Hence the Latin alphabet was adopted by the inhabitants of Western Europe. This is how the modern alphabet was born.

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

Where did the name of the women's bikini swimsuit come from?

A very open women's bathing suit, consisting of a tight bra and swimming trunks, got its name from the name of the atoll (coral island) Bikini in the Pacific Ocean, on which four days before the presentation of the novelty, the United States conducted nuclear tests.

The advertising slogan that accompanied the release of the new model used the parallels between the name of the previous model, and nuclear disintegration: "Bikini - a divided Atom!".

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