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by Roger Kovaciny on November 1st, 2006
Writing proceeded in stages. First of course were pictures, and then pictures took on symbolic meaning and became ideographs. The pictures became stylized, and half of a picture might be used for a syllable that was half of the word. Some nameless genius, don't know when but almost certainly in Phoenicia (modern Palestine/Israel) thought of the idea of using some of those syllable-pictures as just the first sound of the syllable. We can be sure of this because in the Phoenician/Hebrew alphabet, the names of letters have actual meanings, and in their old form the letters look like what they depict.
There are many alphabets today, but the IDEA of having an alphabet was invented only once and has been copied by everyone else. This is why in most alphabets most of the letters are in the same general order.
by Mini_kilt on November 1st, 2006
The history of the alphabet starts in ancient Egypt. By 2700 BCE Egyptian writing had a set of some 22 hieroglyphs to represent syllables that begin with a single consonant of their language, plus a vowel (or no vowel) to be supplied by the native speaker. These glyphs were used as pronunciation guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections, and, later, to transcribe loan words and foreign names.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet#History
by TheAnswerer on November 1st, 2006
The origin of writing is full of riddles, and the most puzzling of all is that of the alphabet. No one knows who invented the first alphabet or where it first origininated.
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Comments
The Phoeniciens invented the alphabet and gave it to the greeks, the Greeks added the vowels,
Correction to the above Phoenicia is present day Lebanon, capital of Phoenicia is Byblos, other famous towns are
Tyre, Saida... Tyre is the city that gave us queen Elisa that created the famous Carthage.
by Sybaco on January 6th, 2011
The alphabet was first created by Phoenicians they gave it To the Greeks they added the vowels and modern day
Phoenicia is Lebanon the capital of Phoenicia was Byblos the residence of Ahiram also home to famous cities such as Saida, Tyre that gave us queen Elisa that escaped Tyre and settled in north Africa that became Carthage, (please read, Hannibal, Carthage, Elisa,)
by Sybaco on January 6th, 2011