Since ancient times, people have sought to communicate with each other in order to survive. Thus began the formation of tribes, groups of tribes, and then peoples. Every decade our ancestors developed more and more and at one fine moment decided to invent something that would help fix their thoughts on stones, papyrus. It's about the alphabet. When did she first appear? How did you develop and compose? Yes, and what is the alphabet? Let's figure it out right now.
The first similarity of the alphabet in the generally accepted sense of the word was
Egyptian hieroglyphs, which were carved on the inner walls of the tombs of noble representatives of society, as well as inside churches. But these symbols represented pictures rather than letters, because many of them depicted specific objects. The basis of
written speech in antiquity was the Phoenician alphabet invented about 4000 years ago. The Phoenician alphabet became the basis for the languages of many other peoples who were contemporaries of this civilization: Greeks, Romans and some others.
Why is alphabet so important? This invention made it possible to systematize the sounds that a person is able to make, and express them in the form of certain symbols, which will mean these sounds. To summarize what the alphabet is. An alphabet is a set of characters arranged in a specific order and personifying sounds made by a person on paper.
In the modern world, every nation has its own alphabet, but some letters may coincide. This trend is especially often observed in neighboring states or in countries whose official languages are descended from one common ancestor. So, for example, the alphabets of many European states were formed from the Latin language and its related dialects, therefore, you can find many similar in both writing and pronunciation of letters.
There is an interesting pattern: in any language there are several times more consonants than vowels. An example of this fact is the alphabet of the English language. It has 26 letters, of which only 6 can be sung, that is, indicating vowel sounds.
Many people are wondering why most of the peoples of East, Southeast and Central Asia, knowing what the alphabet is, did not compose their own or an analogue based on the existing alphabet? The answer is simple - since ancient times, their writing system was built on hieroglyphs, each of which meant a specific word or expression. But these symbols are significantly different from those that were used by the Egyptians several thousand years ago. Their signs were mostly pictures that had a certain meaning. The hieroglyphs of modern peoples are compositions from lines of different thicknesses and lengths, but they are not drawings.
So, the history of letters and symbols dates back many hundreds of years. It illustrates all the changes that preceded the development of writing, and talks about the emergence of ancient languages, from which modern alphabets were formed. Therefore, knowing what the alphabet is, you can discover the history of your own alphabet and your people as a whole.