A word "alphabet" itself comes from either alpha and beta, the 1st 2 symbols of the Greek alphabet. There are 12 of alphabets around have now. Virtually all of the babies come 'linear', which means that they are manufactured higher of lines. Notable exceptions are the Braille alphabet, Morse Code and the cuneiform alphabet of the ancient city of Ugarit. Types

Among segmental scripts (that is, scripts that apply the separate glyph for every phoneme, unremarkably known as "alphabets"), 1 can distinguish abjads, which only record consonants and were first developed per Egyptians as part of their hieroglyphic script; true alphabets which record consonants & vowels separately, 1st developed per Greeks; and abugidas, in which a vowels come indicated by diacritical marks or even orderly modification of the form of the consonants, number one developed per Indians. Examples of present-contemporary abjads come a Arabic and Hebrew scripts; true alphabets include Latin, Cyrillic, and Korean Hangul; and abugidas come utilized to write Ethiopic, Hindi, and Thai. A Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics are also an abugidthe like than the syllabic script, when the glyph stands for a consonant & is rotated to represent the vowel, like than for each one consonant-vowel combination existence represented by a separate glyph, as inside a admittedly syllabic script.

A boundaries between these trine types are non universally clear-cut. For instance, Iraqi Kurdish is written in the Arabic script, which is normally an abjad. Notwithstanding, inside Kurdish, writing a vowels is required, & fully letters come utilized, thus a script occurs as admittedly alphabet. More languages might apply the Semitic abjad by having compulsory vowel diacritical mark, profits making the babies abugidas. Then again, a Phagspa script of the Mongol Empire was based closely on the Tibetan abugida, but whole vowel marks were written fallowing a retiring consonant like than when diacritical marks. Although short the wwhen does'nt written, as in the abugidas, a single can argue that the linear arrangement manufactured this a avowedly alphabet. On a other hand, the vowel marks of the Ethiopic abugida have been so entirely assimilated into their consonants that a patterns is learned as a syllabary rather than as a segmental script. Potentially other extreme, a Pahlavi abjad became logographic. (View following.)

So a primary classification of alphabets reflects how else it deal with vowels. Farther classification may be according to tone, though there are up to now there is no list to distinguish a various types. a select few alphabets only forget about tone totally, especially whilst it doesn't carry a heavily functional batch, when within area of Africa & the Americas. Such scripts come to tone what abjads come to vowels. Virtually all normally, tones come indicated by having diacritical mark, a way vowels come treated within abugidas. This is the instance for Vietnamese (a avowedly alphabet) & Thai (an abugida). Within Thai, tone is determined primarily per selection of consonant, by using diacritical mark for disambiguation. In the Pollard script (an abugida), vowels are indicated by diacritical mark, however a placement of a vowel relative to the consonant indicates the tone. Thomwhen more seldom, the script have had separate letters for the tones, as is the outbreak for Hmong and Zhuang. Irrespective of whether letters or even diacritical mark come utilized, a usual tone might non exist as marked, even as a usual vowel is non marked around Indic abugidas.

Alphabets may be quite little. A Book Pahlavi script, an abjad, had merely 12 letters at one point, & will will have potentially fewer afterwards. In todays world a Rotokas alphabet alphabet has only xii letters. (A Hawaiian alphabet is sometimes claimed to become when microscopic, however it actually consists of Xviii letters, including a Ê»okina and five hanker vowels.) When Rotokas has the little alphabet because it has pack phonemes to represent (only eleven), Book Pahlavi was little because numbers of letters got been conflated, that is, a graphic distinctions got been misused on top instance, & diacritical mark were non developed to compensate for this when it were around Arabic, another script that misused numbers of of its distinct letter shapes. E.g., the comma-shaped letter represented g, d, y, k, & j. Still, such simplifications might perversely produce the script additional complicated. Around later on Pahlavi papyri, up to half of a left over graphic distinctions were misused, & the script may there is no protracted become see when a sequence of letters the least bit, however got to become learned as word symbols – that is, when logograms like Egyptian Demotic.

A big segmental script is probably an abugida, Devanagari. Whilst written around Devanagari, Vedic Sanskrit has an alphabet of 53 letters, including the visarga mark for final aspiration & favorite letters for kš & jñ, though one of a letters is theoretical & non actually utilized. A Hindi alphabet must represent two Sanskrit & modern vocabulary, and then has been expanded to 58 by having a khutma letters (letters by owning the dot added to represent sounds from either Persian & English).

A big known abjad is Sindhi, with 51 letters. A big confessedly alphabets include Kabardian and Abxaz (for Cyrillic), with 58 & 56 letters, severally, & Slovak (for the Latin alphabet), with 46. Notwithstanding, these scripts either include di- & tri-graphs, similar to Spanish ch, or even diacritics, like Slovak č. A big avowedly alphabet in which from each one letter is graphically independent is probably Georgian, with 41 letters.

Syllabic script usually include 50 to 400 glyphs (though a Múra-Pirahã language of Brazil would require single Xxiv in case tone were non indicated, & Rotokas 30), & a glyphs of logogrammatic systems total from either a hundreds to a hundreds to thousands. So the elementary count of the total of distinct symbols is an crucial clue to the nature and severity of an unknown script.

These are non universally clear what is the distinct alphabet. French uses the equivalent basic alphabet when English, however several of the letters could carry diacritic and other marks (for even instance, é, à or ô). Inside French, these marks are non considered to produce extra letters. Yet, inside Icelandic, the accented letters (like á, í & ö) come considered distinct letters of the alphabet. A few adaptations of the Latin alphabet come augmented sustaining ligatures, such as æ in Old English and Ȣ in Algonquin; by borrowings from other alphabets, such as the thorn þ in Old English and Icelandic, which came from the Futhark runes; and by modifying existing letters, such as the eth ð of Old English and Icelandic, which came from d. More alphabets sole utilise the subset of the Latin alphabet, like Hawaiian, or even Italian, which only utilizes a letters k, x,& w for foreign words.

Spelling

Apiece language will establish certain general system that govern a association between letters & phonemes, however, based on the language, these system could or even might not become systematically followed. Within the perfectly phonological alphabet, the phonemes & letters would correspond perfectly within 2 directions: the writer may predict the spelling of the word given its pronunciation, & a speaker may predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling. But, languages typically develop independently of their orthography, & orthography use been borrowed for languages it were non designed for, & then the degree to which letters of an alphabet correspond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from either one language to a second and potentially in a single language.

Languages will fail to achieve the 1-to-1 correspondence between letters & sounds in any of many ways:

The language might represent the given phoneme by using the combination of letters like than merely one letter. 2-letter combinations come known as digraphs and 3-letter groups come known as trigraphs. utilizes the tesseragraph (quaternity letters) for one of its phonemes. a language might represent the equivalent phoneme by owning 2 different letters or even combinations of letters. The language might spell a few words sustaining unpronounced letters that survive for even historical or more reasons. Pronunciation of single words will vary based on datthe from a presence of surrounding words within a phrase. Different accent of the language might pronounce different phonemes for the equivalent word. a language will utilise different sets of symbols or even different system for distinct sets of vocabulary things (like the Japanese hiragana and katakana syllabaries, or even a various rule out English for spelling words from either Latin & Greek, or a original Germanic vocabulary.

National languages usually elect to location a condition of idiom by just associating a alphabet by owning a national standard. But, by owning international languages by owning wide variations within its accent, like , it would become impossible to represent a language altogether its variations sustaining one phonetic alphabet.

Occasionally national languages prefer , within which the spelling of several words only hwhen to become memorized as it don't correspond to sounds in a uniform way. For English, this is because a Great Vowel Shift occurred after the writing system was established, & because English has acquired a heavy total of loan at different days retaining their original spelling at variable levels. Nonetheless, possibly English has general system that predict pronunciation from either spelling, & these system come successful virtually all of the period.

the sounds of speech of completely languages of the globe may be written by a like little universal phonetic alphabet. The standard for this is the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Collation

An alphabet too serves to establish an the correct sequence among letters that may be utilized for sorting entries within lists, known as collating. Note that a the correct sequence doesn't stand to become constant among different languages utilizing this alphabet; e.g. understand Latin alphabet: Collating in other languages.

Inside recent years a Unicode initiative has attempted to collate most of the globe's known orthography into one character encoding. Too when its primary purpose of standardising computer processing of non-Roman scripts, the Unicode task has provided a focus for script-related scholarship.

History and diffusion

Look at History of the alphabet

A virtually all popular alphabet inside utilize now is the 26-letter Latin alphabet utilized, sustaining a few modification, for virtually all of the languages of the European Union, a Americas, Subsaharan Africa, & the islands of the Pacific Ocean: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, French, Turkish, German, Javanese, Vietnamese, Italian, Polish, Hausa, Swahili, Filipino, etc. Around modern usage, a term Latin alphabet is utilized for any straight-forward derivation of the alphabet utilized per Romans. These variants might drop letters (Hawaiian) or add letters (Czech) to or from either a definitive Roman script, & course numerous letter shapes keep close at hand changed on top a centuries — like a lower-out break letters wise shoppers're reading okay,, which a Romans would non use recognized.

A default Latin alphabet is the Roman, supplemented by using J, U, W, & lower-out break variants:

Extra letters can be formed when ligatures, as W was from either VV, e.g. ash Æ from AE, oethel Œ from OE, eszett ß from SZ, engma ŋ from NG, ou Ȣ from OU, Ñ from NN, or Ç from CZ; by diacritical mark, like Ã…, Č, Ų; when digraphs, such as IJ and Ll; by modification, when J was from either I personally, like Ø, eth Ã?, yogh Ȝ from G, and schwa Ə from either A or E; or can possibly become borrowed from either a second alphabet completely, when thorn Þ and wynn Ƿ were from Futhark.

But, these glyphs are non universally considered independent letters of the alphabet. E.g., inside English æ is considered the graphic variant of ae like than the separate letter, when inside Danish and Norwegian it is a admittedly letter, & is positioned at a prevent of the alphabet along using ø & aa/å.

The Alphabet Effect

A few communication theoretician (notably people associated sustaining a and so-supposed "Toronto school of communications", like Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis and more recently Robert K. Logan) have advanced hypotheses to the effect that alphabetic scripts in particular have served to promote and encourage the skills of analysis, coding, decoding, and classification. This placed of hypotheses can be referred to as "the Alphabet effect", fallowing a title of Logan's 1986 work.

the theory claims that a greater level of abstraction is required due to the greater economy of symbols around alphabetic systems; & this abstraction needed to interpret phonemic symbols successively has contributed in some manner to the development of the societies which let it run. Advocate of this theory hang in to that the development of alphabetic (when distinct to more types of) orthography has processed a important impact on "Western" thought & development because it introduced the freshly level of abstraction, analysis, & classification. McLuhan & Logan (1977) postulates that, following one skills, a utilize of the alphabet created an environment tributary to the development of statute law, monotheism, abstract science, deductive logic, objective history, & individualism. Based on data from Logan, "All of these innovations, including the alphabet, arose within the very narrow geographic zone between the Tigris-Euphrates river system and the Aegean Sea, and within the very narrow time frame between 2000 B.C. and 500 B.C." (Logan 2004).

Nonetheless, numerous one abstractions foremost occurred inside societies which did non apply an alphabet, like a statute law of Hammurabi in Babylonia, which predated similar codes in societies by using a alphabet. Since a alphabet quickly spread to turn into about omnipresent, these are hard to trace drive & outcome therein matter.