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The earliest certain ancestor of “A� is aleph, the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet. In turn, the origin of aleph may have been a pictogram of an ox head in proto-Sinaitic script influenced by Egyptian hieroglyphs, styled as a triangular head with two horns extended.
The capital letter ‘B’ may have started as a pictogram of the floorplan of a house in Egyptian hieroglyphs. By 1050 BC, the Phoenician alphabet’s letter beth had a linear form.
‘C’ comes from the same letter as ‘G’. The Semites named it gimel. The sign is possibly adapted from an Egyptian hieroglyph for a staff sling.
The Semitic letter D창let may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this.
The Latin letter ‘E’ differs little from its derivational source, the Greek letter epsilon. In etymology, the Semitic hĂŞ has been suggested to have
a praying or calling human figure. started as
The origin of ‘F’ is the Semitic letter vâv (or waw) that represented a sound like /v/ or /w/. Graphically it originally probably depicted either a hook or a club. It may have been based on a comparable Egyptian hieroglyph such as that which represented the word mace.
The letter ‘G’ was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ‘C’ (boomerang) to distinguish voiced /g/ from voiceless /k/.
The Semitic letter ‘h’ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative. The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts.
In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to /j/ (as in English “yes�) by Semites, because their word for arm began with that sound.
The letter ‘J’ originated as a swash letter long (/-)i (arm), used for the letter ‘i’ at the end of Roman numerals when following another ‘i’, as in ‘xxiij’ instead of ‘xxiii’ for the Roman numeral representing 23.
K is the 11th letter of the English alphabet. The letter K comes from the letter k (kappa), which was taken from the Semitic kap, the symbol for an open hand.
Lamedh may have come from a pictogram of an ox goad or cattle prod. Some have suggested a shepherd’s staff.
The letter M is derived from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu. Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water.
One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like the English <J>, because the Egyptian word for â&#x20AC;&#x153;snakeâ&#x20AC;? was djet.
Its graphic form has remained fairly constant from Phoenician times until today. The name of the Phoenician letter was eyn, meaning â&#x20AC;&#x153;eyeâ&#x20AC;?, and indeed its shape originates simply as a drawing of a human eye.
The Semitic name for the letter P is pe, meaning “mouth”. Those studying Egyptian mythology might be interested to know that the Semitic word pe is related to an ancient mummification ritual that was known as “the opening of the mouth”
The origin of qoph is uncertain. It is usually suggested to have originally depicted either a sewing
specifically the eye of a needle, or the back of a head and neck. According to an older suggestion, it may also have been a picture of a monkey and its tail. needle,
The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, “head”. It was used for /r/ by Semites because in their language, the word for “head” was rê.
Semitic în (“teeth”) represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative /f/ (as in ‘ship’). Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent /s/.
Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets. The sound value of Semitic Taw, Greek alphabet Tau, Old Italic and Latin T has remained fairly constant, representing [t] in each of these; and it has also kept its original basic shape in all of these alphabets.
The oldest direct ancestor of English letter Y was the Semitic
In Modern English, there is also some historical influence from the old English letter yogh, which developed from Semitic gimel. letter waw, from which also come F, U, V, and W.
The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details.
In Greek, the letter upsilon ‘Y’ was adapted from waw to represent, at first, the vowel [u] as in “moon”.
The sounds /w/ and /b/ of Classical Latin developed into a bilabial fricative /w/ between vowels in Early Medieval Latin. It is from this (uu) digraph that the modern name â&#x20AC;&#x153;double Uâ&#x20AC;? derives.
M
In Ancient Greek, ‘X’ and ‘M’ (derived from fish) were among several variants of the same letter, used originally for / kh/ and later, in western areas such as Arcadia, as a simplification of the digraph ‘XM’ for /ks/.
The oldest direct ancestor of English letter Y was the Semitic letter waw, from which also come F, U, V, and W. See F for details (gimel). The Greek and Latin alphabets developed from the Phoenician form of this early alphabet.
The Semitic symbol was the seventh letter, named zayin which possibly meant â&#x20AC;&#x153;weaponâ&#x20AC;?.
REFERANCE
1 Michael Everson, Evertype, Baldur Sigurðsson, Íslensk Málstöð, On the Status of the Latin Letter Þorn and of its Sorting Order
2 Beker, Henry; Piper, Fred (1982). Cipher Systems: The Protection of Communications. WileyInterscience. p. 397. Table also available from Lewand, Robert (2000). Cryptological Mathematics. The Mathematical Association of America. p. 36. ISBN 978-0883857199.
3 Hall-Quest, Olga Wilbourne (1997). “A”. In Johnston, Bernard. Collier’s Encyclopedia. I: A to Ameland (First ed.). New York, NY: P.F. Collier.
4 Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E.S.C., eds. (1989). “A”. The Oxford English Dictionary. I: A-Bazouki (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-861213-3.
5 Hoiberg, Dale H., ed. (2010). “A”. Encyclopædia Britannica. 1: A-ak—Bayes. Chicago, IL: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. ISBN 978-1-59339-837-8.