 Western began their writing with Cuneiform and ideograms

 The Modern Writing started in Egyptian Hieroglyphs

 Jean François Champollion (1822)
- Hieroglyphs translator
- used names to decipher hieroglyphic symbols
- He assumed that hieroglyphs were a mix of ideograms and
phonetic signs
THE EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS
 Hieroglyphic signs included alphabetic symbols for consonants
 Only consonants were written. But ideographic determinatives were
added to clarify the meaning of a word.
PHONECIAN ALPHABET

 From Egypt, the alphabet was passed to Phoenicia (eastern

Mediterranean seaboard). It contains the names ‘aleph, beth, gimel” and
is the Greek names for letters: alpha, beta, gamma, delta came
 It has the “Semitic Alphabets” which only uses consonants to spell a
word. e.g. JHWH means Jehovah, Jahweh

GREEK ALPHABET
 The greeks added new letters at the end of the alphabet which are the p, r, s, t

ROMAN ALPHABET
 The Etruscans (from Greek) were the first people in Italy to use the alphabet. They also gave
romans an alphabet although romans, adapted it to fit latin

MEDIEVAL ALPHABET
 There are a few changes dues to low literacy rate of the people. The
changes made were:
a. I and J were separated
b. U, V, W were next to each other
TIMELINE

 4,000 years ago

- the early alphabetic writing started.
- According to Scholars, alphabetic writing developed between 1800-
1900 BC in Egypt from Proto-Sinaitic (Proto-Canaanite) form of
writing that was not very well known.
 About 700 years after
 - the Phoenicians developed an alphabet. It was widely used in the
Mediterranean, Southern Europe, North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula
and the Levant.
- The alphabet was made up of 22 letters, all of the consonants.
 750 BC
- Greeks added vowels to the Phoenician alphabet. The combination
was regarded as the initial true alphabet.
- Romans seized this and added the S and F, an Etruscan characters
 3rd Century
- ancient Latin script removed the letters G, J, V/U, W, Y and Z
- When the Romans ruled the world, they introduced their Roman
Alphabet. Although, letters J, U/V and W were still excluded
 16 Century
th

- The start of the Modern Alphabet with 26 letters. It had influences

from Semitic, Phoenician, Greek and Roman scripts

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Majuscules and Minuscules

 Majuscules- from the latin word “Majusculus” means large, and are the
Capital Letters
 Minuscules- from a latin word “minusculus” means small) are lower-case
letters.
The combination of majuscules and minuscules in a single system (the so-
called dual alphabet) first appeared in a form of writing named after
Emperor Charlemagne (742-814), Carolingian minuscule.
Pangrams
- A Sentence that contains 26 letters
- Ex: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
"Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs."
Lipograms
- A text in which a letter from the alphabet did not exist
- Ex: Ernest Vincent Wright's novel Gadsby: Champion of Youth (1939)
>> a story of more than 50,000 words but the letter e never appears.