Susanna Viljanen

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Knows Finnish5y
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What is the oldest alphabet still in use today in a living language?
Oldest writing system: Hanzi (the Chinese characters)

Oldest abjad: (consonants only): The Hebrew abjad

Oldest abugida: (consonants + vowel signs): The Brahmic scripts

Oldest true alphabet: The Greek alphabet

Oldest syllabary: The Hiragana

Michał Pietrusiński
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Studied Linguistics & Historical Linguistics at University of Bergen (Graduated
2015)Upvoted by
Nick Nicholas
, PhD in Linguistics from Melbourne University, lectured historical linguistics2y
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Is it true that the Arabic language does not have an alphabet to write to this day?
Technically speaking yes, because the Arabic script is not an alphabet, but an
abjad. There are several other languages that do not use alphabets — Chinese uses
logograms, Japanese combines them with a syllabary, and most scripts from India to
Cambodia are abugidas. All of these are different types of writing that ultimately
serve the same purpose, but differ somewhat in technical approach to such things as
denoting vowels.

EDIT, as requested in the comments:

In an alphabet, technically, each glyph stands for a sound of speech or a phoneme,

at least historically. We know, however, that the evolution of pronunciation often
happened at different, faster pace than the evolution of orthography, hence no
language written with an alphabet nowadays has a 1:1 sound-to-glyph ratio. One of
the examples would be an English word queue, comprising three sounds /kju:/, but
five glypha. Latin, Cyrillic, Greek and Coptic alphabets, as well as Hangul, are
some examples of alphabetic writing.

An abjad is a type of script where the glyphs only mark the consonants. Vowels are
usually inferred from the context or marked through supplementary, non-mandatory
signs that are more akin to the diacritic signs used in the alphabets (such as the
circumflex over e and the grave accent over a in the phrase prêt-à-porter) than to
the full glyphs. Phoenician, Arabic and Hebrew scripts are among the best-known
abjads.

A syllabary contains glyphs that denote a full syllable as per the rules for a
given language. Each glyph denotes one or more sounds as per what is permitted to
be a syllable in a language we are trying to write. For example, the Japanese
Hiragana glyph か denotes the syllable /ka/. Japanese Hiragana and Katakana, as
well as the Cherokee script are some of the known syllabaries.

An abugida is in a way an intermediate step between an alphabet, an abjad and a

syllabary. In an abugida, each glyph denotes primarily a consonant and a ’default’
vowel. If a different vowel sound is needed, the glyph needs to be modified
accordingly to take account for that. Vowels are not separate glyphs, making this
contrast with the alphabet, but are obligatory, contrasting with the abjad. While a
glyph has a multi-sound pronunciation, its form changes predictably based on the
vowel sound, thus contrasting with the syllabary. A well-known abugida is the
Devanagari, used to write Hindi, as well as Khmer and Thai scripts.

Finally, the logographic script gets away with most of the phonetic notation. The
logograms represent words and morphemes instead. Contrary to a frequent assumption,
they are not pictures, however, and usually include some features that allow the
reader to infer the pronunciation, if not in a way obvious to everyone. The most
famous logographic scripts are, of course, the Chinese Hanzi, as well as the
Egyptian hyeroglyphs and the Cuneiform.

Is Arabic the oldest alphabet that is still widely used until now?

Matt Riggsby
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MA Archaeology, Boston University5y
No.

Written Arabic doesn’t really start to emerge until late antiquity, with the
earliest examples showing up around the 5th or 6th century AD. The Roman and Greek
alphabets emerged more than a thousand years before that, though since Greek is
only used for Greek (its Cyrilic variant is a few centuries younger than Arabic
script), it’s arguably not widely used. Aspects of Sanskrit and Chinese writing are
also quite old, though it’s not clear to me just how widespread Sanskrit is outside
of ritual contexts, and Chinese writing is more a combination of syllabary and
ideographic script than an alphabet.

Steven Frederick Baljkas

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B.A. (Honours) in History & French (college major), University of Winnipeg
(Graduated 1992)5y
Hi, Andri! Thank you for the A2A.

Sorry for not answering more promptly. In checking through the answers already
given, I cannot really add anything of importance to what John Cowan and Matt
Riggsby already provided you.

Both John and Matt are correct: the answer to your question (with the correction
that the Kufic Arabic script is technically not an alphabet but an abjad) is no,
Arabic is not the oldest alphabet still used (nor, as Matt added, the oldest abjad;
it is also not older than the oldest abugida still used).

By the way, Andri, and just as a curiosity for you, South Arabian had developed a
quite beautiful (more angular) alphabetic script before the advent of Kufic. I
really wish it had not disappeared from use (if it had not, it would still be
slightly younger than the Hebrew abjad but possibly as old as the Greek alphabet!).

Anyway, here it is for any to admire.

The only minor emendation I would wish to add to John's answer is in his statement
at the end regarding Aramaic.

While it is true that the Modern Hebrew script in use descends from the Samaritan
script (Samaritan < Lat. Samaria < Heb. ‫ שורן‬Shomron, one of the northern kingdoms
in the Biblical era), the Aramaic script used in testamentary eras is not that
difficult for most modern Hebrew speakers to read. Take for example the scroll of
the Book of Isaiah on display in the Shrine of the Scroll. Other than a few
potentially strange letter forms, it is really quite straightforward.

Aramaic as a language, of course, is somewhat different from Hebrew. However,

overall the two were about as closely related as English and Frisian are now, so
with a little effort — and despite some differences in vocabulary — even Aramaic is
understandable.

After all, there is Aramaic in the Hebrew scriptures (or Tanakh, ‫תנך‬, an acronym
for ‫תורה‬, Torah, the Pentateuch or 5 books of Moses + ‫נביים‬, Nevi'im, the books of
the Prophets + ‫כתבים‬, the Ketuvim, the Writings, also called the Hagiographia,
which includes the Books of Psalms and Proverbs). Furthermore, there are even
prayers recited in regular synagogue services still that are in Aramaic, not
Hebrew, including the common prayer offered for the deceased, the Kaddish.

Adam Reisman
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B.A. in Linguistics, University of Southern California5y
No, the Arabic alphabet dates to about the year 400. The Latin, Greek, and Hebrew
alphabets are all much older.

Out of those, the most widely used is the Latin Alphabet, making it the oldest
widely used alphabet in the world.

Note: A minor correction to other answers is that when Arabic and Hebrew are
written with vowels, they are no longer considered Abjads, but complete alphabets.
They are only Abjads in their unvocalized forms.

Matt Riggsby
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Sometimes puts words in a row in exchange for moneyUpvoted by
George Corley
, PhD in Linguistics, University of Wisconsin at Madison2y
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Is it true that the Arabic language does not have an alphabet to write to this day?
By the narrowest of technicalities, yes. In every practical sense, no.

Arabic most emphatically has a fully functional writing system. But different
writing systems are built in different ways. For example, many languages don’t have
alphabets. They have syllabaries (each character represents a syllable) or
logographic writing (each character represents a full word). What Arabic has, as
does Hebrew, is called an abjad. It’s like an alphabet, where each character
represents a single sound, but it doesn’t have vowels. Mind you, Arabic can
represent vowels with diacritical marks, but they’re not full-blown characters.

But that’s a very technical and, arguably, very new analysis. The word “abjad” is
relatively recent, replacing earlier terminologies like “consonontal alphabet.” So
it’s probably best not to insist too hard that Arabic doesn’t have an alphabet.
It’s a very academic point, and putting that forward without adequate explanation
could reasonably be regarded as misleading.
Assistant
Bot
May 3
Arabic is not the oldest alphabet that is still widely used today. The oldest
alphabet that is still in use is generally considered to be the Greek alphabet. The
Greek alphabet has been in use for over 3,000 years and is still used today in
Greece and by many other countries and organizations around the world.

The Arabic alphabet, on the other hand, is much younger, dating back to the 4th
century AD. It is primarily used for writing the Arabic language and is also used
for other languages such as Persian, Urdu, and others. While Arabic is an ancient
script, it is not the oldest alphabet still in use.

Other ancient scripts that are still used in some capacity today include the Hebrew
alphabet, which is used for writing Hebrew and Yiddish, and the Latin alphabet,
which is the basis for many modern scripts including English, Spanish, French, and
many others.

onathan Orr-Stav
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Author of "Aleph Through the Looking Glass"Updated 4y
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What is the oldest alphabet still in use today in a living language?
You’re looking at it. Kind of.

Graphically speaking, the Greek and Roman alphabets are the closest widely used
script* today to the first and original alphabet—the Canaanite aleph-bet adopted by
the Greeks some time in the tenth or ninth century BCE. They dropped a couple of
the original symbols (tet, samekh), and changed the phonetic value of a few others:

heh—which became the vowel E

vav—which became F
ḥet, which became the consonant H;
shin—which became S only)
aleph and ayin—downgrading them from vowel-carriers to carriers of two specific
vowels—/a/ and /o/)
—but otherwise essentially stuck to the original, as nicely demonstrated in this
graffiti inscription made by Canaanites around 1550 BCE, which spells M-T-L-B-O-L-T
(pron. mat leBa’alat = “A gift for the goddess”):

—and in this inspired chart by Matt Baker on the Evolution of the Alphabet:

Other variants of the original Canaanite script—specifically, Hebrew (since the

post-Babylonian exile), Arabic, and all other scripts this side of India, evolved
from the Assyrian alphabet, which was also derived from the Canaanite but diverged
from it graphically much more.

In terms of the alphabet names and function, however, Hebrew and modern-day Aramaic
are the closest equivalents today of the original Canaanite alphabet, as they
retain the same character names and phonetic functions.

*As SJ Thomas points out in the comments, the Samaritans still use a variety of the
original Canaanite alphabet—but they are a very small community within Israel, and
the Samaritan alphabet is arguably no more similar graphically to the original
Canaanite than Greek or Roman.

Michael de Werd
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Studied History at Leiden UniversityUpvoted by
Jonathan Witt
, BA (Hons) Biology & History, Binghamton University (1984) and
John Campbell
, M.A Literature & HistoryUpdated Apr 14
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What is the world's oldest language still spoken today?
Of course it is impossible to say how long a language has been spoken, but we can
answer the question which language that is still spoken today has the longest
written record - in other words: for which we have the oldest proof that is was
used. I think that there two possible candidates for this title.

Egyptian. It the probably the second-oldest recorded language in history. The

oldest texts date from 3200 BC. Although the oldest texts in Sumerian date from the
same period, most scholars believe that Sumerian started to be written earlier.
However, the question is how far we can consider Egyptian a language that is still
spoken. Coptic, the youngest form of Egyptian, was spoken until the 18th Century
AD, but it is still in use as the liturgical language in the Coptic Church. It is
written in the Coptic script which is closely related to the Greek script. So it is
spoken during church services and there are people who learn it. I have studied
both classic Middle Egyptian and Coptic myself. I know of a group of scholars in
Egypt who try to converse in Coptic and it even said that it has been revived
somewhere in Middle Egypt and some families speak in daily life. I am not sure if
this is true and I am rather sceptic about such stories.

A modern Bible in Coptic with explanations in Arabic.

Greek. The oldest surviving texts in an Archaic form of Greek were found on Crete
in a script called Linear B and date from the 15th Century BC, which makes it the
oldest written Indo-European language after Hittite, that has died out over 3000
years ago. After the so-called dark centuries Greek reappeared as a written
language in the 8th Century and flourished with authors like Homer and Hesiod. From
then on it was written in the Greek script that is still in use today. I have
studied both Ancient and Modern Greek and I can confirm that it has changed a lot
over the course of time. However it is still recognizable as the same language.

Kutluk Ozguven
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Studied Linguistics at University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology
(UMIST) (Graduated 1900)5y
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What language script (Arabic, Latin, Hebrew, etc.) is the oldest?
All three are derivatives of the Old Semitic phonetic alphabet developed in Sinai
and the Levant during the early Iron Age. It was inspired by the Egyptian Hieratic
script, was intended for writing on paper with ink, took the first sound of the
word the letter looked like such as alef (cow), bet (house), gimal (camel), and
spread by the seafaring businesslike Phoenicians to Italy, Greece, Syria, Arabia
and Iraq.

The simple phonetic practicality of the invention made it adopted over older
scripts intended for non-paper media such as the Cuneiform of the Middle East or
Linear-B variants of Greece, Crete and Asia Minor.
Arabic script in its present form was standardised around late 7th century but
continued to have artistic and bureucratic variants even as late as 19th century.
(A geometric Kufic and Ottoman Siyakat are basically the same script but look
unrelated.) However it is known that Arabic was used centuries before in differing
variants of the Old Semitic script in Arabia Felix.

Hebrew probably adopted the Phoenician from early times as they were neighbouring
civilisations but probably the standardisation was not before the Persian conquest
of the Middle East following the Babylonian exile. Arabic and Hebrew scripts look
very different but are in fact similar in basic form.

Latin script was based on existing Italian versions of the Phoenician influenced by
the Greek version. It was used widely during the fourth century and later Cato the
Elder led the movement of promoting Latin as the prestige language over Greek or
already disappearing Etruscan in Rome, which was originally an Etrurian settlement.

So all three scripts emerged around the middle of the first millenium BCE in close
periods but found their standardised forms much later, in the timeline order of
Hebrew > Latin > Arabic.

Regarding what is the oldest script, it is the Cuneiform script based on Sumerian
language which were ideograms representing word roots and grammaticalised affixes,
developed for carving symbols on soft clay which was baked for duration, developed
in the 4th millennium BCE, adopted by Ebla and Akkadian peoples for their Semitic
languages in the 3rd millennium BCE, and in the 2nd millennium BCE the script of
the common diplomatic language of the world Akkadian.

Frans du Plessis
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Studied History of Religion & Comparative ReligionUpdated 6y
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Is Hebrew the world's oldest alphabet?
Is Hebrew the world's oldest alphabet?

No.

I am referring to the new book The World's Oldest Alphabet: Hebrew As the Language
of the Proto-consonantal Script: Douglas Petrovich: 9789652208842: Amazon.com:
Books. How reliable is the information in the book?

It is not reliable. The two main arguments in the book (Hebrew as the oldest
alphabet and evidence for the Exodus from Egypt around 1450 BCE) are rejected by
both religious and non-religious scholars, and the arguments are contradicted by
evidence from archaeology and written records.

Does it really represent new evidence for the Exodus?

No. The argument that certain stone tablets were written in Hebrew is new, but is
has been pointed out for decades that these stone tablets could have been written
in any of a number of Semitic languages.

Longer answer:

There are a number languages that are older than Hebrew, including Chinese,
Egyptian and Sumerian languages, and even other older Semitic languages similar to
Hebrew.
For example, the Canaanite Semitic language called Ugaritic is older than Hebrew,
and we have a wealth of evidence that the Israelite culture, religion and language
have evolved from Canaanite culture, polytheism and language. For more detail about
the Ugaritic language and the Ugarit texts, see:

Frans du Plessis's answer to What books still in circulation are older than the
Bible?

As for the Ugaritic language, scholars have done detailed studies and comparison
between the Ugarit texts and the Hebrew Bible. Ugaritic is an older language than
Biblical Hebrew, but it is not a totally different language. Ugaritic is older than
Biblical Hebrew by a few centuries, in the same way that Shakespearean English is
older than modern English by a few centuries. Like modern English has gradually
evolved from Shakespearean English with many external influences, Biblical Hebrew
has evolved from Ugaritic, but it is different enough so that some of the meanings
of words have changed, and so that we do not understand some of the words.

Here is a 5 minute clip by Dr. David Neiman, renowned scholar in the fields of
Biblical Studies and Jewish History, describing the Ugaritic language and its
relationship to Biblical Hebrew:

As for the book The World’s Oldest Alphabet by Petrovich, I have recently read part
of it, as well as some reviews of it by scholars.

Two main arguments in the book go hand in hand:

Petrovich argues that certain stone tablets contain Hebrew from around 1450 BCE and
older.
He also argues that some of the stone tablets contain evidence that the Exodus from
Egypt happened around 1450 BCE.
Scholars point out two major problems with the assertions in his book:

Firstly, his "evidence", in the form of stone tablets is not new evidence. This
image shows one of the tablets on the left, while the drawing of the same tablet on
the right have Hebrew characters (in green) added by Petrovich, which he argues are
the equivalent Hebrew characters:

However, scholars have pointed out for many decades that these tablets can be in
any one of a number of Semitic languages. According to Semitic language specialist
and biblical scholar Christopher Rollston of George Washington University:

Petrovich's Hebrew identification for the ancient inscriptions is starved for

evidence. [...] There is no way to tell which of many Semitic languages are
represented by the early alphabetic system.

The second major problem with Petrovich's book is that he uses the stone tablets as
evidence that the Exodus happened around 1450 BCE. Petrovich's arguments in this
regard are similar to the arguments in a recent documentary, called Patterns of
Evidence: Exodus, which places the Exodus around 1450 BCE. This is not a new idea,
but a rehash of old ideas which has already been rejected by all but the most
conservative of scholars, because of the numerous problems, contradictions and
anachronisms created by such a date.

Patterns of Evidence has been discredited as disingenuous by scholars, because it

starts out with a scholarly façade of taking an unbiased look at the evidence, by
giving people with different opinions a say in the video, and then proceeding to
"conclude" that the best evidence points to a date of 1450 BCE. In reality, there
is reason to believe, also from the web site of the creators of the documentary,
that their motivation in the first place was to set out to place the Exodus around
1450 BCE, and that they did not follow the evidence where it took them, as
indicated in their documentary (see review below).

Like Patterns of Evidence, Petrovich's book is one of those attempts reminiscent of

the old days when archaeology in the Levant was still called "biblical
archaeology": archaeologists went to the field with a spade in one hand and the
Bible in the other (figuratively speaking), looking for confirmation of the
narratives in the Bible and making fit what they find as "evidence" for the
narratives, in the process allowing their confirmation biases to cause them to see
evidence where there is none. Modern archaeology and scholarship does not work like
that, but it employs a much more scientific approach.

Below is a review of Patterns of Evidence by James F. McGrath, Professor of

Religious Studies at Butler University. Following the links in the article provides
a thorough rebuttal of the documentary. This criticism applies equally to a book
like that of Petrovich, which uses the same arguments:

Patterns of Evidence: Exodus

I would, however, not describe Petrovich’s arguments as disingenuous, like the

Patterns of Evidence documentary. I think his book is more a case of the kind of
literature that we frequently see in apologetics: somebody really wants something
to be true, and in the process they are deceived by their own unconscious
confirmation biases. I think the choice of the title of his book by his publishers
is intentionally more provocative than intended by Petrovich himself.

Having said that, the problems with The World’s Oldest Alphabet and the problems
with Patterns of Evidence are the same. If is was a simple case of lack of
evidence, one could say that the arguments against the historic validity of the
Exodus narrative is an argument from silence, because absence of evidence is not
necessarily evidence of absence. However, the problem with the Exodus narrative,
and in fact with the entire narrative about the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob), the Egyptian enslavement, the Exodus, the forty year wandering of the Sinai
and the seven year military conquest of Canaan, is threefold:

We indeed do not have a single item of direct evidence for these narratives.
In addition to that, many parts of the narratives have been contradicted and
obliterated by a wealth of archaeological evidence, written records and the
anachronisms created by the narratives.
Finally, we also have a wealth of archaeological evidence and written records which
tells us a story about the origins of the Israelites which is very different from
what the Bible would have us believe. Instead of outsiders who have conquered
Canaan by force through a short seven year military campaign, the Israelites were
Canaanites who have simply emerged from the local late Bronze Age Canaanite
population, who have settled mostly peacefully in the highlands over a much longer
period of time, and who have evolved their culture, language and religion from
Canaanite culture, language and polytheism into a unique identity. The narratives
appear to be a fictional history that was created for the Israelites during the
reign of King Josiah in the seventh century BCE, the result of political ambition
and a rather successful tribal survival strategy, during a period of strife for the
Israelite nation.
I have described this in much more detail here:

Frans du Plessis's answer to Do we have extra-biblical evidence for the origins of

the Israelites?

In summary, if you would accept Petrovich’s arguments as evidence for the Exodus
narrative happening around 1450 BCE, then you also have to deal with a multitude of
anachronisms, archaeological evidence and written records which contradict such a
date.

EDIT (added in response to a comment):

So what is the big problem with the exodus happening in 1450BC? Surely this book is
additional proof that the exodus happened. […] there are historians who see it as a
viable date.

There is a multitude of problems with the date of 1450 BCE for the Exodus, which I
have discussed in more detail in the answer mentioned above my previous paragraph.

Here is just one problem:

For more than 300 years, past 1450 BCE and until the beginning of the 12th century
BCE, Egypt was a very strong empire and Canaan was a province of Egypt, with
Egyptian soldiers enforcing strict control of the Canaanite city states:

Joshua is said to have conquered thirty Canaanite city states during the seven year
military campaign. However, the Egyptian army would have easily prevented the
Israelites from attacking the Canaanite city states, yet the presence of the
Egyptians in Canaan is not even mentioned in the exodus or conquest narrative in
the Bible, neither is the military campaign or hostile actives of the Israelites
mentioned at all in Egyptian records.

Another problem is the strong featuring of the Phillistines in the southwest of

Canaan during the conquest narrative, yet we know beyond doubt from archaeology and
Egyptian records that the Phillistines only settled on the southwestern
Mediterranean coast during the Bronze Age collapse from 1200 BCE onwards.

These are just two major problems pointed out by scholars, but there are many more,
which I discuss in my answer mentioned above.

Even the vast majority of religious scholars reject 1450 BCE as a possible date for
the Exodus. They do that, because the exodus, the forty year wandering of the Sinai
and the seven year military conquest of Canaan as told in the Bible, simply could
not have happened during the 15th century BCE. The problems with such a date is
insurmountable. That is why scholars, including religious scholars, try to propose
other dates.

It is only the most conservative of religious scholars who insist on a date of 1450
BCE, and they simply ignore the problems created by the proposal of such a date.
People who insist on that date are either genuinely ignorant about the history of
the Levant and Egypt, and about the wealth of evidence which tells us that the
exodus simply could not have happened during the 15th century BCE, or they are
disingenuous because they have an agenda.

People who insist on that date have the same mindset as people who insist that the
earth is 6000 years old. They are either disingenuous or else they are totally
ignorant of a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Knowledgable scholars simply do
not take them seriously.