What is the alphabet, its meaning and history

Since ancient times, people tried to communicate with each other to survive.Thus began to form tribes, tribal groups, and then nations.Our ancestors with each decade more and more evolved and at one point decided to invent something that would help fix his thoughts on stones, papyri.It is about the alphabet.When it first appeared?As it developed and compiled?And what is an alphabet?We will understand right now.

first semblance of the alphabet in the conventional sense of the word began to Egyptian hieroglyphics, which were carved on the inner walls of the tombs of noble members of society, as well as inside churches.But these characters represent more pictures than letters, because many of them depicted concrete objects.The basis for writing in ancient times was the invention of some 4,000 years ago, Phoenician alphabet.Phoenician alphabet became the basis for many other languages ​​of the people who were contemporaries of this civilization: the Greeks, Romans and others.

Why is the alphabet is so important?This invention helped organize the sounds that a person is able to issue and to express them in the form of certain characters, and that will mean these sounds.To summarize, what is the alphabet.Alphabet - a set of symbols arranged in a certain order, and embody the sounds uttered by man on paper.

In today's world, every nation has its own alphabet, but some of the letters may overlap.This trend is particularly common in neighboring countries or from countries whose official languages ​​are descended from a common ancestor.For example, the alphabets of many European countries were formed from the Latin language and related dialects, so they can meet a lot of similarities both in writing and in the pronunciation of the letters.

traced an interesting pattern: in any languages ​​according to several times more than the vowels.An example of this fact can serve as the alphabet in English.In it the 26 letters, of which only six can sing, that is, denoting vowels.

Many people wonder why the majority of the peoples of the East, Southeast and Central Asia, knowing what alphabet not made your own or equivalent, based on the existing alphabet?The answer is simple - from the earliest times of their system of writing was based on hieroglyphs, each meant for a specific word or phrase.But these characters are significantly different from those of a few thousand years ago, Egyptians used.Their signs were mostly pictures, had a certain value.Hieroglyphics as modern nations - a composition of lines of varying thickness and length, but they are not drawings.

So, the history of letters and symbols has many hundreds of years.It shows all changes that preceded the development of writing, and tells of the appearance of the ancient languages ​​of which formed the modern alphabet.Therefore, knowing what alphabet, you will be able to discover the history of their own alphabet and its people as a whole.