alphabet [Gr. alpha-beta, like Eng. ABC], system of writing, theoretically having a one-for-one relation between character (or letter) and phoneme (see phonetics). Few alphabets have achieved the ideal exactness. A system of writing is called a syllabary when one character represents a syllable rather than a phoneme; such is the kana, used in Japanese to supplement the originally Chinese characters normally used. The precursors of the alphabet were the iconographic and ideographic writing of ancient man, such as wall paintings, cuneiform, and the hieroglyphic writing of the Egyptians. The alphabet of modern Western Europe is the Roman alphabet, the base of most alphabets used for the newly written languages of Africa and America, as well as for scientific alphabets. Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, and many languages of the former Soviet Union are written in the Cyrillic alphabet, an augmented Greek alphabet. Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic all have their own alphabets. The most important writing of India is the Devanagari, an alphabet with syllabic features; this, invented probably for Sanskrit, is the source of a number of Asian scripts. The Roman is derived from the Greek, perhaps by way of Etruria, and the Greeks had imitated the Phoenician alphabet. The exact steps are unknown, but the Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic, and Devanagari systems are based ultimately on signs of the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. This writing was not alphabetic, but in the phonogram it bore the germ of phonemic writing; thus the sign "bear" might (to use an English analogy) mean also the sound b, and "dog" d. A similar development created the Persian cuneiform syllabary. Two European alphabets of the late Roman era were the runes and the ogham. An exotic modern system is the Cherokee syllabary created by Sequoyah, suggested by, but not based on, the Roman alphabet. Another was the short-lived Mormon Deseret alphabet.

or futhark

Writing system used by Germanic peoples of northern Europe, Britain, Scandinavia, and Iceland from roughly the 3rd to the 16th or 17th century AD. Of uncertain origins, it is clearly derived from one of the alphabets of the Mediterranean area. Three main varieties were used in different regions and time periods: Early, or Common Germanic (Teutonic); Anglo-Saxon, or Anglian; and Nordic, or Scandinavian. More than 4,000 runic inscriptions and several runic manuscripts are extant, of which about 2,500 come from Sweden.

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Set of symbols or characters that represent language's sounds in writing. Each character usually represents a simple vowel, a diphthong (two vowels), or one or two consonants. A writing system in which one character represents a whole syllable is called a syllabary. The first alphabet is believed to have been the North Semitic, which originated in the eastern Mediterranean region between 1700 and 1500 BC. Alphabets that arose in the next 500 years included the Canaanite and Aramaic, from which the modern Hebrew and Arabic alphabets descended, and the Greek (ancestor of the Latin alphabet), considered the first true alphabet because it includes both consonants and vowels. Scholars have attempted to establish an exact correspondence between each sound and its symbol in new alphabets such as the International Phonetic Alphabet.

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