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It depends what you mean by alphabet. In the narrow sense (consonants AND vowels) Greek was the first language to have one - Phoenician had an abjad (consonan
by DonaldFisk 3y ago
It depends what you mean by alphabet. In the narrow sense (consonants AND vowels) Greek was the first language to have one - Phoenician had an abjad (consonants only), probably because most words had 3 consonant roots, with vowels varying with their grammatical role.
- Archelaos 3y agoTo elaborate on this a bit more: When discussing the history of writing systems, the term "alphabet" can be used in two different senses. In a broader sense the term refers to the set of symbols, typically in a specific order, that are based on representing phonetic elements with signs (in contrast to logographic systems). In a narrower sense, the term refers to the Greek alphabet and its derivatives, to distinguish them from their syllabic or consonant-only predecessors. It should be noted in this context, that Semitic languages can be written with comparatively less disambiguity with a consonant-only set of symbols, as the correct vowels can be inferred with relatively good accuracy from the consonants and the context. For Indo-European languages, such as Greek, this is not the case. However, even for Semitic languages a consonant-only writing-system was far from ideal. Thus, various strategies have been developed to reduce ambiguity, such as the use of plene scriptum[1] or punctation[2] in Hebrew. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plene_scriptum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plene_scriptum [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_punctuation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_punctuation