ALPHABET. The A. of any language is the series of letters, arranged in a fixed order, with which that language is written. Picture-writing was doubtless the earliest method invented of conveying thought through the eye. The idea of an ox was readily expressed by a sketch of the animal, -or, for shortness, by an outline of his bead and horns. Or the picture was used symbolically ; as the figure of an eye, to express the action of seeing, or the •attribute of wisdom. In process of time, some of those pic tures came to be used phonetically—i.e., to represent, not ideas, but sounds. But the sounds so represented would at first be whole words, or, at all events, syllables ; and the important step was yet to be taken of analyzing syllables into their elementary sounds, and of agreeing upon some one unvarying picture or sign (a letter) to represent each This constituted the invention of the A. By what steps alphabetic writing most proba bly rose out of picture-writing, will be seen tinder the head of HIEROGLYPHICS. See also LANGUAGE and CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS.
The Phoenician A. is the oldest of which we have any account ; and from it have originated, directly or indirectly, all the modes of writing now in use in the world. It is the foundation of the Greek, the Latin, and the Arabic alphabets ; and the great influ ence of the nations speaking these tongues accounts for the wide-spread similarity. Taking both ancient and modern times into account, as many as 400 alphabets have been enumerated ; but of those now in use, if we set aside slight variations of form, the num ber does not exceed 50. Auer's Sp•aelthalle (Vienna, 1849) contains a rich collection of alphabets. We must confine ourselves here to those more immediately connected with the history of the English A.
A point of considerable importance is the order of the letters. In modern alphabets, this appears at first sight to be quite.arbitrary; but traces of a principle of arrangement, or natural system according to which the series grew, have recently been brought to light.* The evidences of such a natural order are best seen in the Hebrew A., which was almost identical with the Phoenician. The following table exhibits the Hebrew letters, with their names, and sounds or powers ; and also the names of the letters composing the early Greek A., as borrowed from the Phoenician: Leaving out of account the letters inclosed in brackets, which are not easily accounted for, and are possibly later interpolations, the whole fall into four groups, the law of which will best appear in the following scheme : Without entering at present into the nature of the relation between the letters in the several rows horizontal and vertical, of the scheme (for which see LETTE110, it will be seen that.group (1) in the Hebrew A. consists of a vowel followed by three mute letters, all having one character (flats or medials); that group (2) consists of a vowel followed by three mutes, also having one character (aspirates); and that group (4) consists in like manner of a vowel followed by three mutes, all of the same character (sharps). The
order, moreover, according to the organ of utterance, in which the mutes follow in each group, is invariable: the labial (lip-sound) coming first; the palatal (palate-sound), second; and the dental (tooth-sound), last. This principle of arrangement is charac terized by Dr. Latham as a circulating order. Group (3) likewise consists of a vowel and four consonants of one character (liquids); but in this case the order of the vocal organs is not observed—at least in the form in which the Hebrew A. is known to us; in order to be symmetrical with the other groups, the sequence would require to be m, 1, n.
The nucleus of the original A. would thus seem to have consisted of 16 letters, grouped in four tetrads or quatermons, on an organic principle of arrangement. This principle is obscured in English and other modern alphabets, by some of the letters having gradually come to represent quite other sounds than their original. There is sufficient evidence, for example, that in the earliest Latin alphabet, from which the English is derived, the third letter, C, had the power of G (in yun). There was a subsequent period in the development of that language when the distinction between the sharp and flat palatal sounds seems to have been lost, and when two syllables like kam and gam would hare been both pronounced alike (kam). C thus acquired the power of K, and the letter K itself went almost out of use. But about the time of the first Punic war(264-241 u.c.), the distinction between the sharp and the flat sounds revived; and while the original C continued ever after to have the power of K (Cicero, for instance, was pronounced Kikero), a new character (G) was formed from it, by a very slight alteration, to express the flat sound. Again, the modern H, which has in most cases become a mere evanes cent breathing, can be traced back until it becomes a strong guttural, like CH in the Scotch word ioch. The place of the third consonant in the cycle of aspirates is a com plete blank in the alphabets derived from the Latin; because that language being originally destitute of the sound, dropped the sign of it, from the first. The Latins were, in fact, completely destitute of the genuine aspirate sounds; for even the letter F had net the sound we give it. Therefore, when they had to represent the aspirate consonants of the Greek language, cp,x, 0, they had recourse to the combinations ph, eh, th—a clumsy expedient still followed in modern alphabets derived from the Roman, and constituting one of their most serious defects.—The cycle of the sharps is pretty perfect in the English alphabet, for Q is only a variety of K.