It is easy to conceive a language represented by 16 characters of the nature above described. The most serious deficiency would seem to be the want of r and s. But the sound of th is very nearly allied to that. of s (witness "loves or loveth ; " also the pro nunciation of a person who lithpth), and one character might be made to stand for both, as easily as in English c is made to represent two sounds so different as those exemplified in cat and city. borne nations, again, are said to make no distinction between r and 1, so that one character might stand for both these sounds.
But whether or not the Phoenician A. had originally only 16 letters, it is evident that when transplanted into Greece, it had 21 letters, if not 22. In accommodating itself to the necessities of the Greek tongue, it gradually underwent it series of changes. Some of the letters were modified: He became e; Meth, ee; Sigma became Q = r, and the name Sigma was transferred to San. Other letters were altogether dropped, as Digamma. (= v) and Koppa. On the other hand, for such simple sounds as had no representatives in the Phoenician, new characters were invented, and annexed to the end (v, Ca).
Another important change was in the direction of the writing. In the Phoenician and other Semitic languages, the writing proceeded from right to left. The Greeks, on bor rowing the Phoenician A., also wrote for some time from right to left. The mode called bustrophedon (turning like an ox in plowing\ of writing alternately from right to left and from left to right, was then introduced; and finally the direction from left to right pre vailed throughout the west, to the exclusion of the other modes.
In the classical period of the Greek language, the A. had come, to consist of 24 letters, as in columns 2, 3, 4 of the following table. Column 1 (copied from Ball horn's Alphabcte) gives some of the earlier forms of the Greek letters, found on coins and other inscriptions, of the period when writing still proceeded from right to left; column 2 is from the Alexandrian Codex (q.v.), as given in Key's Alphabet; and Nos. 3 and 4 are the modern printed forms of capitals and small letters. The small characters are merely cursive forms or variations of the capitals; and it would not be difficult to show- how, in each case, the endeavor to trace the capital on soft material rapidly and without lifting the hand, would give rise to the form now used as the small letter.
With regard to the figures or shapes of the letters, it is believed that they all arose out of pictures or hieroglyphic characters. The names of the Hebrew letters are also the names of material objects; and the letters themselves were at first, in all probability, rude outlines of the objects. Aleph, for example, means an "ox," and the letter was in its origin an outline of an ox's head. The history of Gimel, which means "camel," is probably similar. The IIebrew characters known to us are believed to be compara tively modern, and much corrupted from their original forms, and the likenesses are more difficult to trace in them than in the Samaritan and the early Greek, or even in the Latin. Mem, again, is the Hebrew word for " water," and some of the earliest forms of the letter 31 are zigzag lines, similar to the sign of Aquarius (4.7 ) in the zodiac, intended no doubt to represent the undulations of water. Ayn, the name of the Hebrew letter equivalent to 0, also means an "eye," and the picture of an eye would naturally degenerate into a circle, first with a dot iu the center (which some ancient 0's actually have), and then without a dot.
The A. came into Italy not directly from Phoenicia, but from Greece, and that at a time when the Greek A. had undergone some of the changes described above, although not all of them; v, cp, and x had been added, but not tfr and a% Moreover, there must have been distinct and independent importations into more than one part of Italy, and that, probably, from different parts of Greece, or, at all events, at different periods. The Etrurian A. is evidently an earlier importation than the more southerly Latin, as it departs less from the Phoenician. There are even differences in different parts of Etruria itself. The alphabets of Etruria north of the Apennines (for numerous inscriptions recently discovered show that this remarkable race must have extended at one time as far north as the Alpine valleys of Provence, Tyrol, Graubundten, and Styria) differ slightly from the alphabets of the inscriptions in Etruria proper, which are demonstrably taken from the A. of the Greek colony of Ctere.