Z slipped out at an early period, and g took its place. To these we might also add the char acters a and is, representing the Greek diph thongs 01 and ai. The letters i and u, it must be remarked, had a double force that of a vowel and that of a consonant. in the latter case they were, after the introduction of print ing, changed frequently into j and v. The i consonant, as in inventus (youth), had a sound resembling that of y in English orj in Ger man; u, consonant, as in uespa (vespa), a wasp, had a sound much like the English w— wespa. (At least this opinion appears best supported by the evidence). No genuine Latin word con tains either y or z, these being used in foreign (chiefly Greek) words adopted into the lan guage; and k is found in classical Latin only in Kalendee. Our modern lower-case letters and script represent adaptations of the Caro lingian minuscule of the 9th century, which itself was descended from the uncials or book hands of still earlier periods. The most im portant of these were the Roman uncial, which is essentially made up of rounded capital forms, and the Irish semi-uncial, which shows traces of influence by an antecedent cursive script or running hand. The modern Greek minuscule is likewise the result of the interaction of uncial and cursive forms.
While the alphabets of the west of Eu rope are derived from the Latin, the Rus sian and other Slavonic alphabets of the east come from the Greek. The modern Rus sian, consisting of 35 letters, is a modification and simplification of the ancient Cyrillic alpha bet, invented by Cyril in the 9th century in order to translate the Gospels into the language of the Slays of Bulgaria and Moravia. It was formed of Greek letters, together with some that had been differentiated from Greek liga tures. The Anglo-Saxon alphabet (see Atecto SaxoN) had two letters for the two sounds of th, which appear to have come from the Greek through the Mieso-Gothic, and which were un fortunately not retained in later English. It wanted the letters j, k, q, v, z, but it had the sound er. The German alphabet consists of the same letters as our own, the common German characters being mere modifications of the Roman, but the sounds of some of them are different. Anciently certain characters called Runic (q.v.) were made use of in Germany and Scandinavia, to which some would attribute an origin independent of the Greek and Latin alphabets, although it is pretty well established that both Greek and Latin played a part in their origin. Among Asiatic alphabets the Arabian, which, like Hebrew, is of Aramaic or igin, has played a part exactly analogous to that of the Latin in Europe, the conquests of Mohammedanism having imposed it on the Persian, an Aryan language; the Turkish, a Tatar language; the Hindustani, also an Aryan language; and even the Malay. It con sists of 28 letters, and appears to derive its origin from the Sinaitic alphabet, employed during the first centuries of the Christian era, and found in inscriptions in the Sinaitic penin sula, at Petra, in the Hauran, etc. Other alpha
bets of Aramaic origin are used for Syriac, Mongolian and Manchu. Beside these alpha bets of North Semitic origin there is a group of alphabets indigenous to southern Arabia. ,A specimen which appears to be of this stock, though it comes from Safa, near Damascus, is shown in the accompanying table. Though the relation of these forms to those of Phoenicia is unquestioned, the precise nature of this re lation is unknown. The alphabets or sylla baries of Abyssinia are South Semitic in char acter, as is shown by the Amharic alphabet pictured. It has also been maintained by Buhle, and vigorously denied by other writers, that the alphabet used in the edicts of the great Indian monarch, Asoka (255-223 ac.), is of South Semitic origin. The Nagari alphabet, used in writing Sanskrit, comes from this stock. This alphabet is one of the most remarkable alphabets of the world. As now used it has 14 characters for the vowels and diphthongs, and 33 for the consonants, besides two other symbols. The vowel a short is to be understood after every consonant, unless ex cluded by another vowel immediately attached to the consonant. (See SANSKRIT; also arti cles on the various Indian languages). Our alphabet is by no means a perfect instrument for what it has to perform, but is both defec tive and redundant. It is estimated that there are 42 sounds in the language, and only 26 letters to represent them. A, to begin with, has to do duty for many different sounds, as in far, fat, fall and fame; o has three sounds, as not, note and move; e has a long sound and a short, as in mete and met. C is a useless letter altogether, since it has always either the sound of s or of k. Others of the consonants encroach upon one another's prov inces; g, for example, sounds sometimes like as in digest; f sounds v in of; s sometimes usurps the sound of s, as in raisin, sometimes that of sh or sh, as in pleasure. See articles on the various languages mentioned and on the several letters of the alphabet, and Hasao GLYPHICS; PALAEOGRAPHY; PHONETICS; WRITING. Consult Berger, P:, (Histoire de l'ecriture dans l'antiquite' (Paris 1891) ; Dodds, E., (The Story of the Alphabet' (1900) ; Evans, A. J., (Scnpta Minoa' (Vol. I, 1909); Faulmann, (Illustrierte Geschichte der Schrift' (1880) ; Kirchoff, A., (Studien zur Geschichte des grie chischen Alphabets' (4th ed., 1887) ; Larfeld, W., (Handbuch der ?riechischen (1902-07) ; Lidzbarski, article in Jewish En cyclopedia, and (Nordsemitische Epigraphile (1898) ; Reinach, S., (Traite d'epigraphie grecque' (1::5) ; Roberts, E. S., (Introduction to Greek Epigraphy' (1887-1905) ; Steffens, ( Lateini sche Palographie — Tafeln (1903) ; Taylor, I., (The Alphabet' (London 1883) ; Thompson, E. M., (Handbook of Greek and Latin Paleography' (3d ed., 1906).