Alphabets

The word alphabet as we know it comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta. When the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet to write Greek, they became the first civilization to create the very first true alphabet with a symbol assigned for each vowel and consonant. It is the oldest alphabetic script still in use today. It gave rise to the Latin, Gothic, Cyrillic, Coptic and Glagolitic alphabets. It is used in mathematics, physics, astrology etc. The best known and most widely used offshoots of the Greek alphabet are Latin (Roman) and Cyrillic which both have been adapted to write the numerous modern languages used all over the world today.

Phi (The Golden Number)

Dagas

Tau

Othala

Jera

Aramaic

Phoenician

 

On this Page: Alphabets for the Deaf/Blind    Animated Alphabets    Children's Development of Writing    Hebrew    Origins of Alphabets    Phonetic Symbols   

Related Categories: Alphabets    Ancient Symbols    Fonts    Visual Languages    Writing Systems

 

Alphabet versus the Goddess
In the bestselling book, The Alphabet Versus The Goddess, Leonard Shlain proposes that the invention of writing, particularly alphabetic writing, rewired the brains of the people who learned how to communicate using this culture-changing tool. Great benefits to society followed. However, a precipitous decline in feminine values manifested by women's status, goddess veneration, nature, and representative art occurred in tandem.
alphabetvsgoddess.com/

 

Alphabet - wikipedia.org
An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet

 

John Higgins's silent alphabet
In 1968 an American linguist, answering the question "How do you pronounce TESOL?" (the acronym of the Association of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) answered: "T as in castle, E as in give, S as in island, O as in people, and L as in calm." In fact you can, with some use of proper names and loan words, create a complete silent alphabet for English.
myweb.tiscali.co.uk/wordscape/museum/silent.html

 

Alphabets - omniglot.com
Writing systems: abjads, alphabets, syllabic alphabets, syllabaries, complex scripts undeciphered scripts, alternative scripts, your con-scripts, A-Z index. Alphabets: Armenian, Avestan, Bassa (Vah), Beitha Kukju, Coptic, Cyrillic, Elbasan, Etruscan, Fraser, Georgian (Asomtavruli), Georgian (Nuskha-khucuri), Georgian (Mkhedruli), Glagolitic, Gothic, Greek, Hungarian Runes, International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and more.
omniglot.com/writing/alphabets.htm
Coptic Alphabet    Samaritan alphabet   

 

Unifon alphabet
The Unifon alphabet, which was created by John Malone in 1959, is an alternative way of writing English based on the principle of one letter per phoneme.
omniglot.com/writing/unifon.htm
Download the Unifon Font   

 

Phonetic Alphabets
These are not phonetic alphabets as in those used to guide pronounciation, rather they are a selection of alphabets used, particularly by radio operators, to spell out words. NATO & International Aviation, British Forces 1952, RAF 1942-43, Telecom B, British A or International, NY Police, French, German, Italian, Spanish.
morsecode.scphillips.com/alphabet.html

 

 

 

Alphabets for the Deaf/Blind

 

Moon Type
The Moon System of Embossed Reading. The majority of people who go blind in later life are unable to master the small dots of the braille system. For such people the Royal National Institute for the Blind provides an easier alternative system of embossed type.
bsblind.co.uk/full/moon/moontype.htm

 

Deafblind Manual Alphabet
A graphical image of the Deafblind Manual Alphabet.
deafblind.com/card.html
Sign Language Alphabets from all over the world   

 

Braille - wikipedia.org
The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write, and was the first digital form of writing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille

 

Braille script - omniglot.com
Braille is a writing system which enables blind and partially sighted people to read and write through touch. It was invented by Louis Braille (1809-1852), a French teacher of the blind.
omniglot.com/writing/braille.htm

 

Moon alphabet - omniglot.com
The Moon alphabet was invented by Dr. William Moon (1818-1894). Dr Moon lost his sight completely at the age of 21 after being partially sighted throughout his childhood.
omniglot.com/writing/moon.htm

 

Braille and ASL Specialty Fonts
Braille and Sign language fonts, True type, postscript for Windows and Macintosh.
tsbvi.edu/resources/1087-download-braille-and-asl-specialty-fonts

 

 

 

Animated Alphabets

 

Spin Animated Alphabet - IconBAZAAR
Permission is granted for limited personal use of up to twenty (20) images from ALL collections. ALL commercial or institutional use requires licensure.
iconbazaar.com/alphabets/animated/spin/
Mystic Animated Alphabet   

 

Animated Alphabets - virtuallandmedia.com
Sets of transparent animated GIFs.
virtuallandmedia.com/ani-text.htm

 

Web Diner's Alphabets and Icons for Web Pages
A choice menu of downloadable alphabet graphics, including deco and script alphabets in a variety of colors, textures and styles. Don't miss the gold and two toned alphabets.
webdiner.com/alpha/alpha.htm

 

 

 

Children's Development of Writing

 

(PDF) - Young in Art
A developmental look at child art.
artjunction.org/young_in_art.pdf

 

Early Writing Development
Though most children in pre-kindergarten or kindergarten are approximately the same age, their writing levels usually have a wide range. Some children may be scribbling, but can tell you what their pictures are about.
lindaslearninglinks.com/earlywrtgdev.html

 

Stages of Childhood Writing
The earlier you encourage drawing/writing, the earlier you will see these stages.
literacy.kent.edu/Oasis/PACT/section1.html

 

 

 

Hebrew

 

Hebrew alphabet - wikipedia.org
The Hebrew alphabet, known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_alphabet

 

Hebrew Alphabet
Vowels and Points, Styles of Writing, Transliteration, Numerical Values of Words.
jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/alephbet.html

 

 

 

Origins of Alphabets

 

Invention of the Alphabet
Proto-Canaanite, also known as Proto-Sinaitic, was the first consonantal alphabet. Even a quick and cursory glance at its inventory of signs makes it very apparent of this script's Egyptian origin.
ixoloxi.com/alphabet/index.html

 

History, Development and Evolution of the World's Writing Systems
Writing came about much later than spoken language. It is not possible to determine which Language Family a language belongs to by looking at the writing system. Writing systems can be deployed for political or religious reasons as well as linguistic ones.
krysstal.com/writing.html

 

Proto-Hebrew alphabet
The Proto-Hebrew or Early Aramaic alphabet was developed sometime during the late 10th or early 9th century BC and replaced Assyrian cuneiform as the main writing system of the Assyrian empire.
omniglot.com/writing/aramaic.htm

 

Phoenician Alphabet
The Phoenician alphabetic script of 22 letters was used at Byblos as early as the 15th century B.C.
phoenicia.org/alphabet.html

 

Evolution of Alphabets
This page is part of the course material for "History of the Alphabets" taught by Prof. Robert Fradkin at University of Maryland. Animations showing the evolution of: Cuneiform character set, Phoenician character set, Greek character set, Arabic Character set, Square Aramaic/Hebrew character set, Modern Cyrillic character set, Latin character set.
terpconnect.umd.edu/~rfradkin/alphapage.html

 

Origin of the Alphabet
The original alphabet was developed by a Semitic people living in or near Egypt. They based it on the idea developed by the Egyptians, but used their own specific symbols.
webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/alphabet.html

 

 

 

Phonetic Symbols

 

Resources For Studying Spoken English
IPA Phones and Phonemes of English, Variation in the sounds of English, Speech Waveform Analysis, Text to Speech (TTS) Synthesizers, Speech Recognition, Archives and Comprehensive Lists.
faculty.washington.edu/dillon/PhonResources

 

Phonetic Picture - Writing
A phonetic picture-writing is a picture writing, which also can be read phonetically. For its ideograms are composed of specially designed letters, so that a thing or idea (e.g. "face") is shown. When reading these ideograms phonetically, the result is an artificial language with clear phonetics.
ieao.de/lautbildschrift-english/lautbildschrift.htm

 

International Phonetic Alphabet
International Phonetic Association (IPA), Phonetics, Reproduction of The International Phonetic Alphabet (Revised to 1993, Updated 1996).
langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/

 

Sound Symbolism
Study of the apparent appropriateness of the sound-structures of many individual words for their meanings.
percepp.com/soundsmb.htm