Alphabet, Abjad and so forth

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated Thu, 14 Mar 2002 12:00:50 PM Eastern Standard Time,
Michael <michael at RFA.ORG> writes:

> We all know the term "alphabet", and there are probably quite
> a few of us who are familiar with the term "abjad".
>
> (Abjad is a term used to refer to a writing system -- like
> the one used in Arabic -- that begins "a-b-j".)
>
> Does English have any other terms that we use to refer to
> a language's writing system should it fall outside of the
> usual "abecedarian" approach ?
>
> Thanks,
> Michael

To be pedantic, "alphabet" originally referred to the Greek alpha-beta-gamma
(or A-B-G), which is not abecedarian.

The Hebrew "alphabet" is frequently referred to in English as "aleph-bet".

The Runic alphabet is called "futhork" from its first letters.

The following was pointed out to me by Robert Birch of the National
Agricultural Library:

Set up the Latin alphabet in the following tableau

      A      B       C          D
      E      F       G          -  H
      I              K             L,M,N
      O      P       Q  R   S   T
      U      V       X  Y   Z

and you will see that (ignoring the vowels in the first column) the first
row is voiced stops, the second row is unvoiced fricatives, the fourth row
(ignoring R) is unvoiced, and the fifth row is voiced.

A similar tableau can be set up for Greek and for Hebrew (allowing for the
fact that certain Hebrew letters such as bet and pe represent both stops and
fricatives).

Conclusion:  way back when (circa 1500 BC) the scribes who started using the
alphabet knew enough about phonetics to sort the alphabet by related sounds.

One problem though:  why did Latin mess up the tableau by switching C and G?

Probably because of Etruscan influence.  The Etruscans picked up the Greek
alphabet and modified it for their use.  According to the sources I have
seen, the Etruscan language did not distinguish the (hard) C and G sounds.
The Romans also picked up the Greek alphabet, whether from the Etruscans to
whose culture they belonged at the time or from Greek colonists along the
Italian coast is not clear.  However, due to the Etruscan influence, the
Romans managed to get C and G confused.

Where did K come from, and what is it doing in the wrong row?  Blame the
Germans.  At some point the Romans converted C and G before /e/ and /i/ into
the "soft" C and G, and the Romance languages continued the tradition.
However, in Germanic it is possible to "kiss your sister" so the Germans
needed a letter for /k/ before /e/ or /i/.  So they went back to Greek,
resurrected the kappa, which became the modern K, and tossed it into the
tableau at random.

One final note:  the noted philologist J. R. R. Tolkien, in one of the
appendixes to The Return of the King, states that unlike Tengwar the Latin
alphabet has no rationale to the shape of its letters, except possibly for B
and P.

This is incorrect.  The Hebrew letters have names that are words in Hebrew,
e.g. aleph = ox and bet = house.  Apparently the letters (possibly derived
from hieroglyphic symbols) are stylized versions of what their names means,
e.g. in "bet" you can see the floor, one wall, and the roof of a house.

The Greeks were unaware of the meanings of the names of the Semitic letters
(more likely Phoenician than Hebrew, but similar) so they accepted "alpha",
"beta", etc. as arbitrary sounds and saw no reason to make the shapes
correspond to the original Semitic meanings.  The Romans dropped those
meaningless names the Greeks used and felt equally free to change the
shapes, but it is possible that the Roman scribes decided to be systematic
about the shapes they produced:

In the B column, every consonant (except V, derived from U and maybe
pronounced /w/ at the time) has a full-length vertical stroke and part of
two half-height loops.

In the C column, every consonant (except X, which may be a late arrival) is
some variation on a full-height circle.

In the D column, both D and T have a full-height vertical stroke and part of
a full-height loop.

Vowels are less than obvious, but perhaps it is significant that E and I,
representing related sounds, both have full-height vertical strokes, whereas
the A-O-U family do not.

       - Jim Landau (whose name has two letters not recognized by Latin
stonecutters)