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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lorne who wrote (8797)	10/27/2001 8:52:59 PM
From: Carolyn	Respond to of 27666

Excellent. Then numerals! (I get confused. LOL)

To: lorne who wrote (8797)	10/27/2001 11:14:04 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 27666

I don't think your history is accurate. As far as we know, the alphabet was invented once, by the Phoenicians. The cuneiform systems were not the same, though I think they included both picteographic and syllabic symbols. Some other forms of writing, such as that used for Linear B in Crete, were syllabic (i.e. each letter was represented a syllable, such as "ba" or "be"). I don't know of any other system of writing that had a letter for each consonent alone. (Letters for vowels came later). The Hebrews and the Greeks both learned the alphabet from the Phoenicians. The Romans learned it from the Greeks. The Arabs learned it from the Byzantine Greeks. Modifications were made at each step. Note that the names of the letters mean something in Hebrew (& the original Phoenician) but not in Greek. In Hebrew: aleph, an ox, beyt, a house, gimmel, a camel, etc. In Greek, alpha, beta, gamma don't mean anything.