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Alphabet. An alphabet is a standard set of letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from another in a given language. [1] Not all writing systems represent language in this way: a syllabary assigns ...
Definition and usage. A letter is a type of grapheme, the smallest functional unit within a writing system. Letters are graphemes that broadly correspond to phonemes, the smallest functional units of sound in speech. Similarly to how phonemes are combined to form spoken words, letters may be combined to form written words.
For the distinction between [ ], / / and , see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. Modern English is written with a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters, with each having both uppercase and lowercase forms. The word alphabet is a compound of alpha and beta, the names of the first two letters in the Greek alphabet.
History of the alphabet. The history of the alphabet goes back to the consonantal writing system used to write Semitic languages in the Levant during the 2nd millennium BCE. Nearly all alphabetic scripts used throughout the world today ultimately go back to this Semitic script. [1] Its first origins can be traced back to a Proto-Sinaitic script ...
t. e. According to the alphabetic principle, letters and combinations of letters are the symbols used to represent the speech sounds of a language based on systematic and predictable relationships between written letters, symbols, and spoken words. The alphabetic principle is the foundation of any alphabetic writing system (such as the English ...
In formal language theory, an alphabet, sometimes called a vocabulary, is a non-empty set of indivisible symbols /characters/ glyphs, [1] typically thought of as representing letters, characters, digits, phonemes, or even words. [2][3] Alphabets in this technical sense of a set are used in a diverse range of fields including logic, mathematics ...
Letter frequency is the number of times letters of the alphabet appear on average in written language. Letter frequency analysis dates back to the Arab mathematician Al-Kindi (c. 801 –873 AD), who formally developed the method to break ciphers. Letter frequency analysis gained importance in Europe with the development of movable type in 1450 ...
This writing system, unrelated to the Greek alphabet, last appeared in the thirteenth century BC. In the late ninth century BC or early eighth century BC, the Greek alphabet emerged. [2] The period between the use of the two writing systems, during which no Greek texts are attested, is known as the Greek Dark Ages.