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Greek Letter
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as well as consonants. In Archaic Greece, Archaic and early Classical Greece, Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in Archaic Greek alphabets, many local variants, but, by the end of the 4th century BC, the Ionia, Ionic-based Euclidean alphabet, with 24 letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard throughout the Greek-speaking world and is the version that is still used for Greek writing today. The letter case, uppercase and lowercase forms of the 24 letters are: : , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of several scripts, such as the Latin script, Latin, Gothic alphabet, Gothic, Coptic script, Coptic, and Cyrillic scripts. Throughout antiquity, Greek had only a single uppercas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Latin-script Digraphs
This is a list of digraphs used in various Latin alphabets. In the list, letters with diacritics are arranged in alphabetical order according to their base, e.g. is alphabetised with , not at the end of the alphabet, as it would be in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Substantially-modified letters, such as (a variant of ) and (based on ), are placed at the end. Capitalisation only involves the first letter ( becomes ) unless otherwise stated ( becomes in Dutch, and digraphs marking eclipsis in Irish, are capitalised on the second letter, i.e. becomes ). Apostrophe Source: (capital ) is used in Bari for . (capital ) is used in Bari for . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark or ''yin'' tone . It is also often written as . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark . is used in the Wu MiniDict Romanisation for dark . (capital ) is used in Bari and Hausa (in Nigeria) for , but in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin Language
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language in the Italian Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. It has greatly influenced many languages, Latin influence in English, including English, having contributed List of Latin words with English derivatives, many words to the English lexicon, particularly after the Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England, Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest. Latin Root (linguistics), roots appear frequently in the technical vocabulary used by fields such as theology, List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names, the sciences, List of medical roots, suffixes and prefixes, medicine, and List of Latin legal terms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), 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. Not all writing systems represent language in this way: a syllabary assigns symbols to spoken syllables, while logographies assign symbols to words, morphemes, or other semantic units. The first letters were invented in Ancient Egypt to serve as an aid in writing Egyptian hieroglyphs; these are referred to as Egyptian uniliteral signs by lexicographers. This system was used until the 5th century AD, and fundamentally differed by adding pronunciation hints to existing hieroglyphs that had previously carried no pronunciation information. Later on, these phonemic symbols also became used to transcribe foreign words. The first fully phonemic script was the Proto-Sinaitic script, also descending from Egyptian hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voiceless Velar Plosive
The voiceless velar plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is k. The sound is a very common sound cross-linguistically. Most languages have at least a plain , and some distinguish more than one variety. Most Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ... and Bengali, have a two-way contrast between aspirated and plain . Only a few languages lack a voiceless velar plosive, e.g. Tahitian and Mongolian. Some languages have the voiceless pre-velar plosive, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical velar plosive, though not a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semitic Alphabets
Alphabetic writingwhere letters generally correspond to individual sounds in a language ( phonemes), as opposed to having symbols for syllables or wordswas likely invented once in human history. The Proto-Sinaitic script emerged during the 2nd millennium BC among a community of West Semitic laborers in the Sinai Peninsula. Exposed to the idea of writing through the complex system of Egyptian hieroglyphs, their script instead wrote their native West Semitic languages. With the possible exception of hangul in Korea, all later alphabets used throughout the world either descend directly from the Proto-Sinaitic script, or were directly inspired by it. It has been conjectured that the community selected a small number of those commonly seen in their surroundings to describe the sounds, as opposed to the semantic values of their own languages. This script was partly influenced by hieratic, an older cursive script derived from hieroglyphs. Mainly through the Phoenician alphabe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin Script
The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Greek alphabet was altered by the Etruscan civilization, Etruscans, and subsequently their alphabet was altered by the Ancient Romans. Several Latin-script alphabets exist, which differ in graphemes, collation and phonetic values from the classical Latin alphabet. The Latin script is the basis of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and the 26 most widespread letters are the letters contained in the ISO basic Latin alphabet, which are the same letters as the English alphabet. Latin script is the basis for the largest number of alphabets of any writing system and is the List of writing systems by adoption, most widely adopted writing system in the world. Latin script is used as the standard method of writing the languages of Western and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phoenician Alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean basin. In the history of writing systems, the Phoenician script also marked the first to have a fixed writing direction—while previous systems were multi-directional, Phoenician was written horizontally, from right to left. It developed directly from the Proto-Sinaitic script used during the Late Bronze Age, which was derived in turn from Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Phoenician alphabet was used to write Canaanite languages spoken during the Early Iron Age, sub-categorized by historians as Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite, Ammonite and Edomite, as well as Old Aramaic. It was widely disseminated outside of the Canaanite sphere by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean, where it was adopted and adap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined Ideogram, ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters.In total, there were about 1,000 graphemes in use during the Old Kingdom period; this number decreased to 750–850 during the Middle Kingdom, but rose instead to around 5,000 signs during the Ptolemaic period. Antonio Loprieno, ''Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction'' (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995), p. 12. Cursive hieroglyphs were used for Ancient Egyptian literature, religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic (Egyptian), demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet. Egyptian hieroglyphs are the ultimate ancestor of the Phoenician alphabet, the first widely adopted phonetic writing system. Moreov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Sinaitic Script
The Proto-Sinaitic script is a Middle Bronze Age writing system known from a small corpus of about Serabit el-Khadim proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, 30-40 inscriptions and fragments from Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula, as well as Wadi el-Hol inscriptions, two inscriptions from Wadi el-Hol in Middle Egypt. Together with about 20 known Proto-Canaanite alphabet, Proto-Canaanite inscriptions, it is also known as Early Alphabetic, i.e. the History of the alphabet, earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian script and the Phoenician alphabet, which led to many modern alphabets including the Greek alphabet. According to common theory, Canaanites or Hyksos who spoke a Canaanite languageJohn F. Healey, ''The Early Alphabet'' University of California Press, 1990, , p. 18. repurposed Egyptian hieroglyphs to construct a different script. The earliest Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are mostly dated to between the mid-19th (early date) a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kaph
Kaph (also spelled kaf) is the eleventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''kāp'' 𐤊, Hebrew ''kāp̄'' , Aramaic ''kāp'' 𐡊, Syriac ''kāp̄'' ܟ, and Arabic ''kāf'' (in abjadi order). It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪋, South Arabian , and Ge'ez . The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek kappa (Κ), Latin K, and Cyrillic К. Origin Kaph is thought to be derived from a pictogram of a hand (in both modern Arabic and modern Hebrew, kaph means "palm" or "grip"), though in Arabic the ''a'' in the name of the letter (كاف) is pronounced longer than the ''a'' in the word meaning "palm" (كَف). The small ک above the ''kāf'' in its final and isolated forms was originally ''‘alāmatu-l-ihmāl'', but became a permanent part of the letter. Previously this sign could also appear above the medial form of ''kāf'', instead of the stroke on its ascender. D46 Arabic kāf The letter is named ''kāf'', and it is written ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
