ALPHABET MEANING

The word ‘alphabet’ refers to a series of symbols (letters) each of which represents one or more sounds, including vowels as well as consonants.

Because each letter of an alphabet stand for a sound, different letters can be combined in order to represent the sound of every single word in our language. We use the sounds (and the written words which represent the sounds) to mean different real objects, actions and locations.

The word ‘alphabet’ comes from the Greek ‘alpha, beta’ which are the names of the first two letters in the Greek alphabet:

Why? Because Greeks were the first to invent a true alphabet, which is to say a series of symbols for each sound they spoke including both vowels and consonants. (Some earlier symbol systems just showed the consonants.) The Greek alphabet dates from around the ninth century BC. Almost three thousand years later it’s still going strong.

But that's nothing like as old as some other Eastern systems. In the history of writing, our Western calligraphic alphabets arrived on the scene quite late – and then they made up for lost time by developing into all sorts of wonderful styles very rapidly.

But, of course, there are other writing systems in the world than the Western Roman alphabet.

There are even calligraphic writing systems that aren't alphabets.