Transcript The alphabet story - Liceo Scientifico G.Galilei di Pescara

The alphabet
(Uda Communication)
by
Travaglini Giorgio
class: I A
English Teacher:
Miscia Roberta
What is the alphabet?
• The alphabet is a group of letters that we
arrange in a customary order to form words
and communicate with other people. The
letters, which are not many, correspond to one
or more sounds.
• In other alphabets, like the Japanese and
Chinese ones, letters are replaced by
ideograms: a symbol represents a word or an
idea. That’s why there are thousands of
ideograms.
World alphabets
• The most used alphabet is the Roman one. It
is made of 26 letters. It is also used for
international communication.
• In Russia and in neighbouring countries
people use the Cyrillic alphabet. It consists of
other letters, 33 in total.
• The Arabic alphabet has strange signs. It is
used in the Arabic countries.
• The Chinese alphabet has more then 2,000
different symbols that are called ideograms.
Alphabets currently used
Armenian
Bassa (Vah)
Cyrillic
Freser
Georgian (Mkhedruli)
Greek
Kayah Li
Korean (hangul)
Manchu
Mongolian
Latin/Roman
N’Ko
Oirat Clear Script
Ol Camet’ (santali)
Sutton Sign Writing
Tai Dam
Shorthand
Pollard Miao
Thaana
Tifinagh
Alphabets used mainly for
religious and/or decorative
purposes
Copitic
Deseret
Fraktur
Irish Unicial
Old Church Slavonic
Runic
Dead alphabets
Avestan
Beitha Kukju
Borama (Somali)
Carian
Carpathian Basin Rovas
Caucasica Albanian
Decarlian runes
Elbasan
Etruscan
Georgian (Nuskhuri)
Glagotic
Gotic
Merotic
Lycian
Lydian
Ogham
Uighur
Old Italic
Old Permic (abur)
Osmanya (Somali)
1° step
The origins: the Phoenicians
Around 1800 B.C. a clever man in Byblos
wanted to write documents in his language:
Caananite. He managed to do it by choosing
some Egyptian symbols and tried to link each
of them to a Caananite sound, so the first
alphabet had its birthday. The Phoenicians
were sailors and traders. When they sold
things they had to write the prices and the
names of people and objects on them. That’s
why they used this alphabet, which was made
of 22 consonants without vowels.
2° step
The Greeks
They were sailors and traders, too
and they also wrote the prices of
things on the objects they intended to
sell,
but
differently
from
the
Phoenicians,they did not use any
sounds. So the Greeks introduced the
vowels that were “extra” symbols and
sounds.
3° step
The Romans
In the Roman Empire, which was
extremely wide, people spoke Latin.
This language whose alphabet was
formed by 19 letters, included most
of the Greek ones. It rapidly spread
in many parts of the world.
4° step
Modern world
The Roman alphabet also arrived in
America thanks to the Spanish and
the
Portuguese
empires.
Many
countries used it and added letters to
mean extra sounds. It was exported
to India, Australia and Asia, that’s
why today it is used in any part of
the world and many of its terms have
entered English vocabulary, too.