| Proto-canaanite Alphabet |
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This was the ancestor of nearly every alphabet in use today, from Greek , Hebrew , Roman and Berber in the West to Thai , Mongol , and perhaps Hangul in the East. Predecessors, possibly still partly logographic, were discovered in central Egypt in 1905 and 1999 (see Wadi El Hol) (see Middle Bronze Age Alphabets ). These early scripts may have had more letters than are found later, and may also have included letter variants (different letters that could be used to express the same phoneme). The names of the letters, which survive in the Greek and Hebrew alphabets, were probably already present. The names are based on an acrophonic principle, presumably from Semitic translations of the names of Egyptian Hieroglyphs . For example, Egyptian ''nt'' (water) became Semitic ''mu'' (water), ultimately evolving into Latin M , while Egyptian ''drt'' (hand) became Semitic ''kapp'' (hand), and ultimately Latin K . The alphabetic order is unknown; the related but cuneiform Ugaritic Alphabet had two alphabetic orders, an ABCD order similar to our own, and an HLĦM otherwise attested in the South Arabian and Ge'ez Alphabet s. One reconstruction of 22 letters, based on Proto-Canaanite's better-attested successors Phoenician, and its sibling South Arabian, follows, along with the Latin descendants, # {Link without Title} ʾalp "ox" ( A ) # {Link without Title} Bet "house" ( B ) # {Link without Title} Gaml "throwstick" ( C , G ) # {Link without Title} Digg "fish" ( D ) # {Link without Title} Haw / hll "jubilation" ( E ) # {Link without Title} Waw "hook" ( F , U , V , W , Y ) # {Link without Title} Zen /ziqq "manacle" ( Z ) # {Link without Title} ḥet ( H ) # {Link without Title} ṭēt ( Θ ) "wheel" # {Link without Title} Yad "arm" ( I , J ) # {Link without Title} Kap "hand" ( K ) # {Link without Title} Lamd "goad" ( L ) # {Link without Title} Mem "water" ( M ) # {Link without Title} Naḥš "snake" ( N ) # {Link without Title} Samek "fish" # {Link without Title} ʿen "eye" ( O ) # {Link without Title} Piʾt "corner" ( P ) # ṣad "plant" # {Link without Title} Qup ( Q ) # {Link without Title} Raʾs "head" ( R ) # {Link without Title} šimš "sun, the Uraeus " ( S ) # {Link without Title} Taw "signature" ( T ) LITERATURE
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