Stirring the Alphabet Soup: Language Facts & Figures
Welcome to our latest gathering of facts, figures, and (let's face it) hunches in response to some of the questions we've recently received about the English language. (Previous collections appear in our Grammar & Composition Forum.) The topic this month is the alphabet, from a to z.
What is the etymology of the word alphabet?
The English word alphabet comes to us, by way of Latin, from the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta. These Greek words were in turn derived from the original Semitic names for the symbols: aleph (which meant "ox") and beth ("house").
How many sounds are there in English?
There are more than 40 distinct sounds in English. Because we have just 26 letters to represent those sounds, most letters stand for more than one sound. For example, the consonant c is pronounced differently in the three words cook, city, and (combined with h) chop.
What's the name for a sentence that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet?
That would be a pangram. The best known example is "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." A slightly shorter example is "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs."
Why is the last letter of the alphabet pronounced "zee" by Americans and "zed" by most British, Canadian, and Australian speakers?
The older pronunciation of "zed" was inherited from Old French ("zede"). The American "zee," a dialect form heard in England during the 17th century (perhaps by analogy with bee, dee, etc.), was approved by Noah Webster in his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828).
By the way, the letter z has not always been relegated to the end of the alphabet. In the Greek alphabet it came in at a quite respectable number seven. According to The Oxford Companion to the English Language (1992), "The Romans adopted Z later than the rest of the alphabet, since /z/ was not a native Latin sound, adding it at the end of their list of letters and using it rarely." The Irish and English simply imitated the Roman convention of placing z last.
Where did the alphabet come from?
One of the most significant inventions in human history, the alphabet has a rich and fascinating history. Here's the 30-second version of the story.
The original set of 30 signs, known as the Semitic alphabet, was used in ancient Phoenicia beginning around 1600 B.C. Most scholars believe that this alphabet, which consisted of signs for consonants only, is the ultimate ancestor of virtually all later alphabets. (The one significant exception appears to be Korea's han-gul script, created in the 15th century.)
Around 1,000 B.C., the Greeks adapted a shorter version of the Semitic alphabet, reassigning certain symbols to represent vowel sounds, and eventually the Romans developed their own version of the Greek (or Ionic) alphabet. It's generally accepted that the Roman alphabet reached England by way of the Irish sometime during the early period of Old English (5 c.- 12 c.).
Over the past millennium, the English alphabet has lost a few special letters and drawn distinctions between others. But otherwise our modern English alphabet remains quite similar to the version of the Roman alphabet that we inherited from the Irish.
To learn much more about this wondrous invention, read Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z, by David Sacks (Broadway, 2004).
More About Language
Whom do we consult for answers to questions about grammar, rhetoric, and the English language? Our favorite reference book this month (in addition to those already mentioned) is The Origins and Development of the English Language, 5th edition, by John Algeo and Thomas Pyles (Heinle, 2004). Some of our other dependable resources are listed on these pages:
Are there any questions? If so, please send them our way. And please visit our Grammar & Composition Forum for past installments of Language Facts & Figures.
Comments
I read that early Anglo-Saxon writing, the earliest writing found of what was to become English, was written in Scandinavian runes before the Latin alphabet was adopted.