Origin of the alphabet

The first writings were little images, that were supposed to show what was describes. Later on, people replaced those images by signs that symbolized a sound. The human voice is capable of forming about 35 different sounds. So an alphabet shouldn't contain more than 35 letters.



The Phoenicians, who lived in Syria about 3000 years ago, were the first to develop a modern alphabet. The Greek copied that alphabet from the Phoenicians and the Romans copied it from the Greek and improved it. This Roman alphabet is now used almost over the whole world

Different Alphabets

The Roman Alphabet
The Greek Alphabet
The Hebrew Alphabet
Egyptian Hieroglyphics

An interesting link, which has many examples on different alphabets, is this one:
http://www.asklang.co.uk/publish/alphabet.html