LESSON 7 ALPHABET SOUP

English and most European languages are written in the Latin or Roman alphabet. The Latin alphabet is the most widely used alphabet in the world, but did you know that the Arabic alphabet is the secondmost widely used alphabet in the world? In addition to Arabic, many other languages are written in the Arabic script, especially in Islamic countries. The major ones include Persian, the language of Iran, Urdu, the language of Pakistan, Pushtu, the language of Afghanistan, and Kurdish, the language of the Kurdish people who live in Turkey, Iran and Iraq. In all, about 100 languages around the world are or were written in the Arabic script, including some African languages and many central and south Asian ones. Turkish used to be written in the Arabic script, until the 1920s when the government made the change to the Latin alphabet which Turkish uses now. Arabic is a Semitic language. The word Semitic is the name of a family of languages. It is named after one of the sons of Noah, Shem. You know in the Old Testament there is the story of Noah and the Ark and the Great Flood. According to the story, after the Flood, Noah and his family went out and repopulated the earth. The descendants of his son Shem were called the Shemites, or Semites, and the descendents of his son Ham were called the Hamites. The Semitic languages include many ancient languages such as Babylonian and Assyrian as well as Hebrew, Arabic, Amharic, the language of Ethiopia, and Aramaic, which is the language Jesus spoke. In fact, Aramaic is still spoken today in villages in Syria, Iraq and Iran. The Hamitic languages include ancient Egyptian, Coptic, Nubian, Berber--the languages of the native peoples of North Africa--and many other African languages. The Phoenicians were an ancient Semitic people who lived in what is now Syria, Lebanon and Israel. They were famous for sailing and trading throughout the Mediterranean. Mediterranean, in Latin, means "in the middle of the land." The Phoenicians were expert sailors, and to them the sea was not a barrier...it was more like the parking lot at the mall. They had to cross it to get to the countries on the other side. What kinds of things were they trading?? Many things--in Lesson 6 we learned that many English words for precious gems and spices and fine cloth come from Arabic--the Phoenicians were famous for their purple dye that was very rare and expensive. They made it from a particular kind of seashell that lived on their shores, and it was so expensive that only kings could afford it--so it was called "royal purple." They also traded in timber from the famous cedar trees that grew there, and wine, olive oil and olives, and other things that were produced in their country. But in addition to material goods, they were also exchanging knowledge and culture. About 3000 years ago the Phoenicians started using an alphabet for their language, and the new system quickly spread throughout the entire Mediterranean. The Phoenician alphabet was a great advance over the other writing systems used before that time. Previously, writing systems like Egyptian hieroglyphics used symbols for different syllables....so they had to learn hundreds of them in order to put them together to form words and sentences. The Phoenician alphabet had just 22 symbols--one for each individual sound--so it was a lot easier to learn. Each symbol was a picture of a common object, and the letter's sound was the first sound in the name for the object (in Phoenician.) This alphabet system made communication with different cultures much simpler, which of course was in the interest of trade and commerce. The Greeks quickly began to use the Phoenician system, adapting it to their own language. The Hebrews also adopted it and made their own changes. Later, the Romans adapted the Greek alphabet for their language, Latin. Our English alphabet is derived from the Latin alphabet. The word "Alphabet" comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet--alpha and beta--but the

names of the Greek letters themselves mostly come from the Phoenician names. The Arabic alphabet developed from an earlier script used by the Nabatean people, who had also adapted the Phoenician alphabet to their own needs. The Nabateans were an Arab people who lived about 2000 years ago in what is today Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. They grew rich from commerce, and had their capital at Petra. They were later conquered by the Romans. By the year 600, the Arabic script had developed to more or less the form it is in now...although it was not until later that the dots were added to the shapes of the letters. So now you know that it is no coincidence that all of the alphabets used in both European and Semitic languages start with A B C D E....(or A B G D E...) Now let's compare the Latin/English and Arabic alphabets: Spelling in English can be confusing even for native speakers of English, and especially for foreigners learning English. This is in part because English has words derived from many different languages with many different spelling systems--such as French, German, Latin and Greek. So in English we have spellings like: kn in know gh in laugh ph elephant sometimes a "c" is pronounced like a "k" and sometimes like an "s." the "sh" sound is written as two letters instead of as one. Arabic has one letter for each sound--so spelling is a lot easier than in English. You hear the sound, you know which letter to use. Do you have to take spelling tests in English class?? I'll bet you love them. I have been told that in schools in Arab countries, they don't give spelling tests, because spelling is not a problem with the Arabic language. If you can pronounce a word in Arabic, you can spell it. And if you can read it, you can pronounce it. (unlike in English.) There are 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet. English has both printing and writing, but Arabic has only writing; it is a cursive alphabet, meaning the letters always connect to one another. There are no capital letters in Arabic. Arabic letters can have as many as 4 different shapes, depending on where the letter occurs in the word. This may sound complicated, but it's really not. In English we have capital, or upper case, and lower case letters, and then we have printing and writing. So we can have as many as 4 letter shapes in English, too. For example a capital G looks nothing like a lower-case g. Lastly, Arabic, like Hebrew and other Semitic languages, has long vowel sounds and short ones. Arabic does not consider the short vowels to be real letters, and they are usually not used in writing. In a newspaper, for example, they are usually not printed. So although Arabic has only 28 actual letters, there are also a number of other symbols used in writing which are not considered letters.