The first fully phonemic script was the Proto-Sinaitic script, also descending from Egyptian hieroglyphics, which was later modified to create the Phoenician alphabet. Later on, these phonemic symbols also became used to transcribe foreign words. This system was used until the 5th century AD, and fundamentally differed by adding pronunciation hints to existing hieroglyphs that had previously carried no pronunciation information. The first letters were invented in Ancient Egypt to aid writers already using Egyptian hieroglyphs, now referred to by lexicographers as the Egyptian uniliteral signs. Not all writing systems represent language in this way: a syllabary assigns symbols to spoken syllables, while logographic systems assign symbols to spoken words, morphemes, or other semantic units. Specifically, letters correspond to phonemes, the categories of sounds that can distinguish one word from another in a given language. For other uses, see Alphabet (disambiguation).Īn alphabet is a standardized set of written letters that represent particular spoken sounds in a language. For the international technology conglomerate, see Alphabet Inc. For the English alphabet in particular, see English alphabet. This article is about alphabets in general.
