Letter: Roman order
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Sir; Robert Graves's tree alphabet (letter, 7 January) has an unusual order. Our alphabet, and the order of its letters, is basically the Latin one, which the Romans inherited from the Greeks via the Etruscans.
But the Greeks didn't invent it. Some Greek genius who knew the Phoenicians' language adopted their 22-letter alphabet to write Greek. The Phoenicians had no signs for vowels, so the Greek altered the sound of some letters and invented others, placing the new letter omega at the end. By early in the 8th century BC Greeks throughout the Mediterranean were using variants of this alphabet. Its Phoenician origin is proved by the order of the letters - similar to alphabets used in Sinai - and by the names of many of the letters, which mean nothing in Greek, but do in Semitic languages. Alpha means a bull, beta a house etc.
The Romans dropped a few Greek letters including omega, and made a slight alteration to the order.
MARY LANCH
Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments