Alphabet

Alphabet (from first 2 Greek letters, alpha and beta), set of characters intended to represent the sounds of spoken language. The chief alphabets of the world are Roman (Latin), Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic (Slavic), Arabic, and Devanagari (used for Sanskrit). Alphabets probably originated around 2000 B.C. Hebrew, Arabic, and other written languages sprang from an alphabet that appeared around 1500 B.C. Greek was derived from the Phoenician alphabet, which appeared around 1700 B.C. Roman letters were derived from Greek and from Etruscan, also a descendant of the Greek. Most of the letters used in English are from the Latin alphabet. The Cyrillic alphabet, used for Slavic languages, also derives from the Greek.