A alphabet (of Alpha and Beta , the first two letters of the Greek alphabet) is a whole of Symbole S intended to more or less precisely represent the Phonème S of a Langue.

Each one of these symbols, or Graphème, is also called “letter”; each letter, in theory, should note a phoneme. Certain letters can receive one or more Diacritique S in order to extend the stock of graphèmes if this one is insufficient to note the sounds of the language or to make it possible to avoid ambiguities. Same manner, an alphabet can be wide by the use of Digramme S or of additional letters.

The phonetic evolutions of a language occurring at intervals different from the written evolution, the alphabetical writing does not guarantee in any manner a bijective mapping between the phonemes and the graphèmes, thus in French, /s/ notes as well C , S , S or T . A contrario , S can decide /s/, /z/ or be dumb. Certain languages, like Hungarian, have however a writing quasi-phonetics. In the majority of the cases (except for Hungarian), these are languages written recently whose transcription by means of alphabetical signs was the subject of a planned research.

History

The first alphabets of the history are the ougaritic Alphabet and the linear Alphabet, two Abjad already classified besides in the alphabetical order Levantine. He is followed by that of the Phéniciens, whose descendants are numerous: as well the Arab writing as the Latin alphabet.

The first two letters of the alphabet Greek, α ( alpha ) and β ( beta ), originate in the first two letters Phénicien born: the Glottal stop and /b/, whose name probably meant “bull” and “house”.

Francoise Briquel-Chatonnet (in charge of research at the laboratory of the old Semitic studies, CNRS - Collège de France) proposed in 2006 a history of the alphabets:

──o protosemitic Writings ├─o linear Alphabet or Protosinaïque () ├─o Ougaritique () ? ? | └─o Phénicien (-) | ├─o Paléo-Hebrew (, replaced at sixth century BC by the Hebrew square) | ├─o Punic | ├─o Araméen () | | ├─o Hebrew square (sixth century BC) | | ├─o Writings of Central Asia (Sogdien, Ouïgour, Mongolian, Manchu, etc) | | ├─o Karoshti (third century BC) | | ├─o Brahmi (middle of third century BC) | | ├─o Nabatéen (first century BC) | | └─o Syriaque (1st century apr. J. - C.) | | : | | └─o Arab (6th century apr. J. - C.) | └─o Greek () | ├─o Etruscan (eighth century BC) | | └─o Latin (fifth century BC - fourth century BC) | ├─o Copte (4th century apr. J. - C.) | ├─o Géorgien (beginning of the 5th century apr. J. - C.) | ├─o Armenian (beginning of the 5th century apr. J. - C.) | └─o Cyrillic (9th century apr. J. - C.) └─o Arabic Writings (beginning of) ├─o North-Arabic (Safaïtique, Thamoudéen, etc) └─o South-Arabic ├─o Himyarite

Alphabets

French alphabet

to write the French, one uses the Latin alphabet modern with its twenty-six letters:

the fundamental alphabet enriched by 15 Vowel S accentuées :   * and respectively “E-in-L' has it” and “it E-in-L' O”.

  • Description of the diacritics  :

    • Acute accent ´ (diacritic more running, but only on the E it very appreciably modifies the phonetics while making it nonnull and void),
    • the Circumflex accent ˆ (enough running on the has , the E and the O of which it can modify phonetics by closing them or lengthening them according to the areas, and residual in process of obsolescence on the I and the U where it symbolizes an old letter amuïe, and maintaining completely disappeared in the phonetic plan),
    • it Grave accent ` (very running on the E that it lengthens, and on the has and the U in some current words of which it specifies the direction without modifying phonetics of it),
    • the Tréma ¨ (on the E to avoid the formation of a vocalic digraph or a diphthong as in Christmas, or on a E dumb to force the pronunciation of a preceding vowel who differently would remain dumb in a digraph consonnantal as in acute , on the I of some words like haï for same reasons but sometimes replaced in other words by a H dumb before the I , on the U of rather rare words like jumble and of proper names, there too to avoid the formation of a vocalic digraph, and sometimes on the there of certain proper names like the Haÿ-the-Pinks).
    • the Cedilla ¸ (enough current, but only in French under the C to keep the pronunciation of it before the vowels has , U or O , for example the word that and the words and conjugations derived from the verbs in - cer ).
    • To consult on this subject Diacritic used in French   ;
    • Curieusement, certain French keyboards, used under Windows, does not make it possible to accentuate a E capital (not of acute accent in dead key) or to indicate the cedilla under a C capital, which obliges with a certain number of distorsions to write a decent text (or to use for example another keyboard like the keyboard French-speaking Switzerland or Canadian, which is even more painful with use because the punctuations all are moved just as certain letters of the alphabet the main thing). The operating systems Mac and Unix (or Linux) do not know this problem, it is enough to be put in capital mode of locking and to press on the key of the accented accentuated letter (but one must then nevertheless maintain the key capital inserted to type the figures of the first line if one does not have numeric keypad not separated, which is contrary with the French use typing, and requires an adaptation and can not even prove to be practical for certain users of portables, accustomed to type the numbers without having to maintain one second key inserted)   ;
  • of the bindings  :
    • of the bindings orthographiques : æ and œ (regarded as Digraph S, because coming from the disappearance or the contraction from two syllables in only one)   ;
    • of the bindings esthétiques : ct , and (&), FF (ff), ffi (ffi), ffl (ffl), fi (fi), fl (fl), ft , St (st) and tt (of everyday usage in Typography, they however are not regarded as distinct letters in the orthographical, semantic or etymological plan)   ;
  • of the C-Ws communication consonnantales :
    • of the consonnantaux digraphs insécables : CH , gu , Ge (before has , O , U ), pH , qu (before E ), HS (in certain imported words of English), sch (in certain words of Germanic origin)   ;
    • of the sectile consonnantaux digraphs, affecting the prononciation : S   ;
    • of the sectile consonnantaux digraphs, often introduced by orthographical change of a prefix, and not affecting normally the pronunciation of this préfixe : FF , gg , L , mm , N , p , rr , tt   ;
    • of the generally dumb consonants at the end of the word, often necessary for their grammatical function or reasons étymologiques : D (at the end of the word), lt (after with the , water ), p (dumb after has , O ), S , T (except after E ), X (dumb after with the , water , have )   ; these consonants are often mutable to form the agreements ( X becomes S , F becomes v )   ;
  • of the semi-vocaliques  C-Ws communication;:
    • a semivowel forming of the diphtongues : there (used instead of it after has to form distinct diphthongs)   ;
    • a trigram sectile semivowel, forming diphthongs after a its vowel, or sometimes separately after a consonne : it (preferred form with there )
  • of the C-Ws communication vocaliques :
    • a generally dumb vowel at the end of the word, often necessary for its grammatical function or lexicographique : E (normally always dumb after E , I , U , except in the event of emphatic formula accentuating the féminin  exaggeratedly; ; its addition after a final consonant causes the change this consonant, dumb woman or not, in another nondumb consonant, or sometimes in sectile digraph consonnantal).
    • many Digraph vocalic S or trigrams (sometimes undergoing orthographical changes and often phonetics) resulting from old diphthongs, or a reform of the writing of the nasalisation (after the disappearance of the diacritic tilde)  :
      • have , have , Ain , have , year (mutable in amndt before the consonants B , p , m ), with the , ay ,
      • ee (in imported words of English), EFF (in the key word ), I.E.(internal excitation) , ein , in (mutable in EM before the consonants B , p , m ), er (at the end of the verb), and (at the end of the word), have , ez (at the end of the word or conjugated verb),
      • in (mutable in im before the consonants B , p , m ),
      • one (mutable in om before the consonants B , p , m ), oo (in imported words of English), or , œu
      • a (mutable in um before the consonants B , p , m )   ;
    • of the digraphs or trigrams of false Diphthong s : oi , oî , OY (except before a vowel), oin (except before a vowel).

In French, unlike other languages, the diacritics or the combinations of letters (digraphs and bindings) are not taken into account in the primary alphabetical order, or the sets of letters (crossed words, scrabble, etc)   ; these differences of accents or bindings are taken into account only at the ternary level , i.e. after the secondary level (differences in breakage), considered more important, and which follows the principal alphabetical classification of the words according to the 26 classes of letters.

Recent alphabets and of transcription

The languages whose written notation is recent (number of African Langues), those whose writing is not Latin even alphabetical (Mandarin, Japanese) or those whose writing is ambiguous and requires a phonetic clarification within the framework of didactic texts are generally written or transcribed by means of alphabetical signs (Latin essentially). Thus, certain African languages are written by means of the Alphabet side-Nigerian, of the purely oral languages are it more and more thanks to the International Phonetic Alphabet (which makes it possible to note all the languages more or less), a language with nonalphabetical writing as the Mandarin can be transcribed in Pinyin and one uses in Phonétique history Romance Langues the Transcription of Bourciez, all alphabetical writings.

One will refer to the list of the methods of transcription for more details.

See also: International Phonetic Alphabet

Other alphabets

Note:

  • one classified in this list of the writings which are not really alphabets but Abjad S , i.e. writings noting only the consonants or mainly the consonants, often named in a current way alphabets . One will refer to the article in question for more details. In these writings, moreover, the letters tend to more or less to change form according to the context;
  • the Alpha-spelling-book S ─ writings noting the consonants accompanied by a fundamental vowel by only one sign but indicating the other vowels by a sign appendix ─ are listed in their own article, although they are named often but improperly also alphabets . In these writings, the letters often change form according to their place in the syllable;
  • the operation of the Hangul in fact a very original but quite alphabetical writing: the phonemes are visually gathered by syllable but the syllabic blocks created do not constitute independent graphèmes.

Alphabet imaginary

Certain authors of Fantastic literature and Science-fiction developed an imaginary alphabet to give an additional relief to the people and to the cultures which they created:

  • Tengwar, a writing of the Elves of the Earth of the Medium of J.R.R. Tolkien (the world of the Lord of the Rings );
  • alphabet Klingon.

  • alphabet of the Codex Seraphinianus

System of coding

The term alphabet is sometimes used to indicate various systems of Codage:

By extension, alphabet becomes a mathematical concept abstracted in mathematical theory from the languages. Mathematically, an alphabet is a unit, whose elements are called letters, from which the words are generated, like continuations of letters. That makes it possible to develop algorithms to with it.

See too

Related articles

References

  • Francoise Briquel-Chatonnet, the Revolution of the alphabet , collections of the History, 29,2005.
  • Site presenting various alphabets and forms of writings in the world, as well as the evolution and the influence of the alphabets between them

External bonds

  • the interactive alphabet

  • Table with various alphabets

  • Of many written forms from the world and their evolutions

Be-X-old: Алфавіт Simple: Alphabet

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