Any ancient people who had their own language always tried to reflect it on paper so that the language and events taking place in the present could be passed down through generations. People came to the sages, who drew signs on wooden tablets, clay or papyrus, which denoted certain events. What is the connection of these events of antiquity with the word "alphabet"? What is an alphabet anyway?

The alphabet (a word originally from the Greek language) denotes a set of characters that we now call letters. From the letters in the future, you can add words, and from words - whole sentences. The inventors of the first alphabet are considered the people of Ancient Mesopotamia - the Sumerians, who invented cuneiform writing in the 3rd century BC, from which both the Egyptian and Indian alphabets are believed to have gone. There are several types of alphabets used by different peoples of the world:

• Consonant-vocal alphabets - in such an alphabet, the same letters can denote both vowels and consonants.
• Consonant alphabets - letters in such writing are only consonants, but they can be considered vowels with a special system of voicing signs.
• Syllabic alphabets - in such an alphabet, signs denote not one letter, but entire syllables. More often these syllables have the same consonant but a different vowel.

Life and death of alphabets

Several languages ​​die every year, and alphabets go with them. Many neighboring peoples can find similar signs in writing, as sometimes one people borrows something from another, and this is normal. But still, there are a lot of alphabets in the world, each nation has its own, albeit somewhat similar to someone else's. There are alphabets for a reason, they carry certain tasks. Firstly, this is communication, because we communicate using words that consist of letters of the alphabet. Secondly, the alphabet plays a big role in preserving and fixing on paper the knowledge accumulated by mankind. The alphabet is an integral part of the culture and civilization of peoples. Previously, alphabets were needed in order to tell the story of the emergence of a people, various campaigns and battles, and to convey the experience of ancestors.

Since ancient times, people have sought to communicate with each other in order to survive. So tribes, groups of tribes, and then peoples began to form. Our ancestors developed more and more every decade and at one fine moment decided to invent something that would help fix their thoughts on stones, papyri. It's about the alphabet. When did she first appear? How was it developed and formed? And what is the alphabet? Let's figure it out right now.

The first similarity of the alphabet in the generally accepted sense of the word was that they were carved on the inner walls of the tombs of noble representatives of society, as well as inside the temples. But these symbols were pictures rather than letters, because many of them depicted specific objects. The basis in antiquity was the Phoenician alphabet invented about 4000 years ago. The Phoenician alphabet became the basis for the languages ​​of many other peoples who were contemporaries of this civilization: Greeks, Romans and some others.

Why is the alphabet so important? This invention made it possible to systematize the sounds that a person is capable of making and express them in the form of certain symbols that will mean these sounds. Let's summarize what the alphabet is. The alphabet is a set of symbols arranged in a certain order and personifying the sounds pronounced by a person on paper.

In the modern world, each nation has its own alphabet, but some letters may be the same. This trend is especially often observed in neighboring states or in countries whose official languages ​​originated from one common ancestor. So, for example, the alphabets of many European states were formed from dialects related to it, therefore, in them you can find many similar letters both in writing and in pronunciation.

An interesting pattern can be traced: in any language there are several times more consonants than vowels. An example of this fact is the alphabet of the English language. It has 26 letters, of which only 6 can be sung, that is, denoting

Many people are wondering why most of the peoples of East, Southeast and Central Asia, knowing what the alphabet is, did not make their own or an analogue based on the already existing alphabet? The answer is simple - since ancient times, their writing system was based on hieroglyphs, each of which meant a certain word or expression. But these symbols differ significantly from those used by the Egyptians several thousand years ago. Their signs were mostly pictures that had a certain meaning. The hieroglyphs of modern peoples are compositions of lines of different thicknesses and lengths, but they are not drawings.

So, the history of letters and symbols has many hundreds of years. It illustrates all the changes that preceded the development of writing, and tells about the appearance from which the modern alphabets were formed. Therefore, knowing what the alphabet is, you can discover the history of your own alphabet and your people as a whole.

ALPHABET- a set of letters or similar characters used in writing, where each letter stands for one or more phonemes. Alphabets were not the oldest basis of writing, having developed from hieroglyphs or written images, used, for example, in ancient Egypt, and from syllabic writing, in which one unit depicts a syllable, as in Mycenae. However, the "convergence" of writing and oral speech was fully realized only with the advent of the alphabet.

In the traditions of the peoples of the world, writing is a gift from the gods. For example, the ancient Egyptians attributed their hieroglyphs - the "language of the gods" to the god Anubis, and according to the legend of the Phoenicians, the god Tautu created the alphabet. The Jews, on the one hand, speak of their alphabet as a language of heavenly and mystical symbolism told to them by angels, and on the other hand, according to the biblical tradition, the art of writing to fix knowledge and prescriptions was received by Adam from God in paradise. In the Chaldean legend, the god Ea ordered the king Kasistra to inscribe the divine teachings and principles of all sciences on terracotta tablets and bury them before the flood in the city of Sippar. The ancient Aryan Sanskrit-speaking peoples believed that their Devangari alphabet - literally, the language of the gods - was sent to them from heaven.

Based on the idea of ​​the divine origin of the alphabet, all cultures rely on the use of the symbolic meaning of letters in their graphic and phonetic meanings. In a number of alphabets, the letter was represented by the principle of similarity with objects and things, in the form of which its outline is guessed. For example, the hieroglyph for N among the ancient Egyptians, Etruscans, Pelasgians, Arcadians and a number of peoples of Central America was a snake.

In another case, literal symbolism is built on the basis of cosmic correspondences, i.e., the letter acts as a symbol of the heavenly prototype of earthly realities. Thus, Egyptian writing is symbolically associated with the idea of ​​creation and the circles of associations that come from the sacred first principle. Pictographically (in the form of visual models), the divine principle, the root cause of creation and the essence of life were depicted by the king of birds, the eagle, which also denoted the mind. Action was transmitted in the form of a hand, and inaction - in a broken line, the nature of the action - in the form of a mouth, which meant the divine word.

In a series of symbols of the hieroglyphic alphabet, a rounded spiral means cosmic forces in action (a model of the Universe), a square spiral is a sign of human labor, creation. By his activity, a person transforms gross matter, the sign of which is an irregular triangle, into organized matter - a pyramid or a regular triangle. Cosmic and human activity is governed by the law of balance, expressed by a semicircle based on its diameter. Relations between opposite poles (for example, life - death) are represented by a sign equivalent to the Hebrew sign "Mem", which denotes the emergence of life from death. This uninterrupted flow forms the cycle of life symbolized by the writhing snake.

The mystical theory of forms, determined by the progressive change in the forms of the moon - from a disk to a thin thread of light - underlies the graphics of the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets. For example, 28 signs of the Arabic alphabet, interpreted by Arab mystics as the breath of God, through which the language of the divine word is transmitted, correspond to 28 "great houses of the Moon" in the Zodiac. In accordance with this, like the Jews, the letters in the Arabic alphabet have a numerical designation. The Hebrew alphabet has similar semantics and symbolism, which, like Tarot cards, has 22 characters. In the Kabbalistic tradition, 22 letters are divided into three main groups: three "mothers" - Aleph, Mem, Shin, - defining air, water and fire; seven "double" letters (Beth, Gimel, Dalet, Kaf, Phe, Resh, Tau), which are called astral and correspond with the corresponding planets and seven directions of light (north, east, west, south, top, bottom, center); twelve simple letters corresponding to the signs of the Zodiac. At the same time, Kabbalah establishes the mystical and magical meaning of each letter: the letters from Aleph to Yoda symbolize angelic myths: from Kaf to Tzadi - they represent a number of angelic ranks inhabiting various spheres; and from Tzadi to Tau, they establish correspondence with the world of elements. For example, the 21st - Shin - is turned to the vegetable kingdom, and Tau is connected to the world of minerals.

The Greek alphabet, containing 38 characters - 24 letters plus 11 two-vowels and 3 numbers - is a combination of spirit and matter and symbolizes the universality and perfection of the cosmos. The symbolism of letters, correlated with the sign of the Zodiac, with the symbolism of numbers and with the movement of the Sun and Moon, also plays a significant role among the Gnostics and in the cult of Mithra. The system of the Pythagoreans was based on sound analogies: seven celestial spheres are voiced by seven vowels singing a hymn to God. In a number of cultural systems, each vowel also corresponds to a certain color, and seven letters define seven directions of space - six rays of a three-dimensional cross plus a center.

Source: Big explanatory sociological dictionary. T. 1. (A-O). M., 1999; Encyclopedia of symbols, signs, emblems. M., 1999.

Definitions, meanings of the word in other dictionaries:

A large dictionary of esoteric terms - edited by d.m.s. Stepanov A.M.

letters in all cultures have a symbolic meaning - sometimes double, when it corresponds to both their form and sound. The letter symbolism probably derives from primitive pictograms, and especially from ideograms, according to the theory of cosmic correspondences, which...

1. Read letters of the Russian alphabet.

2. Name correct letters of the Russian alphabet and answer the questions.

1. How many letters are in the Russian alphabet?
2. What are the letters for?
3. Which two letters do not represent sounds?

3. Read. Write an offer.

• Why do you think it is important to be able to read well?

X about R about sho

Page for the curious

About the origin of words

The words ABC and alphabet mean the same thing.

Word alphabet came to us from the Greek language. It is formed from the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: "alpha" (α) and "vita" (β).

The word alphabet came to us from the Old Slavonic language. It is formed from the names of the first two letters of the Old Slavonic alphabet: “az” () and “beeches” ().

4. Read. What letters are missing? Which letters are “mixed up” in their places?

• Write all the letters of the Russian alphabet in alphabetical order.

5. Look at the pictures.

• Name each letter correctly. Guess why they come down with different parachutes.
• Write down the letters of any group, arranging them in alphabetical order.

6. Read expressively.

On the lesson

What letters do you know? the teacher asked.
- B-e-e-e! Lamb answered.
- And-and-and! Donkey said.
- Ha-ha-ha! Gus replied.
- W-w-w! Zhuk said.
Only Rybka said nothing. She didn't know a single letter.

(M. Bitny)

• Who mispronounced the letters? Name these letters correctly.
• Write the names of the two "students" in alphabetical order.

7. Read.

Alphabet - alphabet, meadow - lawn, student - student, work - worker, Olya - Olga, good - good.

• Which word in each pair of words will you write alphabetically first? Why?
• Write down two pairs of words, arranging the words in each pair alphabetically.
• Make up an oral sentence with one of the words.

uch e nick uch e nice

8. Guess word! The first letter is behind the letter "te", the second - behind the letter "tse", the third - behind the letter "ze", the fourth - behind the letter "es", the fifth - before the letter "e", the sixth - after the letter "ka", the seventh - after the letter "y".

• Make up a similar riddle and ask it to your friends.

teaches e eh

9. Read in the explanatory dictionary of the meaning of words ABC and scarlet, guest and rook. Which of these words has multiple meanings?

• Why word ABC given in the dictionary before the word scarlet, and the word rook- after the word the guest?
• Make a conclusion: how are the words arranged in the dictionary?

10. Read. Write any three words alphabetically, filling in the missing letters.

V..rona, v..r..bay, teaches..l, x..rosho, ru..cue, ..language, student..nick, from..tank, from..rock, weight.. oh, p..lto, l..sitsa, k..r..ndash.

• Check the spelling dictionary of the textbook spelling of these words. Mark them with emphasis.

11. Decipher the words. To do this, arrange the letters in alphabetical order.

• Write down the composed words. Explain the meaning of each word.

12. Read.

Aster, alphabet, quince
They start with "a".
And they end with "a"
Aster, alphabet, quince.
(N. Kostarev)

• Why do you think the author did not write the highlighted words in alphabetical order? What does each of these words mean?
• Write the underlined words in alphabetical order.

ALPHABET meaning

Modern explanatory dictionary ed. "Great Soviet Encyclopedia"

ALPHABET

Meaning:

in programming, a system of indecomposable, confidently distinguishable from each other characters (letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and other characters) used to build programming languages. --- (from the name of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha and beta, modern Greek - vita ), a set of letters, syllabic signs, and other graphemes of a given writing system, arranged in a certain order.

Dictionary of foreign words

ALPHABET

Meaning:

(not: alphabet), a, m.

1. A set of letters adopted in the writing of a language and arranged in a certain order; ABC. Russian a.

2. A list of names, surnames, names, etc., compiled by initial letters in the order adopted in the alphabet. Call to the board in alphabetical order. Alphabetic - pertaining to the alphabet, alphabets.

Compiled dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

alphabet

Meaning:

ALPHABET

(from alpha and beta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet). 1) all the letters of any language, located in the accepted constant, in other words, alphabetical order. 2) a list or a list of any items, in capital letters of their names, in sequential alphabetical order.

(Source: "Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language." Chudinov A.N., 1910)

ALPHABET

from alpha and beta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet. a) All the letters of any language, put in the accepted order. 1) Designation of objects in alphabetical order.