AlphabetAn alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) representing phonemes, units of sounds that distinguish words, of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllable, and logographic systems use characters to represent words, morphemes, or other semantic units. The Egyptians have created the first alphabet in a technical sense.
Akkadian languageAkkadian (əˈkeɪdiən; Akkadian: ) is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia (Akkad, Assyria, Isin, Larsa, Babylonia and perhaps Dilmun) from the third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from the 8th century BC. It is the earliest documented Semitic language. It used the cuneiform script, which was originally used to write the unrelated, and also extinct, Sumerian (which is a language isolate), as well as the fellow East Semitic language Eblaite, the Hurro-Urartian language Hurrian, Elamite (another language isolate) and the Indo-European language Hittite.
Shin (letter)Shin (also spelled Šin (DIN) or Sheen) is the twenty-first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician šīn , Hebrew šīn ש, Aramaic šīn , Syriac šīn ܫ, and Arabic sin س. Its sound value is a voiceless sibilant, ʃ or s. The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Sigma () (which in turn gave Latin S and Cyrillic С), and the letter Sha in the Glagolitic and Cyrillic scripts (, ). The South Arabian and Ethiopian letter Śawt is also cognate.
Iranian languagesThe Iranian languages, also called Iranic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau. The Iranian languages are grouped in three stages: Old Iranian (until 400 BCE), Middle Iranian (400 BCE – 900 CE) and New Iranian (since 900 CE). The two directly-attested Old Iranian languages are Old Persian (from the Achaemenid Empire) and Old Avestan (the language of the Avesta).
Ligature (writing)In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph. Examples are the characters æ and œ used in English and French, in which the letters 'a' and 'e' are joined for the first ligature and the letters 'o' and 'e' are joined for the second ligature. For stylistic and legibility reasons, 'f' and 'i' are often merged to create 'fi' (where the tittle on the 'i' merges with the hood of the 'f'); the same is true of 's' and 't' to create 'st'.
Egyptian hieroglyphsEgyptian hieroglyphs (ˈhaɪrəˌɡlɪfs, ˈhaɪroʊˌɡlɪfs) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters. Cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet.
JewsJews (יְהוּדִים, Yehudim, jehuˈdim) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group, nation or ethnos native to the Levant, originating from the ancient Israelites and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the ethnic religion of the Jewish people, although its observance varies from strict to none. Jews take their origins from a Southern Levantine national and religious group that arose towards the end of the second millennium BCE.
