The Arabic alphabet, or Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing Arabic. It is written from right to left in a cursive style and includes 28 letters. Most letters have contextual letterforms.
The Hebrew alphabet, known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Persian. It is also used informally in Israel to write Levantine Arabic, especially among Druze. It is an offshoot of the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, which flourished during the Achaemenid Empire and which itself derives from the Phoenician alphabet.
R, or r, is the eighteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ar, plural ars, or in Ireland or.
The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization.
Raphael is an archangel first mentioned in the Book of Tobit and in 1 Enoch, both estimated to date from between the 3rd and 2nd century BCE. In later Jewish tradition, he became identified as one of the three heavenly visitors entertained by Abraham at the Oak of Mamre. He is not named in either the New Testament or the Quran, but later Christian tradition identified him with healing and as the angel who stirred waters in the Pool of Bethesda in John 5:2–4, and in Islam, where his name is Israfil, he is understood to be the unnamed angel of Quran 6:73, standing eternally with a trumpet to his lips, ready to announce the Day of Judgment. In Gnostic tradition, Raphael is represented on the Ophite Diagram.
Phoenician is an extinct Canaanite Semitic language originally spoken in the region surrounding the cities of Tyre and Sidon. Extensive Tyro-Sidonian trade and commercial dominance led to Phoenician becoming a lingua franca of the maritime Mediterranean during the Iron Age. The Phoenician alphabet spread to Greece during this period, where it became the source of all modern European scripts.
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants. In Archaic and early Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in many local variants, but, by the end of the 4th century BCE, the Euclidean alphabet, with 24 letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard and it is this version that is still used for Greek writing today.
Shin is the twenty-first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Shin 𐤔, Hebrew Shin ש, Aramaic Shin 𐡔, Syriac Shin ܫ, and Arabic Šin ش . Its sound value is a voiceless sibilant, or.
Qoph is the nineteenth letter of the Semitic scripts. Aramaic Qop is derived from the Phoenician letter, and derivations from Aramaic include Hebrew Qof ק, Syriac Qōp̄ ܩ and Arabic Qāf ق.
Gimel is the third letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Gīml , Hebrew Gimel ג, Aramaic Gāmal , Syriac Gāmal ܓ, and Arabic ǧīm ج. Its sound value in the original Phoenician and in all derived alphabets, except Arabic, is a voiced velar plosive ; in Modern Standard Arabic, it represents either a or for most Arabic speakers except in Northern Egypt, the southern parts of Yemen and some parts of Oman where it is pronounced as the voiced velar plosive.
The Celestial Alphabet, also known as Angelic Script, is an set of characters described by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa in the 16th century. It is not to be confused with John Dee and Edward Kelley's Enochian alphabet, which is also sometimes called the Celestial alphabet. Other alphabets with a similar origin are Transitus Fluvii and Malachim.
The Paleo-Hebrew script, also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in inscriptions of Canaanite languages from the region of Southern Canaan, also known as biblical Israel and Judah. It is considered to be the script used to record the original texts of the Hebrew Bible due to its similarity to the Samaritan script, as the Talmud stated that the Hebrew ancient script was still used by the Samaritans. The Talmud described it as the "Libona'a script", translated by some as "Lebanon script". Use of the term "Paleo-Hebrew alphabet" is due to a 1954 suggestion by Solomon Birnbaum, who argued that "[t]o apply the term Phoenician [ancient Phoenicia or modern Lebanon being Northern Canaan] to the script of the Hebrews [ancient Israel-Judah or modern Israel/Palestine being Southern Canaan] is hardly suitable". The Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets are two slight regional variants of the same script.
Resh is the twentieth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Rēsh , Hebrew Rēsh ר, Aramaic Rēsh , Syriac Rēsh ܪ, and Arabic Rāʾ ر. Its sound value is one of a number of rhotic consonants: usually or, but also or in Hebrew and North Mesopotamian Arabic.
Ayin is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician ʿayin, Hebrew ʿayinע, Aramaic ʿē, Syriac ʿē ܥ, and Arabic ʿayn ع.
He is the fifth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Hē , Hebrew Hē ה, Aramaic Hē , Syriac Hē ܗ, and Arabic Hāʾه. Its sound value is the voiceless glottal fricative.
Proto-Sinaitic is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian script and the Phoenician alphabet, which led to many modern alphabets including the Greek alphabet. According to common theory, Canaanites or Hyksos who spoke a Semitic language repurposed Egyptian hieroglyphs to construct a different script. The script is attested in a small corpus of inscriptions found at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, dating to the Middle Bronze Age.
The Byblos script, also known as the Byblos syllabary, Pseudo-hieroglyphic script, Proto-Byblian, Proto-Byblic, or Byblic, is an undeciphered writing system, known from ten inscriptions found in Byblos, a coastal city in Lebanon. The inscriptions are engraved on bronze plates and spatulas, and carved in stone. They were excavated by Maurice Dunand, from 1928 to 1932, and published in 1945 in his monograph Byblia Grammata. The inscriptions are conventionally dated to the second millennium BC, probably between the 18th and 15th centuries BC.
Yiddish orthography is the writing system used for the Yiddish language. It includes Yiddish spelling rules and the Hebrew script, which is used as the basis of a full vocalic alphabet. Letters that are silent or represent glottal stops in the Hebrew language are used as vowels in Yiddish. Other letters that can serve as both vowels and consonants are either read as appropriate to the context in which they appear, or are differentiated by diacritical marks derived from Hebrew nikkud, commonly referred to as "nekudot" or "pintalach". Additional phonetic distinctions between letters that share the same base character are also indicated by either pointing or adjacent placement of otherwise silent base characters. Several Yiddish points are not commonly used in any latter-day Hebrew context; others are used in a manner that is specific to Yiddish orthography. There is significant variation in the way this is applied in literary practice. There are also several differing approaches to the disambiguation of characters that can be used as either vowels or consonants.
The Canaanite “Hebrew” alphabet is a language the Aramaic alphabet was derived from taking place during the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman periods. It replaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet which was used in the earliest epigraphic records of the Hebrew language.
Teseo Ambrogio degli Albonesi was an Italian humanist. He was a proponent of Christian Kabbalah and an early student of Semitic languages. His Introductio ad Chaldaicam linguam, Syriacam, atque Armenicam, et decem alias linguas was one of the earliest Western studies of Syriac and Armenian. The bulk of the work consists of an Introduction to Chaldean, Syriac and Armenian. To this is added an Appendix which includes the presentation of alphabets, including brief references to Coptic and Ethiopic and comments on the ancestry of European languages, especially languages of Italy, with a discussion of Etruscan.
