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Twenty-two letters that travelled.
Also known as: Phoenician script, Canaanite alphabet
The consonantal alphabet from which the Greek, Aramaic and Latin scripts descend.
Writes Phoenician with twenty-two consonant letters and no vowel notation.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
Carried by trade rather than by conquest, which is why it spread across the Mediterranean without a Phoenician empire behind it — the alphabet travelled as a commercial tool.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
The Greeks reused letters for sounds Greek did not have as vowels, which is the single change that turned an abjad into a full alphabet.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
Twenty-two angular letters written right to left, with no vowels and no distinction of case.
The Phoenician letters are the direct descendants of the Sinai pictorial signs.