The origin and meaning of 26 English letters.

Hello, let me tell you something. As we all know, English has 26 letters.

But I'm afraid not many people know the origin of these 26 letters. It turns out that English letters originated from Latin letters, Latin letters originated from Greek letters, and Greek letters evolved from Phoenician letters.

Phoenicia is an ancient civilization on the east coast of the Mediterranean, and its geographical position is roughly equivalent to the coastal areas of Lebanon and Syria today. "Phoenicia" is the Greek name of this area, which means "the country of purple" and is named after its rich purple dyes. The Romans called it "Punic".

In the early 20th century BC, Phoenicia had some small slave cities, but it never formed a unified country. In ancient times, Phoenicia was famous for its industry, commerce and navigation. By 10 century BC, its activities had reached Cyprus, Sicily, Sardinia, France, Spain and North Africa, and many colonies had been established. After the 8th century BC, Assyria, New Babylon and other countries invaded Phoenicia. In the 6th century BC, Phoenicia was finally annexed by the Persian Empire.

About13rd century BC, Phoenicians created the first alphabet in human history, with ***22 letters (no vowels). This is the great contribution of Phoenicians to human culture. The Phoenician alphabet is the beginning of the world alphabet. In the west, it derived from ancient Greek letters and developed into Latin letters and Slavic letters. Greek letters and Latin letters are the basis of letters in all western countries. In the East, it derived Aramaic alphabet and evolved into national alphabet such as Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew and Persian. The Uyghur, Mongolian and Manchu letters in China also evolved from this.

According to textual research, the Phoenician alphabet is mainly based on the pictures and characters of ancient Egypt. In ancient Egypt, "A" was a picture of a bull's head; "B" is a picture representing "home" or "yard"; "C" and "G" are pictures representing "a ruler"; "D" is a diagram representing "door leaf"; "e" is a picture of "a person who raises his hand and shouts"; "F", "V" and "Y" are pictures representing "stick" or "stick"; "H" is a picture representing "a piece of hemp coil"; "I" is a picture representing "open hands"; "K" is a picture representing "palm"; "M" is a diagram representing "water"; "n" is a diagram representing "snake"; "O" is a picture representing "eyes"; "P" is a graph representing "mouth"; "Q" is a picture representing "rope loop"; "R" is a picture representing "human head"; "S" and "X" are pictures representing "hilly land" or "fish"; "T" is a graph representing "vertical and horizontal"; "Z" is a picture, meaning "pry" or "arrow". In the 2nd century BC, these 23 letters were included in the Latin alphabet. Later, in order to facilitate carving and writing, and to distinguish the vowel "V" from the consonant "V", the lower part of the original "V" was changed into a circle and named as the vowel "U"; When two "V" are connected, they form the consonant "W", and this "W" has appeared for 1 1 century. Later, people changed the "I" slightly and created another consonant letter "J". In this way, the original 23 letters plus "U", "W" and "J" form a 26-letter alphabet. In the Middle Ages, Latin letters were basically stereotyped, and later western characters (including English, of course) also evolved from this.