Writing Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Alphabets=== {{See also|History of the alphabet}}An [[alphabet]] is a set of written symbols that represent [[consonant]]s and [[vowel]]s.<ref name=":0" /> In a perfectly [[phonology|phonological]] alphabet, the letters would correspond perfectly to the language's [[phoneme]]s. Thus, a writer could predict the spelling of a word given its pronunciation, and a speaker could predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling. However, as languages often evolve independently of their writing systems, and writing systems have been borrowed for languages they were not designed for, the degree to which letters of an alphabet correspond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from one language to another and even within a single language.{{citation needed|date=June 2023}} Sometimes the term "alphabet" is restricted to systems with separate letters for consonants and vowels, such as the [[Latin alphabet]], although abugidas and abjads may also be accepted as alphabets. Because of this use, [[Greek alphabet|Greek]] is often considered to be the first alphabet.{{citation needed|date=June 2023}} ====Abjads==== In most of the alphabets of the Middle East, it is usually only the consonants of a word that are written, although vowels may be indicated by the addition of various diacritical marks. Writing systems based primarily on writing just consonants phonemes date back to the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt. Such systems are called ''[[abjad]]s'', derived from the Arabic word for "alphabet", or ''consonantaries''.<ref name=":0" /> ====Abugidas==== In most of the alphabets of India and [[Southeast Asia]], vowels are indicated through diacritics or modification of the shape of the consonant. These are called ''[[abugida]]s''.<ref name=":0" /> Some abugidas, such as [[Geʽez script|Ethiopic]] and [[Canadian Aboriginal syllabics|Cree]], are learned by children as syllabaries, and so are often called "syllabics". However, unlike true syllabaries, there is not an independent glyph for each syllable.{{citation needed|date=June 2023}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page