From which alphabet did all Western alphabets originate?

CellarDoor

It depends how you define alphabet. If we exclude hieroglyphs, then the original western alphabet was the Proto-Canaanite alphabet (from about 1400 BC), which developed into the Phoenician alphabet, which inspired the Greeks, and the rest is history. The Greek alphabet was the first to include vowels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Canaanite_alphabet Aug 05 09, 8:22 PM

trans991

Modern Western alphabet is descended from the Latin alphabet which was descended from the Greek Alphabet which was the first to have separate characters for consonants and vowels. So an argument could be made for Latin and for Greek being the actual ancestor of the Western Alphabet. The Cumae form of the Greek alphabet was carried over by Greek colonists from Euboea to the Italian peninsula, where it gave rise to a variety of alphabets used to inscribe the Italic languages. One of these became the Latin alphabet, which was spread across Europe as the Romans expanded their empire. Even after the fall of the Roman state, the alphabet survived in intellectual and religious works. It eventually became used for the descendant languages of Latin (the Romance languages) and then for the other languages of Europe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet http://www.answers.com/topic/alphabet 2 votes. Aug 05 09, 8:23 PM