Looking at the further spread of the alphabet

Have been looking at the Brahmi languages of India and their written forms, which are said to have been influenced, to some extent, by Aramaic. One written form was Sanskrit, the language of the Buddhist and Hindu scriptures. With the spread of these religions through South Asia, South East Asia and Central Asia, Sanskrit writing spread too and later had an influence on the alphabets of countries throughout this region.

Have also looked at the development of the Greek and Latin alphabets and their influences on written English, and the role of Christianity in the spread of both.

Points noted include:

* The spread of alphabets is very much a history lesson: events at different periods in time influenced written language and written language had an influence on those events.

* Sanskrit spread with religion whereas most other written alphabets spread through military or political conquest.

* The Sanskrit-influenced alphabets of Asia all reflected the phonemes of Sanskrit and were arranged in the same order, ie according to how they were pronouced, from the back of the mouth to the front.

* Many of the Sanskrit-influenced alphabets of South East Asian countries have today been superseded by Roman and Arabic alphabets.

* Although the Indian subcontinent has hundreds of languages, those with written form encode the same phonemes and their letters are listed in the same order.

* For the Greeks, with a different spoken language to the Phoenicians, the Phoenician alphabet wasn't very practical for putting their language in written form. Greek scribes already used a written language based on syllables, so when they looked at the Phoenician alphabet in relation to Greek spoken language, they looked at it systematically, comparing sounds from their language to those represented by the Phoenician alphabet. It turned out there were consonant symbols which were redundant, so these were used to represent some of the Greek vowel sounds. They devised other symbols for the remaining sounds and added these to the end of the alphabet.

* The Greek alphabet became the first alphabetic writing system to represent both consonant and vowel sounds.

* Around 700BC, the Etruscans (from Tuscany in Italy), a civilisation on the way up, adopted the Greek alphabet for their written language. But it didn't quite fit their spoken language - two letters of the Greek alphabet were redundant. So they adapted it and later introduced word division into their writing.

* The Romans, further south in Italy, took up the written language of their more powerful northern neighbours and again as there wasn't a perfect match of phonemes, it was adapted. This early Roman alphabet differed from the Roman alphabet we recognise today.

* In the early Roman alphabet there were 23 letters and no J, U or W. V alternated between being a consonant and a vowel.

* In the transition from Greek to Etruscan to Roman alphabets, the names of the letters changed from their Semitic-derived names of two syllables: aleph, beta, etc to one syllable names.

* Those who came after the end of the Roman Empire found it convenient to use Latin as a written language, except in North Africa and Spain where Arabic replaced Latin.

* Over time Latin evolved into a diversity of forms and it wasn't until the 8th century and Charlemagne, a supporter of learning, that it was standardised. He found the scholars around him all spoke a different Latin. So he made an effort to standardize pronunciation, grammar usage and the written script.

* Pronunciation of languages changes over time and this obviously influences change in written language also.

* The introduction of the printing press resulted in a move to standardise alphabet forms.



References:

Gnanadesakari, A 2009, The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the internet, John Wiley & Sons, EBooks Corporation, viewed 28 April 2010