The Phoenicians spread the sound-symbol technology

The Phoenician or Proto-sinaitic Alphabet gave birth to many other alphabets including our own Roman letter.  Phoenician letters have the same name as the letters of the traditional Hebrew Alphabet although they look very different.  Each letter is named for something, not just a sound.

The Phoenicians were a sea faring people who could travel to many coastal cities and trade different goods.  They had an alphabet that other people used as a model to make their own alphabets. Though the letters looked similar, often the sounds were different for  different languages.  This Alphabet wasn’t a true Alphabet either because it only contained consonants.  
In order to speak, we must give breath to our words.  Vowels are expressed with air; we breathe into them.  Consonants give distinction to our words.  They are like little stops between the vowels.  Try speaking a consonant without any vowel sound — without any breath of air.  Can you do it .. are you sure?  Listen closely as you sound out ”b-ook”.  What happened?  The b sound needs a little puff of air to make a sound.  Even the k needs a little puff of air after it stops the oo vowel sound. 

There are twenty-two consonants in the Hebrew Alphabet, and five of them have additional, special forms when they end a word.  Some also have a couple ways to pronounce the letter, so a little line or dot is added to note that.  Although the Aleph and the Ayin transliterate (a big word that means to translate from one Alphabet to another Alphabet that uses a different set of letter symbols) as A and O, they are not vowels in the Hebrew.  They are glottal stops.  A no-sound is made by the Aleph as if one would say something, but doesn’t.  The Ayin is similar.  It is a little like saying the word ‘bottle’ by swallowing the ‘t’ sounds, “bah-ul”.

        


All Alphabets evolve over time to reflect the thinking patterns of the people who use them.  Above are pictured two more modern versions of the Hebrew Alphabet.