What is a 'true' Alphabet?

Everywhere we look there are signs and advertisements, some with the letters of the Alphabet.  We read books and magazines and information on our computer screens every day.  The world is filled with letters that string together to make words; words that are grouped together to make up sentences.  We take this all for granted, so commonplace in our lives, it seems simple.  It wasn’t always so simple.    Fifteen thousand years ago, people were drawing pictures and symbols in caves and on rocks.  It took several thousands of years to learn to make the symbols represent sounds.  Finally the Alphabet and handwriting evolved over many centuries to become the letters we write today.

Abjad is a consonantal writing system used like an Alphabet with letters that represent consonants, but not vowels.

ideogram is a symbol that represents an idea or concept, usually a whole word or several words.  A Chinese character.  Also called an ideograph 

logogram is a symbol used to indicate a word or phrase

Also called a logograph.

phoneme - the smallest unit of a language sound, usually represented by a single letter.

phonics is a method of reading by relating sounds to letters or syllables in an alphabetic writing system.

pictograph is a picture symbol for a word or for certain sound, used in early Egyptian and Cuneform writing.

printscript is a term used for a simplified handwriting that incorporates both cursive and printed letters, usually simplified uppercase letters such as with the Vimala Alphabet™.

syllable - a small unit of sound that contains both a consonant and a vowel, or a single vowel sound.

syllabary is a writing system based on syllables, used like an Alphabet.

symbol is a written mark, character, ideogram, or letter that represents something else.  In our Roman Alphabet, a letter represents a certain sound.

technology - applying knowledge and / or skill for a practical purpose, especially scientific knowledge.  Handwriting is a technology!

transliteration means using a letter from one's own alphabet to translate, or stand for, a letter from another language's writing system.

Vimala Alphabet™ - a writing system created by Vimala Rodgers, Ph.D.  The Vimala Alphabet™ letters incorporate all the best aspects of the Roman letters.

vowel is a language sound produced with breath, or without much restriction.  a, e, i, o, u, sometimes y.