▲ | PittleyDunkin 9 hours ago | |
While the greek letter names are derived from phoenician (e.g. aleph/alef/alep and bet), my understanding is that the term was first coined in reference to the greek script (e.g. alpha + bet-). It does, however, seem increasingly silly to look to etymology to argue for why we should use the terms as I did when actual evidence as to the origin seems extremely sketchy at best and may not be relevant to our current needs. I just think it's useful to distinguish consonantal scripts from those with full vowel inclusion. Why not use alphabet/abjad for this? There's already a broad understanding of this meaning; why not lean into it? I'll also admit this gets more complicated when I see people referring to an "abjad alphabet", but this leaves us with no way to describe an alphabet with consonants and vowels as opposed to a consonantal one. |