20 Fun Facts about Alphabet and Language

Here are 20 Fun facts about alphabets:

1. The English alphabet has 26 letters, which is the same number of letters as in the alphabet of Esperanto, a constructed language designed to be easy to learn and use.
2. The word “alphabet” comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta.
3. The oldest known alphabet is the Proto-Sinaitic script, which dates back to around 1800 BCE and was used in the Sinai Peninsula.
4. The longest word that can be typed using only the top row of letters on a QWERTY keyboard is “typewriter.”
5. The shortest sentence in English that uses all 26 letters of the alphabet is “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
6. The Cherokee syllabary, a writing system developed by the Cherokee Nation in the early 19th century, has 85 characters that represent syllables rather than individual sounds.
7. The letter “e” is the most commonly used letter in the English language, and appears in approximately 11% of all English words.
8. The letters “q” and “w” are the only letters in the English alphabet that do not appear in any of the names of the 50 states in the United States.
9. The letter “x” is often used to represent a kiss in written communication, because in the Middle Ages, people would kiss the letter “x” as a sign of sincerity.
10. The International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, also known as the NATO phonetic alphabet, uses words like “alpha,” “bravo,” and “charlie” to represent the letters of the alphabet in radio communication, in order to reduce confusion between similar-sounding letters.
11. The first writing system to use a true alphabet was the Phoenician alphabet, which was developed around 1200 BCE in what is now Lebanon.
12. The Greek alphabet, which was based on the Phoenician alphabet, was the first to include vowels as distinct letters. This innovation made written Greek much easier to read and write than other languages of the time, which used only consonants.
13. The Latin alphabet, which is the basis for many modern European alphabets including English, was adapted from the Etruscan alphabet in the 7th century BCE.
14. The letter “J” did not exist in the English alphabet until the 16th century. It was originally used as a variant of “I” and represented a sound that is now pronounced as “y.”
15. The ampersand symbol “&” is a ligature of the letters “e” and “t,” which together spell the Latin word “et” meaning “and.”
16. The Arabic alphabet, which is used to write many languages of the Middle East and North Africa, has 28 letters and is written from right to left.
17. The Cyrillic alphabet, which is used to write many Slavic languages including Russian and Bulgarian, was created in the 9th century by two Byzantine brothers, Cyril and Methodius.
18. The Chinese writing system, which is based on characters rather than an alphabet, has a history dating back more than 3,000 years.
19. The ancient Mayan civilization of Central America had a complex writing system that used hieroglyphs to represent words and concepts.
20. The Cherokee syllabary, which was mentioned in my previous answer, was one of the few writing systems ever invented by a person who was not literate in any language. Its creator, Sequoyah, was a Cherokee silversmith who wanted to help his people learn to read and write in their own language.