Confident teacher writing on white board
Modern Standard vs. Dialect
20 July 2020

This is a question that been there for some time in my mind

 

Latin letters start with A, is that related to Alpha α in Greek. The same question applies for B and Beta and β. 

A simple search in Wikipedia highlight some relation;

“The English word alphabet came into Middle English from the Late Latin word alphabetum, which in turn originated in the Greek ἀλφάβητος (alphabētos). The Greek word was made from the first two letters, alpha(α) and beta(β).[7] The names for the Greek letters came from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabetaleph, which also meant ox, and bet, which also meant house.

Aleph (or Alef or Álefe, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ʾālep 𐤀, Hebrew ʾālef א, Aramaic ʾālap 𐡀, Syriac ʾālap̄ ܐ, and Arabic alif ا. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱, and Ge’ez ʾälef አ.” 

This is a question that been there for some time in my mind.

Latin letters start with A, is that related to Alpha α in Greek. The same question applies for B and Beta and β. 

A simple search in Wikipedia highlight some relation;

“The English word alphabet came into Middle English from the Late Latin word alphabetum, which in turn originated in the Greek ἀλφάβητος (alphabētos). The Greek word was made from the first two letters, alpha(α) and beta(β).[7] The names for the Greek letters came from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabetaleph, which also meant ox, and bet, which also meant house.

Aleph (or Alef or Álefe, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ʾālep 𐤀, Hebrew ʾālef א, Aramaic ʾālap 𐡀, Syriac ʾālap̄ ܐ, and Arabic alif ا. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱, and Ge’ez ʾälef አ.” 

Quote ends here and question stays open.

A close up of a device Description automatically generated

 

Phoenician Arabic

How come Aleph in Phoenicianأ  is still pronounced ألف  in Arabic,

the very same pronunciation of its Grandfather letter in Phoenician as the wikipedia resource suggest. And how did β Bet meant House and stayed same meaning in Arabic word for house  بيت . 

I am not suggesting this article as an academic research into origins of languages and words – as we define etymology – or a comparative study of languages. Instead,  am showing here one of the reasons we found Nexus Learn Arabic; To focus on a beautiful Language and spread the learning of Arabic so people can discover this Language and they could discover more relations to their own languages. 

We want people to see the NEXUS – Latin word for connection-  in hope that we bring more NEXUS between people. 

Languages have a very inspiring story of how it started and how people started to develop languages and how languages used to engage with other languages and stunningly give and take words from each other.

That interaction happened in peace times (e.g. Trade exchanges) as well as war time (occupation and spread of military power). 

We will tell in other blogs stories about the spread of Arabic as well as other languages two-way influence on Arabic. 

Please feel welcome to send us your story or thoughts about languages in general and how you think they relate to Arabic Language. It is always great to share stories from around the world.