An alphabet is a standard set of letters ( basic written symbols or graphemes ) which is used to write one or more languages based on the general principle that the letters represent phonemes ( basic significant sounds ) of the spoken language.

A true alphabet has letters for the vowels of a language as well as the consonants.

Many languages use modified forms of the Latin alphabet, with additional letters formed using diacritical marks.

The English word alphabet came into Middle English from the Late Latin word alphabetum, which in turn originated in the Greek ἀλφάβητος ( alphabētos ), from alpha and beta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet.

Alpha and beta in turn came from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet, and originally meant ox and house respectively.

Some adaptations of the Latin alphabet are augmented with ligatures, such as æ in Old English and Icelandic and Ȣ in Algonquian ; by borrowings from other alphabets, such as the thorn þ in Old English and Icelandic, which came from the Futhark runes ; and by modifying existing letters, such as the eth ð of Old English and Icelandic, which is a modified d. Other alphabets only use a subset of the Latin alphabet, such as Hawaiian, and Italian, which uses the letters j, k, x, y and w only in foreign words.

They feature many letters that appear to have been borrowed from or influenced by the Greek alphabet and the Hebrew alphabet.

In Korea, the Hangul alphabet was created by Sejong the Great Hangul is a unique alphabet: it is a featural alphabet, where many of the letters are designed from a sound's place of articulation ( P to look like the widened mouth, L to look like the tongue pulled in, etc.

) Cyrillic is basically a true alphabet, but has syllabic letters for ( я, е, ю ); Coptic has a letter for.

However, in Kurdish, writing the vowels is mandatory, and full letters are used, so the script is a true alphabet.

The number of letters in an alphabet can be quite small.

Today the Rotokas alphabet has only twelve letters.

( The Hawaiian alphabet is sometimes claimed to be as small, but it actually consists of 18 letters, including the ʻokina and five long vowels.

) While Rotokas has a small alphabet because it has few phonemes to represent ( just eleven ), Book Pahlavi was small because many letters had been conflated — that is, the graphic distinctions had been lost over time, and diacritics were not developed to compensate for this as they were in Arabic, another script that lost many of its distinct letter shapes.

The alphabet in the Polish language contains 32 letters.

When written in Devanagari, Vedic Sanskrit has an alphabet of 53 letters, including the visarga mark for final aspiration and special letters for kš and jñ, though one of the letters is theoretical and not actually used.

In accordance with the principle on which alphabets are based, these rules will generally map letters of the alphabet to the phonemes ( significant sounds ) of the spoken language.

Beatty's letters home made no complaint about the poor living conditions in Britannia, and generally he was extrovert, even aggressive, and resented discipline.

Members of the order generally carry the letters O. P.

A magical formula is generally a name, word, or series of letters whose meaning illustrates principles and degrees of understanding that are often difficult to relay using other forms of speech or writing.

These vectors are generally represented by capital letters, for example for position.

Although Gauss thought well of Germain, his replies to her letters were often delayed, and he generally did not review her work.

There are 150 letters in what is generally called the Boniface correspondence, though not all them are by Boniface or addressed to him.

Instead it has generally provided guidance to Bahá ' ís around the world through letters and messages.

Instead it has generally provided guidance to Bahá ' ís around the world ; this guidance has generally been through the form of letters and messages, much like Shoghi Effendi's communications.

Today, chain letters are generally no longer actual letters.

It is similar to ISO 8859-1, and thus generally intended for “ Western European ” languages, but replaces some less common symbols with the euro sign and some letters that were now deemed missing in part 1 for the target use.

The letters and diaries of working-class people and ex-servicemen generally demonstrate support for the King, while those from the middle and upper classes tend to express indignation and distaste.

The macron has become the generally accepted device for marking long vowels ( hāngi ), but double vowel letters have also been used ( haangi ).

The postage required for postcards is generally less than postage required for standard letters ; however, certain technicalities such as their being oversized or having cut-outs may result in payment of the first-class rate being required.

Apart from these pairs, the components of a double star are generally denoted by the letters A ( for the brighter, primary, star ) and B ( for the fainter, secondary, star ) appended to the designation, of whatever sort, of the double star.

Although his idea was to travel to Braga, he was forced to pass through Hippo as it is known that he delivered letters from Jerome to Saint Augustine, it is also generally agreed that he passed through Jerusalem and Alexandria, although it is not known if he visited the latter on his outward journey, on his return journey or on both occasions.

The other hosts regarded him as the dullest storyteller, and as the hosts supposedly controlled the letters pages ( responses were written in-character ), that attitude was generally reflected there as well.

In later uncial scripts, the letters are sometimes drawn haphazardly ; for example, double-l runs together at the baseline, bows ( for example in b, p, r ) do not entirely curve in to touch their stems, and the script is generally not written as cleanly as previously.

In 1977 he talked his way onto the board of directors of a local charitable organization and forged a series of letters from its executive director to the mayor of Kansas City, and from the mayor to other civic leaders, commending his generous volunteer efforts and generally singing his praises.

These letters had advised the government to " govern democratically " and " open up ," and generally pounced on the government's political state.

While the crack in the bell appears to end at the abbreviation " Philad < sup > a </ sup >" in the last line of the inscription, that is merely the 19th century widened crack which was filed out in the hopes of allowing the bell to continue to ring ; a hairline crack, extending through the bell to the inside continues generally right and gradually moving to the top of the bell, through the word " and " in " Pass and Stow ", then through the word " the " before the word " Assembly " in the second line of text, and through the letters " rty " in the word " Liberty " in the first line.

When faced with abstract numbers and letters with no “ real world ” significance, respondents of the Wason card test generally do very poorly.

The letters and diaries of working-class people and ex-servicemen generally demonstrate support for the King, while those from the middle and upper classes tend to express indignation and distaste.

But that did not prevent him from writing more long letters, or from coming to spend his Christmas vacations with the hospitable, lively Szolds in their pleasant house on Lombard Street.

Underneath all the high-sounding phrases of royal and papal letters and behind the more down-to-earth instructions to the envoys was the inescapable fact that Edward would have to desert his Flemish allies and leave them to the vengeance of their indignant suzerain, the king of France, in return for being given an equally free hand with the insubordinate Scots.

A good many pages of the first section are taken up with an account of the dogged determination of the prisoners to write to their wives and families -- even when it becomes clear that the Germans are simply allowing the letters to blow away in the wind.

He's telling them now to write letters to their Congressmen opposing the disarmament of Germany.

They stayed in their own world on the bluff, waiting for letters and the peddler, bringing the news.

`` I suppose it has to do with the property '', Mark had said over the telephone when they had discussed their receipt of the letters.

The letters took their source from a stream of my imagination in which I was transformed into a young man not unlike my bunkmate Eliot Sands -- he of the porch steps anecdotes -- who smoked cigarettes, performed the tango, wore fifty dollar suits, and sneaked off into the dark with girls to do unimaginable things with them.

Either lay the components aside in proper order or code them with numbers and letters so they may be replaced in their proper positions.

Sometimes soldiers wrote letters while bullets were whizzing about their heads.

Rebs who owned slaves occasionally would include in their letters admonitions or greetings to members of the Negro community.

Sometimes these servants wrote or dictated for enclosure with the letters of their soldier-masters messages to their relatives and to members of their owners' families.

Some of the choicest remarks made by soldiers in their letters were in disparagement of unpopular officers.

That 60-day period is over and letters are still coming in from shareholders of these four funds, complaining about mistakes in their accounts.

Alphabets are usually associated with a standard ordering of their letters.

It also means that their letters can be used as an alternative method of " numbering " ordered items, in such contexts as numbered lists.

Alphabets often come to be associated with a standard ordering of their letters, which can then be used for purposes of collation – namely for the listing of words and other items in what is called alphabetical order.

The basic ordering of the Latin alphabet ( ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ ) is well established, although languages using this alphabet have different conventions for their treatment of modified letters ( such as the French é, à, and ô ) and of certain combinations of letters ( multigraphs ).

*( b ) limited, as when the Sovereign grants letters of denization to an alien, and the alien's male heirs, or to an alien for the term of their life ;

Nevertheless, Antoninus was virtually unique among emperors in that he dealt with these crises without leaving Italy once during his reign, but instead dealt with provincial matters of war and peace through their governors or through imperial letters to the cities such as Ephesus ( of which some were publicly displayed ).

The solution, stationer, is an anagram of into tears, the letters of which have burst out of their original arrangement to form the name of a type of businessman.

After describing the manifestation of the Gospel in the Ogdoad and Hebdomad, he adds that the Basilidians have a long account of the innumerable creations and powers in the several ' stages ' of the upper world ( diastemata ), in which they speak of 365 heavens and say that " their great archon " is Abrasax, because his name contains the number 365, the number of the days in the year ; i. e. the sum of the numbers denoted by the Greek letters in ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ according to the rules of isopsephy is 365:

) The autosome pairs are labeled with numbers ( 1-22 in humans ), and allosomes are labeled with their letters.