Who Invented the Alphabet?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

by Kaitlyn Iocco on September 26, 2024

One of our readers, Dalton, wrote in with this great question. Thanks for asking, Dalton!

Many languages around the world have their own alphabets, but not all languages do. Some languages use other writing systems to express sounds and meanings. The English alphabet is called the “Latin” or “Roman” alphabet. It’s the most widely used alphabet in the world today.

Our English alphabet didn’t have just one inventor. It has developed over a long time, and it all started at the tower of Babel around 4,200 years ago.

God created language and gave this gift of communication to Adam and Eve. In the beginning, all humans spoke just one language. But after the flood, God told the people to spread out around the world. They disobeyed God and used his gift of language to work together to build the tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–4).

God punished them by confusing their language, which made it harder for them to communicate. This caused the people to stop building the city and to scatter throughout the world (Genesis 11:8–9), as God had originally commanded. The people who spoke the same languages settled together. That’s why we have so many countries in our world today where people speak different languages.

Our Latin alphabet can be traced back to around 1050 BC to the Phoenicians (fuh-NEE-shuns). The Phoenicians were an ancient people who lived in the Mediterranean (meh-duh-ter-AY-nee-un) area, in what is now the country of Lebanon. The Phoenician alphabet influenced many writing systems. The Greeks and later the Etruscans adopted and modified the Phoenician alphabet. Around the fifth to seventh centuries AD, Old English—using the Latin alphabet—was starting to be written down. And that’s when our modern English alphabet began to emerge.

God created humans with the smarts to develop writing systems and communicate our ideas. But as the Creator of all, he gets the credit for being the ultimate inventor!

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