The Educator (Volume 45) - IAMPETH

meaning at first glance; a man a
woman are easily distinguished; so
is a child when it becomes evident
that the figure is engaged in sucking
its thumb.
Gradually from the hieroglyphics
there was evolved the hieratic, the
abbreviated form of the former. It
was employed by the priest from the
fourth to the sixth dynasty. This
writing is found in the earliest Egyptian
books preserved. This hieratic
writing shows but faint traces of its
original pictorial character and even
these were lost in the demotic form
which began by conventional signs.
This demotic form developed between
the third and fourth centuries B. C.
into Egypt, the use of the old writing
forms declined. No inscriptions
are to be found in any of the three
styles after the middle of the fifth
century B. C.
An interesting fact about hieroglyphics
concerns the direction of
the writing. This was not, as in
most writing, fixed, but depended on
the whim of the writer or the shape
of the material to be inscribed. Sometimes
they were to be read from
right to left, less commonly from
left to right; while frequently they
were to be read vertically downwards.
Through the Middle Ages and well
into modern times, no interest was
felt in these old hieroglyphics, but
from the seventeenth century, scholars
made occasional efforts to decipher
the inscriptions. The problem
seemed insoluble, however, until the
discovery of the Rosetta Stone threw
light upon it.
The cuneiform inscriptions and
also the writing of the Chinese developed
from an original pictorial
form. In some of the letters, which
make up the alphabets of European
peoples, the primitive ideograms may
be traced.
Writing in which symbols represent
sounds is called phonetic. The
Phoenicians invented the first phonetic
alphabet. All the alphabets of
the modern times are derived from
this first alphabet.
The name alphabet is derived from
the names of the letters, alpha and
beta, and denotes a set of characters,
or, as we call them letters, each of
which represents a given sound.
Syllabraries and alphabets are the
conventionalized stages of writing.
All the alphabets of modern Europe
may be traced back to the Greek
alphabet, which was in its turn derived
from the Phoenician. Just
when it was introduced is not known,
but there are inscriptions which date
from the seventh century B. C. Originally
the Greek wi-iting, like the
Phoenician, was from left to right,
later the direction was alternated,
but from 500 B. C. a uniform direction
from left to right was followed.
The original Latin alphabet, as it
is found in the oldest inscriptions,
consisted of twenty-one letters;
The Educator 15
namely, the vowels a. e, i, o, u, and
the consonants b, c, d, f, z, h, k, 1,
m, n, p, q, r, s, t, x. Z slipped out
at an early period and g took its
place. No genuine Latin word contains
either y or z, these being used
in foreign (chiefly Greek) words
adopted into the language; and k is
found in classical Latin only in Kalendae.
Our modern lower-case letters
and script represent adaptations
of the Garolingian minuscule of the
ninth century, which itself descended
from the uncials or bookhands of
still earlier periods. The most important
of these were the Roman
uncials, which are essentially made
up of rounded capital form.
About the time of Cicero, the characters
y, u. and z were introduced at
the end of the alphabet. This Latin
alphabet, as spread by the Roman
conquests became the alphabet of
most of the modern European languages.
The Latin or Roman alphabet
which came into use in Italy about
the sixth or fifth century B. C. became
the medium for the classical
literature of Rome. The oldest Roman
inscriptions show the original
Greek letters in simplified form.
Some of the Greek letters are entirely
omitted. The five additional
letters of our English alphabet arose
from the introduction of z, the differentiation
of i and j, and the expansion
of w into u, w, and y. The
German alphabet also comes from
the Latin, but the letters contain the
queer Gothic shapes of the Middle
Ages.
The oldest extant records of the
Latin alphabet are first, the inscription
known as the "Duenos Inscription"
(it read DVENOS MED
FECED) found in 1880 in Rome
upon an earthenware vessel with
three separate branches, dating from
the former half of the fourth century
B. C; second is the Praeneste
fibula, dating from the sixth or fifth
century B. C, the inscription of
which runs from right to left. It
reads MANIOS MED FHEFHAKED
NUMASIOI, and is remarkable as illustrating
the device of combining
the letters F and H to represent the
sound of F which was common in
Latin. The third instance of early
Latin is an inscription upon a column
found in the Roman forum and
dating probably from the fifth century
B. C.
When after the conquest of Greece,
Greek words began to be borrowed by
the Latin Language, the symbols Y
and Z were adopted from the Greek
language and placed at the end of
the alphabet.
The Latin alphabet of twenty-three
letters (including y and z) became
extended during the Middle Ages to
our own of twenty-six by the division
of i and j and the tripartite division
of V into u, v, and w. J developed
in the fifteenth century as an initial
(more ornate) form of i, and as the
consonantal sound occurred more
usually at the beginning of words
and the vocalic in the middle, j became
specialized to represent the
consonant, i the vowel. The history
of us and v is precisely similar except
that it took place five centuries
earlier. W arose, as its name implies,
out of a combination of uu or
vv. In about the eleventh century it
came to represent in old English the
w sound which had previously been
represented by a rune.
The Latin characters are now employed
by many nations, such as the
Italian, the French, the Spanish, the
Portuguese, the English, the Dutch,
the German, the Hungarian, the
Polish, etc., each having introduced
such modifications or additions as are
necessary to express the sound of the
language peculiar to it.
As trade and travel brings the na-
tions into closer relations, there is a
general tendency to adopt the Roman
alphabet.
The Japanese have began to use it
for commercial purposes, although
their literature is still written in
Chinese characters. Even the Chinese
have taken some steps to discard
their old ideographic system and to
develop alphabetic writing.
DR. A. L. HOWARD RETIRES
In February Dr. Howard, the su-
pervisor of business practice classes
of the District of Columbia public
schools, retired. Dr. Howard has
served the schools of Washington for
almost half a century and has won
the admiration and respect of students,
teachers, and administrators.
After graduating from the old
Central High School, Dr. Howard attended
the Washington Normal
School. His early teaching was done
at the Abbot School, now one of
Washington's vocational schools.
While he was teaching, he was
awarded a doctor's degree by the
Georgetown University Medical
School. Soon afterwards he was promoted
to the old Business High
School and taught there until he was
appointed supervisor over twenty
years ago.
It was with regret that the teach-
ers and administrators learned of
Dr. Howard's retirement, for through
his retirement Washington lost one
of her finest educators.
—Submitted by Mary Ellen Meiring,
Teacher, Langley Junior High
School, Washington, D. C.