Revised: 23-Aug-2015
The two letters that comprise the word abba, ’A·lef and bet, happen to be the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In Hebrew, the word for “alphabet” is alef-bet, which comes from coupling the names of these two letters.
The English word “alphabet” is derived from the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta. Although Greek, the names of these letters sound like Hebrew. That is because the Greeks learned to write from the seafaring Phoenicians,[1] who spoke a Semitic language very similar to Hebrew. The Greeks borrowed their alphabet—its symbols and the names for its symbols—to write the sounds of the Greek language.
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For the transliteration system used in this series, click here.
- [1] The Phoenicians belonged to the larger Canaanite people group. ↩
