Similarly, the viking rune “alphabet” is called the Futhark, because the first letters are pronounced F, U, Þ, A, R, K.
Is the word Alphabet literally just a conjunction made from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet?
Submitted 10 months ago by PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
pmk@lemmy.sdf.org 10 months ago
QubaXR@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Fun fact - in Polish language the word alfabet exists as a technical name of the alphabet. There is also a more casual word, often used by children: abecadło which is basically polish way of saying “The ABCs”.
teft@startrek.website 10 months ago
Spanish is similar. For spanish the word is abecedario.
voidMainVoid@lemmy.world 10 months ago
English has “abecedarian”, which can mean “alphabetical”, “rudimentary”, “elementary”, “novice” or “beginner”.
sneezycat@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
We also have alfabeto though.
XTL@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
Finnish word is aakkoset. Well, it has the a. It sounds like a pet name or slang for something, but as far as I know it’s just nonsense.
voidMainVoid@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The Latin word is “abecedarium”. I don’t know why English adopted the Greek word.
hddsx@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
I mean, English isn’t a Romance language
MrSilkworm@lemmy.world 10 months ago
yes source: can speak Greek.
Also the first two letters of the Greek alphabet are άλφα (alpha) and βήτα (beta)
humorlessrepost@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Not that different from us talking about “learning our ABCs”.
Wilzax@lemmy.world 10 months ago
No, it’s a noun made from the portmanteau of the first two letters of the greek alphabet
actionjbone@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Technically correct
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 10 months ago
The best kind of correct.
Resol@lemmy.world 10 months ago
If it isn’t, then where else would the word “alphabet” come from?
Oh wait, you could look at the Hebrew alphabet and pretend that the word came from its first two letters: Aleph and Bet.
pohart@programming.dev 10 months ago
This is what I thought. From Hebrew.
NoMoreLurking@startrek.website 10 months ago
From Phoenician actually
Resol@lemmy.world 10 months ago
In all honesty, I don’t know which of the two languages is older.
angrystego@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Azbuka, name of the cirillic script, also comes from the old names of the first two letters.
username_unavailable@lemmy.world 10 months ago
There’s a series on Prime via The Great Courses Collection about the origins of language. (Almost?) all languages derive their names like this, but that’s like, a throw away line in a much deeper series.
emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Many Indian languages use some version of ‘akshara’, which means ‘unchanging’ or ‘indestructible’. (I guess the alphabet does change, but too slowly for us to notice.) Most Indian languages start the alphabet with all the vowels, so ‘first n letters’ would be unpronouncable.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
CarlsIII@kbin.social 10 months ago
No, it’s named after the cereal
No_Ones_Slick_Like_Gaston@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Completely wrong as is clearly named after Google parent company Alphabet
takeda@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yeah. Little known fact, they named their company after their original product, but struggled with how to turn in profit, so they created a Google subsidiary which invented a search engine. True story.
Klear@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I googled alphabet and apparently google got alphabetted 8 years ago?
casmael@startrek.website 10 months ago
Yeah
UziBobuzi@kbin.social 10 months ago
takeda@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Sounds like a question asked by someone who already knows the answer.
tygerprints@kbin.social 10 months ago
I never thought of it before, but it is a conjunction of those first two Greek letters. Or else, it's named after the soup it resembles.
DontTreadOnBigfoot@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yes
PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I woke up at 7:00 a.m. for this and had a sudden moment of clarity out of absolutely nowhere. Thank you.
gerbler@lemmy.world 10 months ago
These little epiphanies are always fun. Like when you realise how many maths and astronomy terms are just romanised Arabic words like Algebra and Algorithm.
Another fun one that I wasn’t smart enough to notice on my own is that the Hindu-Arabic numerals have the same number of angles in the symbols as the number they represent.
SomeoneElseMod@feddit.uk 10 months ago
It’s a Christmas miracle! 😉
ook_the_librarian@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You had a Sudden Clarity Clarence moment, but you don’t think in memes.
rynzcycle@kbin.social 10 months ago
So calling it your ABCs when you're younger isn't that far off. Interesting.