Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
alphabetic writing system
System of writing based on phonetic and phonological criteria, i.e. a system in which graphic signs represent individual sounds or sound segments. Alphabetic writing systems are differentiated by this ‘phonographic’ principle from writing systems that use (a) picture-like signs to represent linguistic or non-linguistic phenomena (pictograph), (b) concepts (ideograph), (c) morphological units—morphemes or words—(logograph), or (d) syllables. In contrast to ideographic (and syllabographic) systems, which developed independently at different times with different peoples, all alphabetic writing systems can be traced back to a single system invented in the Semitic (Old Phoenician) linguistic area. The Greeks adapted this originally consonantal alphabetic writing system by adding vowels and writing out words in a linear series of consonants and vowels. The universal development and spread of alphabetic writing systems is based on the particularly favorable relationship between the simplicity and the learnability of the system as well as the economy of its use. While the modern Chinese (logographic) writing system (
Chinese script) requires some 6,000–8,000 signs to accommodate colloquial communication and nearly ten times as many for scientific texts, alphabetic writing systems have an average of thirty characters: English has twenty-six, German thirty, French thirty-one, and Russian thirty-three. The transmission of the Latin alphabet to other European languages brought about various difficulties in adapting the alphabet, depending on the phonological structure of the language, as well as certain orthographic irregularities concerning the relation of sound to sign (and vice versa). Such problem cases, which were frequently intensified through historical changes or by chance, are especially due to unsystematically ascribing signs/graphemes to sounds/phonemes. Individual European languages are affected by the following complications to varying degrees: (a) one sign stands for several sounds (e.g. ‹c› stands for [k] in cat, [s] in cell, and [ts] in cats); (b) several signs denote the same sound (‹f, ph› stand for [f] in file, philosophy); (c) simple signs are used for complex sounds (‹j› stands for 
in juice); or (d) complex signs stand for individual sounds (‹sh› for [∫] in shine).
References
Cohen, M. 1958. La Grande Invention de l’écriture et son ézvolution. Paris.
Diringer, D. 1962. Writing. London.
Földes-Padd, K.
1966. Vom Felsenbild zum Alphabet: die Geschichte der Schrift von ihren frühesten Vorstufen bis zur lateinischen Schreibschrift. Stuttgart.
Friedrich, J. 1966. Geschichte der Schrift unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ihrer geistigen Entwicklung. Heidelberg.
Gelb, I.J. 1952. A study of writing: the foundation of grammatology. London.
Lüdtke, H. 1969. Die Alphabetschrift und das Problem der Lautsegmentierung. Phonetica 20. 147–76.
Naveh, J. 1982. Early history of the alphabet: an introduction to West Semitic epigraphy and paleography. Leiden.
Powell, B.B. 1991. Homer and the origin of the Greek alphabet. Cambridge.
Raible, W. 1991. Zur Entwicklung von Alphabetschrift-Systemen. Heidelberg.
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