Alphabets

We can communicate with languages. We tell others what we're thinking or feeling. Writing has this function as well. Most languages have a written form, or writing. Writing consists of characters. These characters can be diverse. Most writing is made up of letters. These letters make up alphabets. An alphabet is an organized set of graphic symbols. These characters are joined to form words according to certain rules. Each character has a fixed pronunciation. The term "alphabet" comes from the Greek language. There, the first two letters were called "alpha" and "beta". There have been many different alphabets throughout history. People were using characters more than 3,000 years ago. Earlier, characters were magical symbols. Only a few people knew what they meant. Later, the characters lost their symbolic nature. Today, letters have no meaning. They only have a meaning when they are combined with other letters. Characters such as that of the Chinese function differently. They resemble pictures and often depict what they mean. When we write, we are encoding our thoughts. We use characters to record our knowledge. Our brain has learned how to decode the alphabet. Characters become words, words become ideas. In this way, a text can survive for thousands of years. And still be understood…

Guess the language!

______ is one of the Indo-Iranian languages. It is the native language of about 200 million people. More than 140 million of those people live in Bangladesh. There are also approximately 75 million speakers in India. Additional speakers are found in Malaysia, Nepal and Saudi Arabia. ______ is thus one of the most spoken languages of the world. The language has its own writing system. There are even distinct symbols for numbers.

Nowadays, however, Arabic digits are used most of the time. ______ syntax follows strict rules. The subject comes first, then the object, and finally the verb. There are no grammatical genders. Nouns and adjectives also vary only slightly. That is a good thing for everyone that wants to learn this important language. And as many as possible should do so!