The story of the Letter A Present by: Alfasy-Vaxcman Sara Course: The Development of English Teacher: Pro. Penny Ur Date: December, 2 nd, 2009

2 The uppercase - Majuscule Form The letter ‘A’ is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is pronounced /e ɪ /. ‘A’ can be traced to a pictogram of an ox head in the Egyptian hieroglyphs. *The pictoral sign represented a whole word.

3 From Egyptian hieroglyphs to Proto-Canaanite In the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, the letter ‘A’, was also represented by the image of an ox’s head, BUT, The Canaanites began to use the sign (ox’s head) to stand for an individual speech sound, which was called- alp (ox). *The Proto-Canaanite alphabet was a consonantal alphabet.

4 From Proto-Canaanite to Phoenician ‘A’ represented a consonant (a glottal stop( עיצור פוצץ- in the Phoenician alphabet, which had no vowels sounds. They called this letter aleph, the Phoenician word for ‘ox’.

5 Phoenician The Phoenicians drew the ox head ‘A’ as a ‘V’ with a crossbar to distinguish the horns from the face. * The Phoenician (North Semitic) alphabet was non-pictorial and consonantal.

6 From Phoenician to Greek The ancient Greeks had no use of the glottal stop that the letter ‘A’ denoted, so they used the symbol to represent the vowel /a/. They rotated it 90° so that it pointed up and changed the angle at which the cross bar is set. Finally, the letter looked almost as it does today. The Greeks also changed the letter’s name from aleph to alpha.

7 From Greek to Etruscans The Etruscans brought the Greek alphabet to their civilization (in Italy) and left the letter ‘A’ unchanged.

8 From Etruscans to Romans Modern ‘A’ derives from the Romans who borrowed the Etruscan alphabet to write Latin. The Romans kept its design, but changed the name of the first letter ‘A’ to- ah. (the sound ay, our name for ‘A’, was not common to the Latin language).

9 The lowercase - Minuscule Form The lower-case letter developed gradually and was in use by the 8th century. The letter ‘A’ has two lower-case forms. The form used in most current handwriting script, and in italic type: a The form used in most printed material: a Both derive from the capital form (majuscule).

10 The lower-case ‘open a’ is a development of the capital, with the addition of a left-facing loop at the top and a lowering of the cross-bar. The lower-case ‘closed a’ (a) is an italic development from the medieval period (Middle-Ages). CursiveRoman uncial CarolingianModern italic Modern Roman

11 Usage In pronunciation, ‘A/a’ has both short and long open-vowel values as in /æ/ cat and / ɑ :/ father, or, in concert with the diphthong /e ɪ / ace and major, due to effects of the Great Vowel Shift. It has a range of other pronunciations in specific contexts such as a closer sound [ ɔ :] after w or before l, as in water and call.

12 In spelling, ‘a’ enters into a number of combined forms with other vowels, both separated as in rate, or adjacent as in rain, cause, ear, goat… It is occasionally doubled, but only in loan words as in Aaron, aardvark. (דב נמלים)

13 Alternative representations of ‘A’ Sign language Braille

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