History of Alphabet

	Revision 57 . . December 11, 2001 5:31 pm by Hannes Hirzel [s/phonetic/phonological/ and made it a link; for consistency]
	Revision 56 . . December 11, 2001 5:38 am by Egern [Copyedit and rephrasing on silent letters]
	Revision 55 . . December 11, 2001 3:29 am by Egern [Elaboration on the whole question of spelling versus pronunciation]
	Revision 54 . . (edit) December 9, 2001 8:37 am by Bryan Derksen [fixed armenian alphabet link]
	Revision 53 . . (edit) December 9, 2001 7:10 am by Bryan Derksen [there's no reason why this list should be numbered, the numbering is meaningless.]
	Revision 52 . . (edit) December 9, 2001 12:16 am by The Anome [fixed 'tibetan' link]
	Revision 51 . . December 9, 2001 12:16 am by The Anome [...and Lao alphabet]
	Revision 50 . . December 9, 2001 12:15 am by The Anome [added link for Old Italic alphabet]
	Revision 49 . . December 9, 2001 12:12 am by Little guru
	Revision 48 . . December 9, 2001 12:10 am by Little guru
	Revision 47 . . December 9, 2001 12:09 am by The Anome [added a couple more languages to the link farm]
	Revision 46 . . December 9, 2001 12:05 am by The Anome [added a few more alphabet entries]
	Revision 45 . . December 8, 2001 8:31 pm by The Anome [added a few more alphabets from Unicode list - there are yet others that need to be added]
	Revision 44 . . (edit) December 8, 2001 8:23 pm by The Anome ['unicode consortium']
	Revision 43 . . December 8, 2001 8:21 pm by The Anome [mentioned, added link to, Unicode]
	Revision 42 . . December 8, 2001 8:18 pm by The Anome [Mentioned Unicode]
	Revision 41 . . December 7, 2001 4:56 am by Hannes Hirzel [Added sentence about universal phonetic alphabet]
	Revision 40 . . December 4, 2001 5:35 pm by Kowloonese
	Revision 39 . . December 4, 2001 5:22 pm by (logged).99.144.xxx [[Hiragana and katakana are syllabaries, and kanji are more or less ideograms. -- This entry needs more work as some non-English letters seem to have been eaten.]]
	Revision 38 . . December 4, 2001 5:15 pm by Bryan Derksen [removed Kanji; it's not a syllabary. I could be wrong.]
	Revision 37 . . December 4, 2001 5:13 pm by Bryan Derksen [Hiragana, Kanji]
	Revision 36 . . December 2, 2001 8:24 am by (logged).3.148.xxx [Addes link to 'Alphabets of Europe']
	Revision 35 . . (edit) November 15, 2001 3:38 am by (logged).128.164.xxx [alphabetized alphabet list]

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Changed: 3c3

Each language may establish certain general rules that govern the association between letters and phonemes, but, depending on the language, these rules may or may not be consistently followed. In a perfectly phonetic alphabet, the phonemes and letters would correspond perfectly in two directions: a writer could predict the spelling of a word given its pronunciation, and a speaker could predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling. However, languages often evolve independently of their writing systems, and writing systems have been borrowed for languages they were not designed for, so the degree to which letters of an alphabet correspond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from one language to another and even within a single language.

Each language may establish certain general rules that govern the association between letters and phonemes, but, depending on the language, these rules may or may not be consistently followed. In a perfectly phonological alphabet, the phonemes and letters would correspond perfectly in two directions: a writer could predict the spelling of a word given its pronunciation, and a speaker could predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling. However, languages often evolve independently of their writing systems, and writing systems have been borrowed for languages they were not designed for, so the degree to which letters of an alphabet correspond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from one language to another and even within a single language.