who make up the abc's?

Answer 1

The phoenicians were a nation of traders and merchants, so they needed a simplified writing form that would allow them to keep ledgers and write messages with a minimum of fuss. About 1600 B.C., a new concept evolved using symbols to represent the sounds made in speaking rather than using symbols to represent ideas or objects. Then the Greeks adopted the phoenician's alphabet around 1000 B. C.. To them, it was a means of preserving knowledge. They also took the names for the letters and made them Greek. (Ex: aleph became alpha, beth became beta, etc.)The word alphabet comes from the first 2 letters, (alpha and beta). Their alphabet had only consonants, no vowels. Their words would have looked like our abbreviations, (ex: blvd., mr., st., etc.) It worked well for business ledgers, but broader use was limited. So, Greeks added 5 vowels and formalized the letterforms in 403 B. C.. The revised alphabet was officially adopted by Athens. The Romans accepted 13 letters unchanged from the Greek: A, B, E, H, I, K, M, N, O, T, X, Y, and Z. 8 letters were revised: C, D, G, L, P, R, S, and V. 2 letters were added: F and Q. This gave them 23 letters, which was all that was needed to write Latin. They also dropped the designations for the letters, such as alpha, beta and gamma, for the simpler A, B and C's known today. U and W were added about 1000 yrs. ago and J was added about 500 years after that.

Extra info: There was no punctuation as we know it in early Greek and Roman writing. Words were either all run together or separated with a dot or slash. In 15th century, with the advent of printing, punctuation became specific.

Answer 2

It's a conspiracy of teachers. 8-)