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Inventors and Inventions

Inventors of the Alphabet

Inventors of the Alphabet
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 8 to 9
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   8.76

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    cast-metal, beta, consonant, stonework, scribes, molded, vowel, efficient, writing, eventually, basis, lower, especially, combination, standard, system
     content words:    Mediterranean Sea, Middle East, In Greece, Roman Empire, United States

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Inventors of the Alphabet
By Sharon Fabian 		  
1     Back in the years BC, the Phoenician traders were some of the busiest people around. These merchants sailed back and forth across the Mediterranean Sea carrying shiploads of cargo. They traded cast-metal objects molded from gold and silver. They traded glass. They traded textiles, especially textiles dyed with their famous purple dye. All of this trading made their businesses prosper. They kept busy and worked hard to keep their businesses growing.
 
2     Just as with a business today, one thing that may have slowed them down was record keeping. At that time most writing used symbols for words or numbers. Maybe the Phoenicians decided that a writing system with symbols for sounds would be much more efficient than a system with a different symbol for each word. A system with fewer symbols would certainly be quicker to learn and easier to remember. The Phoenicians began using an alphabet that had only 22 symbols, or letters -- one for each consonant sound.
 
3     Even though the Phoenicians probably built their alphabet on ideas that they had learned from other cultures, they are often called the inventors of the alphabet. The Egyptians, who are best known for their hieroglyphics, had also used symbols that stood for sounds. Other cultures may have used a combination of picture and sound symbols too.

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