How did the Greeks alphabet influence todays systems of writing?
First, do keep in mind that the Greeks did not ORIGINATE their own writing system. They borrowed and adapted it from the system used by Phoenician traders in the first half of the 1st millennium B.C. (The Phoenicians were themselves not the inventors –though often popularly said to be so. They used a form of a system used by a whole variety of Semitic speaking peoples of that general geographic area, going back to a system invented perhaps 1900-2000 BC by a Semtici-speaking people in the Sinai, on the outskirts of Egypt. They themselves seem to have been inspired by one small piece of the Egyptian system of hieroglyphics, viz., a way of transcribing foreign words and names.) Note that the very ORDER Of the letters of our modern alphabet is based on the ancient Semitic system (though later adapted by added and dropped letters) — The WORD “alphabet” reflects the Greek names of the first two letters “alpha” and “beta”, but these themselves are simply imitations of the Semitic names “ale
