145. Hebrew and Arabic
Only a small part of the history of the alphabet was unfolded in Europe, where the seemingly so different forms of writing that have been discussed are after all only fairly close variants of the early Greek letters. In Asia the alphabet underwent more profound changes.
The chief modern Semitic alphabets, Hebrew and Arabic, are considerably more altered from the primitive Semitic or Phœnician than is our own alphabet. The Hebrew letters were slowly evolved, during the first ten centuries after Christ, under influences which have turned most of them as nearly as possible into parts of squarish boxes. B and K, M and S, G and N, H and CH and T, D and V and Z and R are shaped as if with intent to look alike rather than different. Arabic, on the other hand, runs wholly to curves: circles, segments of circles, and round flourishes; and several of its letters have become identical except for diacritical marks. If we put side by side the corresponding primitive Semitic, the modern English, the Hebrew, and the Arabic letters, it is at once apparent that in most cases English observes most faithfully the 3,000-years old forms. The cause of these changes in Hebrew and Arabic is in the main their derivation from alphabets descended from the Aramæan alphabet, a form of script that grew up during the seventh century B.C. in Aram to the northeast of Phœnicia. The Aramæans were Semites and therefore kept to the original value of the Phœnician letters more closely than the Greeks and Romans. On the other hand, they employed the alphabet primarily for business purposes and rapidly altered it to a cursive form, in which the looped or enclosing letters like A, B, D were opened and the way was cleared for a series of increasing modifications. Greek and Roman writing, on the other hand, were at first used largely in monumental, dedicatory, legal, and religious connections, and preserved clarity of form at the expense of rapidity of production.
One feature of primitive Semitic, most Asiatic alphabets retained for a long time: the lack of vowel signs. In the end, however, representation of the vowels proved to be so advantageous that it was introduced. Yet the later Semites did not follow the Greek example of converting dispensable consonantal signs into vocalic ones. They continued to recognize consonant signs as the only real letters, and then added smaller marks, or “points” as they are called, for the vowels. These points correspond more or less to the grave, acute, and circumflex accents which French uses to distinguish vowel shades or qualities, é, è, ê, and e, for instance; and to the double dot or diæresis which German puts upon its “umlaut” vowels, as to distinguish ä (= e) from a. There is this difference, however: whereas European points are reserved for minor modifications, Hebrew and Arabic have no other means of representing vowels than these points. The vowels therefore remain definitely subsidiary to the consonants; to the extent of this deficiency Hebrew has adhered more closely to the primitive Semitic system than have we.
The reason for this difference lies probably in the fact that Hebrew and Arabic have retained virtually all the consonants of ancient Semitic. Hence the breaths and stops could not be dispensed with, or at least such was the feeling of their speakers. In the Indo-European languages, these sounds being wanting, the transformation of the superfluous signs into the letters needed for the vowels was suggested to the Greeks. The step perfecting the alphabet was therefore taken by them not so much because they possessed originality or specially fertile imagination, as because of the accident that their speech consisted of sounds considerably different from those of Semitic. Perhaps the Greeks once complained of the unfitness of the Phœnician alphabet, and adjusted it to their language with grumblings. Had they been able to take it over unmodified, as the Hebrews and Arabs were able, it is probable that they would cheerfully have done so with all its imperfection. In that case they, and after them the Romans, and perhaps we too, would very likely have gone on writing only consonants as full letters and representing vowels by the Semitic method of subsidiary points. In short, even so enterprising and innovating a people as the Greeks are generally reputed to have been, made their important contribution to the alphabet less because they wished to improve it than because an accident of phonetics led them to find the means. Such are the marvels of human invention when divested of their romantic halo and examined objectively.