Editing Alphabet (section)

== Acrophony ==
In Phoenician, each letter got associated with a word that begins with that sound. This is called [[acrophony]] and is continuously used to varying degrees in [[Samaritan alphabet|Samaritan]], [[Aramaic alphabet|Aramaic]], [[Syriac alphabet|Syriac]], [[Hebrew alphabet|Hebrew]], [[Greek alphabet|Greek]], and [[Arabic alphabet|Arabic]].<ref>{{Cite web |date=16 November 2022 |title=The Samaritan Script |url=https://www.the-samaritans.net/the-samaritan-script/ |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=The Samaritans}} Notice the "Names of the Letters" Section.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=MacLeod |first=Ewan |title=Learn The Aramiac Alphabet |year=2015 |pages=3–4}}</ref>{{bsn|date=September 2024}}

Acrophony was abandoned in [[Latin alphabet|Latin]]. It referred to the letters by adding a vowel—usually {{gpm|e}}, sometimes {{gpm|a}} or {{gpm|u}}—before or after the consonant. Two exceptions were [[Y]] and [[Z]], which were borrowed from the Greek alphabet rather than Etruscan. They were known as ''Y Graeca'' "Greek Y" and ''zeta'' (from Greek)—this discrepancy was inherited by many European languages, as in the term ''zed'' for Z in all forms of English, other than American English.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Sampson |first=Geoffrey |title=Writing systems: a linguistic introduction |publisher=Stanford University Press |year=1985 |isbn=0-8047-1254-9}}</ref> Over time names sometimes shifted or were added, as in ''double U'' for [[W]], or "double V" in French, the English name for Y, and the American ''zee'' for Z. Comparing them in English and French gives a clear reflection of the [[Great Vowel Shift]]: A, B, C, and D are pronounced {{IPA|/eɪ, biː, siː, diː/}} in today's English, but in contemporary French they are {{IPA|/a, be, se, de/}}.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pedersen |first=Loren E. |title=A simple approach to French pronunciation: a comprehensive guide |publisher=Two Harbors |year=2016 |isbn=978-1-63505-259-6 |location=Minneapolis, MN}}</ref> The French names (from which the English names got derived) preserve the qualities of the English vowels before the Great Vowel Shift. By contrast, the names of F, L, M, N, and S ({{IPA|/ɛf, ɛl, ɛm, ɛn, ɛs/}}) remain the same in both languages because "short" vowels were largely unaffected by the Shift.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Great Vowel Shift |url=https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/great-vowel-shift |access-date=2022-12-13 |website=chaucer.fas.harvard.edu}} Note how it says short vowels are similar between Middle and Modern English.</ref>

In Cyrillic, originally, acrophony was present using Slavic words. The first three words going, azŭ, buky, vědě, with the Cyrillic collation order being, А, Б, В. However, this was later abandoned in favor of a system similar to Latin.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lunt |first=Horace G. |title=Old Church Slavonic grammar |publisher=Mouton de Gruyter |year=2001 |isbn=3-11-016284-9 |edition=7th |location=Berlin}}</ref>