Editing Mater lectionis (section)

==Influence on other languages==

Later, in some adaptations of the Arabic alphabet (such those sometimes used for [[Kurdish alphabets|Kurdish]] and [[Uyghur Arabic alphabet|Uyghur]]) and of the Hebrew alphabet (such as those used for [[Judeo-Arabic]], [[Yiddish]] and [[Judaeo-Spanish]]), ''matres lectionis'' were generally used for all or most vowels, thus in effect becoming vowel letters: see [[Yiddish orthography]]. This tendency was taken to its logical conclusion in fully alphabetic scripts such as [[Greek alphabet|Greek]], [[Latin alphabet|Latin]], and [[Cyrillic script|Cyrillic]]. Many of the vowel letters in such languages historically go back to ''matres lectionis'' in the Phoenician script. For example, the letter {{angle bracket|i}} was originally derived from the consonant letter ''yod''. Similarly the vowel letters in the [[Avestan alphabet]] were adapted from ''matres lectionis'' in the version of the [[Aramaic alphabet]] adapted as the [[Pahlavi scripts]].