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How Did a Consonant Script Become the Greek Alphabet? - The Invention of the Vowel | Sleepy Facts About History
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The letter A began as an ox's head. Not as a metaphor, but as a Phoenician pictograph turned sideways, representing a consonant sound that Greek speakers did not use. When the Greeks encountered this maritime trading script, they did something remarkable: they kept the shapes but changed the function, assigning unused consonants to essential vowel sounds. This episode traces how a writing system built entirely of consonants became one that marks vowels, and why that structural shift…
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