But the Semitic names did possess meaning in Semitic languages: they were the words for familiar objects {'aleph = ox, beth = house, gimel = camel, daleth = door, and so on}. These Semitic words were related "acrophonically" to the Semitic consonants to which they refer: that is, the first letter of the word for the object was also the letter named for the object {'a, b, g, d, and so on}. In addition, the earliest forms of the Semitic letters appear in many cases to have been pictures of those same objects. All these features made the forms, names, and sequence of Semitic alphabet letters easy to remember. Many
( Jared Diamond )
[ Guns, Germs, and Steel ]
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