China's 2011 average salaries revealed. Beijing tops the list of employees' salary with an average monthly pay of 4,672 yuan ($730) among the 23 provinces and cities that recently published the statistics, chinanews.com reported Friday.
History of the alphabet. The history of alphabetic writing goes back to the consonantal writing system used for Semitic languages in the Levant in the 2nd millennium BCE. Most or nearly all alphabetic scripts used throughout the world today ultimately go back to this Semitic proto-alphabet. Its first origins can be traced back to a Proto-Sinaitic script developed in Ancient Egypt to represent the language of Semitic-speaking workers in Egypt. This script was partly influenced by the older Egyptian hieratic, a cursive sc
All civilizations have had forms of writing and reading. People first used pictures as words. The Babylonians and ancient Egyptians passed beyond this stage and used hieroglyphics, which contained symbols along with pictures. In 1200 B.C., the Phoenicians, with their alphabet, were the first people to read sounds from letter symbols rather than from pictures. All the letters were capitals, and no spaces were left between words in sentences. Because the letters were printed by hand, they sometimes changed shape and were difficult to read.