History of the Greek alphabet only required one. The history here is complicated, but basically "sāmekh" dropped out in certain dialects, and was reused to represent in others, while usage for the sound varied between "ṣādē" and "šin". The letter now known as sigma took its name from "sāmekh" but its form from "šin", while the letter San, which occurred in a few dialects only, took its name from "šin" but its place in the alphabet from "ṣādē". A further Greek letter of uncertain origin, sampi, is found occasionally, and may represent an affricate, such as . For the special case of zeta, see Zeta
History of the Arabic alphabet History of the Arabic alphabet The history of the Arabic alphabet concerns the origins and the evolution of the Arabic script. It is thought that the Arabic alphabet is a derivative of the Nabataean variation of the Aramaic alphabet, which descended from the Phoenician alphabet, which, among others, gave rise to the Hebrew alphabet and the Greek alphabet (and therefore the Cyrillic and Roman alphabets). The Arabic alphabet evolved either from the Nabataean, or (less widely believed) directly from the Syriac. This table shows changes undergone by the shapes of the letters from the Aramaic original to the Nabataean and