History of the Arabic alphabet the same. After all this, there were only 17 letters that were different in shape. One letter-shape represented 5 phonemes ("b t th n" and sometimes "y"), one represented 3 phonemes ("j ħ kh"), and 5 each represented 2 phonemes. Compare the Hebrew alphabet, as in the table at . A similar ambiguity occurs in the German Fraktur font, in which the Roman alphabet uppercase letters I and J look the same but are officially different letters. The Arabic alphabet is first attested in its classical form in the 7th century. See PERF 558 for the first surviving Islamic Arabic
Letter (alphabet) letters have prescribed orders, although this too may vary by language. In Spanish, for instance, "ñ" is a separate letter, sorted after "n". In English, "n" and "ñ" are classified alike. As symbols that indicate segmental speech, letters are associated with phonetics. In a purely phonemic alphabet, a single phoneme is denoted by a single letter, although in history and in practice letters often indicate more than one phoneme. There are more sounds, or phonemes, in English–about 44–than there are letters of the alphabet. A letter may therefore be associated with more than one phoneme, with the phoneme determined by