Biblical Hebrew and occasionally other literary works, distinct from the calligraphic styles used mainly for private purposes. The Mizrahi and Ashkenazi book-hand styles were later adapted to printed fonts after the invention of the printing press. The modern Hebrew alphabet, also known as the Assyrian or Square script, is a descendant of the Aramaic alphabet. The Phoenician script had dropped five characters by the 12th century BCE, reflecting the language's twenty-two consonantal phonemes. As a result, the 22 letters of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet numbered less than the consonant phonemes of ancient Biblical Hebrew; in particular, the letters could each mark two different
Arabic alphabet Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet ( ', or ') or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing Arabic. It is written from right to left in a cursive style and includes 28 letters. Most letters have contextual letterforms. Originally, the alphabet was an abjad, with only consonants, but it is now considered an "impure abjad". As with other "abjads", such as the Hebrew alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel diacritics. The basic Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters. Adaptations of the Arabic script for other languages added and removed some