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However, Phoenician did not fit Indo-European languages very well. First, because of the difference in phonetics.

Second, because Poenician alphabet lacked vowels. In Semitic languages it did not matter so much, but in European

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languages vowels play an important role, and without them these languages would be unintelligible (compare:

"fill", "full", "fall").

The Greek alphabet originated about the 9th century B.C. as a radical modification of the Phoenician. It was the

first alphabet in the narrow sense, that is, a writing system using a separate symbol for each vowel and each

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consonant. The vowels were made out of Semitic consonants that were superfluous in Greek. E.g., Aleph was

transformed into Alpha, and hence the Latin 'A' and Cyrillic '?'. Since now on, the consonants would always be

accompanied by vowel signs to create a pronounceable unit.

But still, people used to perceive the letters as hieroglyphs ("sacred signs" – Greek). Whenever people need an

additional letter, they would ask: "Where could we borrow one?" They could not even think of designing a new

glyph (a sacrilege!), so they preferred to mutilate an existing one instead. Later this attitude significantly

contributed to development of diacritics.
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The next revolution in writing systems took place more than a thousand years later, when the first proper

alphabet was specially created from scratch for any particular language – not inherited or borrowed from

somewhere. For example, in 9th century A.D. St.Cyril and St.Methodius created a brand-new Glagolitic alphabet for

the Slavic languages. There was one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and graphemes, so Glagolitic alphabet
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perfectly fitted the Slavic languages. It's descendant Cyrillic adapted to changes in spoken language and

developed regional variations to fit the features of national languages. Today, dozens of languages in Europe and

Asia are written in Cyrillic.

And now, more than a millennium later, isn't it time for another revolution?


Don't get scared at this point! I don't suggest developing a brand-new alphabet instead of Latin. Indeed, Latin

script does not fit European languages very well, unlike most other local alphabets. Some Eastern European

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languages employ diacritics so extensively, that they look like rather pathetic attempts to adapt Latin script.

Nations that don't use diacritics, are compelled to use digraphs and trigraphs – hardly a better option (e.g.

German 'tsch'). But it's beyond the scope of this article, and besides, it's not realistic.
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longer depended on fonts optimized for writing, and could develop a legible one. Unfortunately, the readers did

not rise up against the writers' tyranny in Western Europe. Only Russians took advantage of the favorable

circumstances and undertook modernization of their alphabet. Diacritics were abolished and letter-forms improved.

Since then Cyrillic uppercase and lowercase letter-forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography. In

fact, Cyrillic lowercase letters were essentially small capitals (with very few exceptions). Other nations that

used Cyrillic also followed the suit. The font did not change much since then, but even 300 years later Cyrillic

is still more legible than Latin.

And now, when changing a font on a computer screen takes a single mouse-click, I wonder: why so many forms of

shorthand writing systems were developed, but not a single reader-friendly? Those different fonts we have now are

essentially attempts to improve the aesthetic perception of the same old one, with only minor improvement of

legibility. Let's make it clear: aesthetic perception is very important, but when I read a large piece of

technical documentation, I prefer legibility.

I see that nobody has contributed to this thread: it's been all quiet on the western fonts.

Rather ironic that the OP doesn't manage to get the words on the right lines. I smell botched copy and paste.