This is the letter a. What is the alphabet? Definition of a letter as a written sign

1. Read letters of the Russian alphabet.

2. Name it write the letters of the Russian alphabet correctly and answer the questions.

How many letters are there in the Russian alphabet?
What are the letters for?
Which two letters do not represent sounds?

3. Read. Write down the proposal.

Why do you think it is necessary to be able to read well?

X O r O sho

Page for the curious

About the origin of words

Words ABC And alphabet mean the same thing.

Word alphabet came to us from the Greek language. It is derived from the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: “alpha” (α) and “vita” (β).

The word alphabet came to us from Old Slavonic language. It is formed from the names of the first two letters of the Old Church Slavonic alphabet: “az” () and “buki” ().

4. Read. What letters are missing here? Which letters “mixed up” their places?

Write all the letters of the Russian alphabet in alphabetical order.

5. Look at the pictures.

Name each letter correctly. Guess why they descend on different parachutes.
Write down the letters of any group, placing them in alphabetical order.

6. Read expressively.

In class

What letters do you know? - asked the teacher.
- B-e-e-e! answered Lamb.
- E-and-and! - said Donkey.
- Ha-ga-ha! - answered Goose.
- W-w-w! - said the Beetle.
Only Rybka didn’t say anything. She didn't know a single letter.

(M. Bitny)

Who pronounced the letters incorrectly? Name these letters correctly.
Write the names of the two “students” in alphabetical order.

7. Read.

Alphabet - alphabet, meadow - lawn, student - student, work - worker, Olya - Olga, good - good.

Which word in each pair of words will you write first in alphabetical order? Why?
Write down two pairs of words, arranging the words of each pair in alphabetical order.
Compose a sentence orally using one of the words.

uch e nick uch e prostrate

8. Guess word! The first letter comes after the letter “te”, the second - after the letter “tse”, the third - after the letter “ze”, the fourth - after the letter “es”, the fifth - before the letter “e”, the sixth - after the letter “ka”, the seventh - after the letter "s".

Make up a similar riddle and tell it to your friends.

teaches e l

9. Read in the explanatory dictionary the meaning of words ABC And scarlet, guest And rook. Which of these words has multiple meanings?

Why the word ABC given in the dictionary before the word scarlet, and the word rook- after the word guest?
Make a conclusion: how are the words arranged in the dictionary?

10. Read. Write any three words in alphabetical order, inserting the missing letters.

V..rona, v..r..bey, teach..l, h..rosho, hand..kiy, ..tongue, student..nik, s..baka, s..roka, weight.. oh, p..to, l..sitsa, k..r..ndash.

Check by spelling dictionary textbook writing these words. Indicate the emphasis in them.

11. Decipher words. To do this, arrange the letters in alphabetical order.

Write down the words you made up. Explain the meaning of each word.

12. Read.

Astra, alphabet, quince
They start with "a".
And they end with "a"
Astra, alphabet, quince.
(N. Kostarev)

Why do you think the author did not write down the highlighted words in alphabetical order? What does each of these words mean?
Write the highlighted words in alphabetical order.

The only sound that is in everyone known languages peace, - [a]. But what can we say if a baby with any skin color in any corner of the earth, when born, utters this sound first? Naturally, all languages that have writing also have their own letter for this sound. How did she appear?

In Abkhazian there are only three vowel sounds: [a], [s] and diphthong [aa], and there are 57 consonants, and this is only in the literary version, in dialects there are even more. And in the extinct Ubykh language, a relative of Abkhazian, there were two vowel sounds: long and short [a].

About how it all began

The glory of creating letter No. 1 belongs to the Phoenicians. In fact, most likely, they did not invent their own writing, in particular the letter “A”. The Phoenicians were a people of seafarers and traders, they tried to grab the most popular goods from local producers, and then distribute them throughout the world they knew. The same thing happened with letters. It’s a bright idea to write down every sound special sign(what is called “phonetic writing”) came to an unknown resident of the Middle East. Scientists have still not even decided which tribe we owe this innovation to. But they could have used hieroglyphs like all normal ancient Egyptian or Chinese people.

The letter "alp", as it was roughly called in Phoenician, looked like it was upside down on left side“A” most likely denoted a glottal stop - a dull guttural explosive consonant sound. In Russian, we say something similar in the colloquial interjection “ne-a”, as if slightly clicking our throat.
IN Greek there were no glottal stops. But the letter brought by Phoenician merchants was beautiful, and it was necessary to somehow adapt it to the household. They came up with the idea that “alpha” (as provincials from the shores Aegean Sea distorted the word “alp”) will mean the sound [a]. Also, the Hellenes rightly decided that the “bull” would look much more aesthetically pleasing if placed on “horns”. This is how the letter acquired its modern appearance.
In this form it was adopted by the Etruscans, and then by the Romans. However, the Romans, during the infancy of their civilization, fine motor skills was poorly developed, so they sometimes wrote “a” like this:

During the heyday of the empire, the Romans loved the “A” style without a crossbar - Λ. This option, oddly enough, is associated with the appearance of the familiar italic “a”. How this happened, says the head of the School of Historical Calligraphy, Ph.D. philological sciences Andrey Sannikov.

"A" in Russian

The Slavs had a complex relationship with letters in general and with “A” in particular. Greek-speaking Byzantium was faced with the task of baptizing (and at the same time making more civilized and consolidating in its sphere of influence) the wild northern barbarians. To do this, it was necessary to give them writing. But in the language of the Slavs there were so many barbaric sounds that the gentle greek alphabet did not seem to suit them. Therefore, Constantinople sent the learned monks Cyril and Methodius to create a special alphabet for their restless neighbors.

Serbian writer Milorad Pavic compared the creation Slavic alphabet with an attempt to carry a jug through a window with bars: you need to break it, transfer each shard separately, and then glue the shards together with clay. “They [Cyril and Methodius] did the same with Slavic language- they broke it into pieces, transferred them through the Cyrillic lattice into their mouths and glued the fragments with their own saliva and Greek clay under their feet...”
Before distribution Arabic numerals It was letters that replaced the designation of numbers for many peoples. Among the Slavs, “A” conveyed one. The number was distinguished from the letters by the title: a wavy dash above the sign - as well as two dots on the sides: ·Ã·
In fact, in Rus', as is known, at first there was not a Cyrillic alphabet, but a Glagolitic alphabet. The monks, who pursued primarily a missionary goal, endowed the alphabet they created with this name (from the Old Slavonic “verb” - “word”) with religious meanings. Keeping the order of the Greek letters, they created a new symbol for each of them. The first letter, denoting [a], was shaped like a cross. Why this happened, Andrei Sannikov explains.
Glagolitic letters were too intricate and inconvenient to write, so this alphabet was quickly supplanted by the Cyrillic alphabet, which was probably created by Cyril’s students on the basis of the Greek letter. Since then we write "normal" "A".

In other languages

Phoenician letters became the basis for other alphabets. "Alp" in Arabic has become a graceful vertical stroke ﺍ (called "alif", meaning a long [a:] or glottal stop), the appearance of which varies slightly depending on its location in the word. In modern Hebrew - in א (“aleph”, also sometimes denoting a glottal stop). The Armenian letter Ա (“aib”, conveys the sound [a]) is also traced to the Phoenician “bull”, and with doubt the Georgian letter ა (“ani”, sound [a]).
This same tradition put "A" first. There it remained in most other alphabets. Before the spread of Arabic numerals, it was letters that replaced the designation of numbers for many peoples. Among the Slavs, “A” conveyed one. The number was distinguished from the letters by the title - a wavy line above the sign - as well as two dots on the sides: ·Ã·.

God symbol

Greek "alpha" together with last letter the alphabet "omega" (Ω) became a symbol of God in Christianity; the corresponding expression appears many times in the Book of Revelation of John the Theologian (Apocalypse), for example: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, says the Lord, who is and was and is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8). That is why the symbols A and Ω are sometimes found on icons to the left and right of Jesus’ head.

The ancient Germanic rune ᚨ (ansuz) also has the meaning “god”. By the way, according to one version, this sign from the Viking alphabet came from “A” from the Latin alphabet. That is, it is a distant relative of the Phoenician “alp”. In the Viking alphabet, Ansuz was in fourth place, and in first place was the rune ᚠ (fehu), which meant “cattle”: for some reason, the ancients were in agreement that it was necessary to start with bulls. Such are the priorities.

Children "A"

IN different languages the letter "A" stands for the most different sounds. From [o] to diphthong [ej]. But sometimes standard set There are not enough alphabetic characters to convey the entire phonetic palette of the language. This is how letters have descendants. One of the most famous heirs“A” is a ligature Æ (æ), obtained, as you might guess, from the connection of “A” and “E”. Typically, this letter denotes a sound close to that conveyed by the “ya” in the word “to crush.”
There are many variants of "A" with the "second floor" - diacritics. For example, Å - with a circle at the top. In the old days, to convey a special sound in the languages of Northern Europe, a small “o” was written above the “A”. Then these letters merged into one. Now, for example, in Swedish this hybrid is read as [o]. In the same way, Ä was born - with two dots, which are a trace of the letter “E” written on top.
And these are also letters for [a] or sounds close to it in other writing systems not related to Phoenician: in Khmer - ឣ, in Sanskrit - अ or आ, in Bengal - আ, in one of the variants of Japanese - あ.
Text: Nikolay Guryanov, Svetlana Guryanova

What is a "letter"? How to spell given word. Concept and interpretation.

letter Letter LETTER. - B. is called a graphic sign for separate sound language in the so-called phonetic, or letter writing systems (in syllabic, i.e. syllabic systems, for example in ancient Assyrian writing, a graphic sign symbolizes a syllable, in hieroglyphic systems, for example in ancient Egyptian writing, graphic signs represent whole words). B. serve as signs only for typical sounds of a language, without denoting small sound variations of speech. One B. is sometimes meant various sounds, eg. in the Russian letter in the word house B. “O” means the sound “O”, and in the word home the same B. after “D” means a short “A”. In some cases, B. denotes two sounds at once, for example. in the word - “pit” B. “I” means j + a (cf. in the German spelling Jahr, where each sound - both “J” and “A” - is designated by a special B.). Sometimes one sound is denoted by several letters, for example, in German graphics the sound “Ш” is denoted by three letters (SCH), and in Polish by two (SZ). The word B. was borrowed by the Slavs from the Germans back in the pre-Gothic period of influences (pro-German boko;, Gothic boka; German Buch).

letter- that's the name. a written sign for each individual speech sound, why a letter in which all are separate... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Ephron

letter- 1) graphic sign, or Letter; 2) Grapheme, or unit of the alphabet. In regular text B. oboz... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

letter- LETTER, letters, r. pl. letters, w. 1. Alphabet sign. Uppercase, lowercase letter. There are 32 letters in the Russian alphabet... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

letter- and. 1. Graphic sign in the composition some kind of alphabet. language, usually denoting in writing a certain... Explanatory Dictionary by Efremova

letter- LETTER - a graphic sign that, by itself or in combination with other signs, is used to represent... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

letter Grammar dictionary

letter- graphic display of the phoneme. A graphic sign that has a phonetic sound. The concept of a letter is common... Grammar Dictionary

letter- This word, which came from the Old Church Slavonic language, is a reformatted borrowing from the... Krylov Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language

letter- Borrowing. from Art.-Sl. language It is considered a re-registration of the Gothic style. b?ka “letter” (cf. German Buch “book”), also... Etymological dictionary of the Russian language

letter- a graphic sign used alone or in combination with signs to indicate writing fo...

Here are two pillars diagonally,
And between them there is a belt.
Do you know this letter? A?
In front of you is the letter A.

S. Marshak

Here is a letter like a hut,
Isn't it true, the letter is good!
And although she is simple in appearance,
And the alphabet begins.

E. Tarlapan

Letter A, letter A
Alphabet head.
Vova knows, Sveta knows
And it looks like a rocket.

V. Stepanov

And - like the roof of a tower,
This is what the letter A looks like.

Sound.
Phonetic exercise. What does the doctor ask you to say when examining your throat? ( Ah-ah-ah)
Who's attentive?
1. Name what is shown in the pictures. Find the same sound
in words.

(Watermelon, stork, aquarium, asters.)

2.Memorize words with the sound [a] that you will encounter in a fairy tale.
Why A first?
There was a terrible noise in the room. All the letters crawled out of the alphabet and argued loudly: why is A the very first letter of the alphabet?
“Down with the impostor A!” the vowels shouted. “Long live “Abracadabra” (that is, confusion).
“What is this being done, huh?” hissed the hissing ones. “Put the letter with which sore throat and shark begin at the head of the alphabet!” Wow, sh-jokes.
“That’s right,” the consonant letters thought silently, “it’s not for nothing that the most delicious things—watermelon, orange, apricot, pineapple—begin with A.”
But the letter I screamed loudest:
-I don’t understand why A is the first and not I?!
“And because,” said A, who had been silent until now, “that the very first word of every baby begins with A.”
“What kind of word is this?” I continued.
“Yeah,” said A. “And besides, I look like an admiral standing on the captain’s bridge.” And everyone knows that the admiral must always be in front!
“So!” said the firm sign.

Who is bigger?
1. Come up with words in which the sound [a] would be at the beginning (stork, August), in the middle (crayfish, poppy), at the end of the word (board, sister).
2. Name the names of people, names of animals in which the sound [a] would be at the beginning (Anya, Andrey, Anton), in the middle (Valya, Tanya, Raya), at the end of the word (Murka, Burenka).
3. Remember the words about winter with the sound [a] (winter, slide, icicle, cold, blizzard, sled, mittens), without the sound [a] (Santa Claus, ice, skis, snow, blizzard).
4. List the months of the year that have the sound [a] (January, February, March, April, May, August).
5. Choose words: with one sound [a] (watermelon, garden, cat), with two [a] (aster, barn, ram, paint, car), with three [a] (seedlings, drum, pencil), with four [a] (balalaika).

Curious.
For any question, name only words that begin with the sound [a].
-What is your name?
-Anya (or Andrey).
- And your last name?
- Afanasyeva.
-Where did you come from?
— From Astrakhan (or from Arkhangelsk).
- What grows there?
-Watermelons.
- And what else?
- Apricots.
—What kind of birds are there?
- Storks.
- What will you use to get back?
- By bus.
— What gift will you bring to mom and dad?
— Asters and album.

Say the word

There is one game for you:
I'll read the poems now.
I'll start, and you finish,
Add in unison.
So that I can take you,
I don't need oats.
Feed me gasoline
Give me some rubber for my hooves,
And then, raising dust,
…………(car) will run.

He is kinder than everyone else in the world,
He heals sick animals,
And one day a hippopotamus
He pulled him out of the swamp.
He is famous, famous.
This is Doctor…………(Aibolit).

Let's write a fairy tale.
Bunny.
At the edge of the forest lived an animal whose name contained the sound [a]. Guess who it could be? (Bunny).
He had a garden in which he grew vegetables with the sound [a] in their names. What kind of vegetables do you think these are? (Cabbage, turnips, potatoes, zucchini.) In the fall, he harvested his crops and invited his neighbors to dinner. Everyone brought the hare a toy for his children - the bunnies. What kind of toys do you think these were? (A car, a doll, a pyramid.) The bunnies were very happy!

Game "Clap".
If the word has the sound [a], the child claps; if not, he does nothing.
Stork, house, aster, ice, sleigh, teeth, wall, rose, pineapple, pharmacy, glass, August, friend, cat, mouse, bear, etc.

Letter.
The letter is lost. Shark, aquarium, aster, stork, drum.
The word fell apart. ARST(aster), AZUBR(watermelon), AARM(frame), AAMM(mother).

Game "Repair".
We are ordinary words
Everyone knows us all
We contain the letters a
Three times or twice.

Sometimes just one
(Just not at the beginning).
But today….- Well, well!-
They all ran away.

BRBN SRT STKN RSSD MRK PRT SHR KRNDS
Drum, start, glass, seedlings, stamp, desk, sugar, pencil.

Game "Guess the words." Fill in the missing letters "A" or "U".
B K B K
L K M K
S K R K
J K L K
Answers: beech, onion, branch, beetle; tank, poppy, cancer, varnish.

Interesting stuff.

Riddles.
Doesn't fly, doesn't buzz,
A beetle is running down the street.
And they burn in the eyes of the beetle -
Two shiny lights.
(Bus.)

Look, the house is standing
Filled to the brim with water,
In this house the residents are
All are skilled swimmers.
(Aquarium.)

On the ABC book page
Thirty-three heroes
Sages-heroes
Every literate person knows.
(Alphabet.)

Lies on the garden bed
Round, green, smooth,
Red inside
It tastes sweet.
(Watermelon.)

Funny poems.
Astra, alphabet, quince
Start with A
And they end in A

Astra, alphabet, quince.
The stork spreads its wings,
The stork opens the book
IN book - letters and words.
The stork sees the letter A.
And, putting glasses on my nose,
He reads:
- AB-RI-KOS.
G. Sapgir.

Every word we read or write is made up of letters. How were the letters formed? How old are they, and who invented them? Let's look at the origin of letters in general and " elementary particles"Russian writing in particular. Which letters appeared first? And in general, what is a letter?

Definition of a letter as a written sign

A letter is a sign symbol, which sounds are recorded. All the letters of the language make up the alphabet, or alphabet - certain order listing letters. It is impossible to determine the frequency of use of certain letters by the alphabet - their location in the alphabet is determined historically.

Each letter is a sound, and sometimes several sounds. In turn, there are letters that are not pronounced at all, but affect the pronunciation of other letters in the word (in Russian classic example such a letter is soft sign). Sometimes letters are called letters (hence the word literature).

The oldest letters

The desire to convey existing information appeared in a person simultaneously with the ability to think. The first methods of transmitting information were oral and left nothing in our memory except legends and fairy tales. Later, man learned to use tools. Sticks and spears could be used not only to catch prey or fight off enemies - with the help of a slight transformation they could draw any images on stones, cave walls or clay tablets...

This is how protoletters appeared. The most ancient monuments writings are dated mid-19th century BC, but it is quite possible that writing arose even earlier, it’s just that older monuments have not reached us. The “prize-winners” in the “most ancient writing” category should be considered the Semites, who developed their primitive alphabet while under the rule (and great influence) of Egypt. The Semitic alphabet had nothing in common with modern letters - the letters were much more reminiscent of inept drawings that appeared as a result of simplified writing of hieroglyphs. Nevertheless, the Semitic alphabet was quite popular in the Middle East and much later it became the basis for the first alphabet.

Proto-alphabet

The very first alphabet came to us from ancient state Phenicia, which means the very first letter, is one of the parts of Phoenician. There were 22 such letters in total. There were no vowels in them, and we can say with a high degree of probability that the first letter is a consonant.

Despite this discrimination of vowels, the Phoenician alphabet gave rise to all European writing - Greek, Latin, Etruscan writing and even the unknown Basque alphabet. We can say that the Phoenicians became the founders of all European writing. Russian letters also owe their origin to the Phoenician alphabet.

Origin of Russian letters

At the beginning of the 9th century, two alphabets appeared almost simultaneously on the territory of Rus', intended to record the language of the ancient Russian people. They were called Cyrillic and Glagolitic. The authorship of the Glagolitic alphabet is attributed to St. Constantine the Philosopher, who developed this alphabet specifically for writing biblical books. Later, elements of Glagolitic writing became less common, and by the end of the 11th century they almost completely disappeared from circulation. The authors of the Cyrillic alphabet were Cyril and Methodius. It was thanks to them that every Russian letter was born.

Of course, for for many years Russian letters have changed beyond recognition. Many of them disappeared from the letter forever - for example, fita and izhitsa, which struck fear into pre-revolutionary schoolchildren. Modern students have to learn only 33 letters - this is about half of all the letters originally present in the Cyrillic alphabet.