Talk:alphabet

Etymology question

How old is the "individual letter" sense? Was it once used in England but only retained in India etc? Or is it an innovation from India that has spread? What does the OED say? User:Hippietrail (User talk:Hippietrail 00:58, 2018 September 12

Moved from Etymology section. DCDuring (talk) 23:46, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

I was wondering about this too. Here's what the OED says: "Frequently representing a direct translation from a local language or dialect in which the word for ‘letter’ and ‘alphabet’ is the same." The first example is from a Hawaiian English text from 1972. 76.19.225.20 18:06, 13 August 2022 (UTC)