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Modern English is written with a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters, with each having both uppercase and lowercase forms. The word alphabet is a compound of alpha and beta, the names of the first two letters in the Greek alphabet.
Letters are associated with specific names, which may differ between languages and dialects. Z, for example, is usually called zed outside of the United States, where it is named zee. Both ultimately derive from the name of the parent Greek letter zeta Ζ . In alphabets, letters are arranged in alphabetical order, which also may vary by language.
The names for the Greek letters, in turn, came from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet: aleph, the word for ox, and bet, the word for house. [20]
The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet. [note 7] For this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither: for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ʔ , originally had the form of a question mark with the dot removed.
When the letters were adopted by the Greeks, most of the Phoenician names were maintained or modified slightly to fit Greek phonology; thus, ʾaleph, bet, gimel became alpha, beta, gamma. The Greek names of the following letters are more or less straightforward continuations of their Phoenician antecedents.
The traditional names of the Latin and Greek letters are used for unmodified symbols. In Unicode, some of the symbols of Greek origin have Latin forms for use in IPA [clarification needed]; the others use the symbols from the Greek section.
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A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, [1] [2] used in the modern English alphabet, and others worldwide. Its name in English is a (pronounced / ˈ eɪ / AY), plural aes. [nb 1] [2] It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. [3]