<ol><li> The alphabetic system was developed by the Phoenicians, which the Greeks adopted. The names “alpha” and “beta” were derived from the Phoenician “alep” and “bet”.</li><li>Hebrew, which descended from Phoenician, has retained the alphabet order of Phoenician.</li><li>Most alphabets have reduced the names of the letters to the sound they make, but Arabic and Hebrew have not. (I’m sure there are others, but these are the ones I’m familiar with.)</li><li>The reason the letter ‘z’ is called “zed” in British English is that it has retained its name, which was never reduced to the sound it makes.</li></ol>

<ol><li>The names and shapes of the letters originally corresponded to words in Phoenician. “Alep” meant “ox”; “bet” meant “house”.</li><li>Some of these words have been retained in the Semitic languages. In Arabic, the word for house is “bayt”. In Hebrew, it’s “bayit”.</li><li>Similarly, in Arabic, there’s a letter called “ayn”. The word for “eye” is also “ayn”. This is not a coincidence. In Hebrew, the letter is called “ayin”, which is also the word for “eye”.</li><li>The letter ayn in Arabic actually looks kind of like an eye: عـ. In technical terms, the top, curved part of the letter is called the “eyebrow”! (This is a term used in Arabic calligraphy).</li></ol><ol><li>Spanish has a habit of splitting vowels, where ‘o’ becomes ‘ue’ and ‘e’ becomes ‘ie’. Learners are familiar with this with verb conjugations, but it has happened with nouns as well. You can compare words with other Romance languages: “bueno” in Spanish corresponds to “bon” in French; “tiempo” in Spanish corresponds to “tempo” in Italian, etc.</li><li>‘H’ in Spanish corresponds to ‘F’ in Latin. For example, “hecho” means “fact” and comes from the Latin “factus”; “hablar” means “to speak” and comes from the Latin “fablare” (which is also the origin of “fable” in English).</li></ol>

<ul><li>Russian was the first language spoken in outer space.</li><li>People who speak and understand Chinese use <a href="http://theconversation.com/if-you-speak-mandarin-your-brain-is-different-37993" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 128);">both sides of the brain</a>, whereas English only uses the left side.</li></ul>