Where Your Own Alphabet Came From

Turn a capital A upside down and the two legs become horns over a muzzle, because the letter started as a picture of an ox - and the Hebrew name for it is still aleph, which is still the word for ox. Bet is a house. Dalet is a door. And the order survived: aleph bet gimel dalet ran into Greek as alpha beta gamma delta and into Latin as A B C D. This is a history pack as much as a language one, and the prize is knowing why your own letters look the way they do.