70 The Loom of Language

of the early Semitic alphabet This early Semitic alphabet was not an
ABC It was a BCD It was made up of consonants only.

One peculiarity of the Semitic languages gives us a clue to the unique
circumstances which made possible this immense simplification
Semitic roof-words nearly always have the form which such proper
names as Moses, Rachel, Damdy Moloch., Balak or Ldban recall. They

Ancmvb

fffpto
&'ogf

plucs

ti

0

TT

script

a

Mbafofe

y

o

w

Phoeni-
cian.

y

w

Western.
Gfvsck,

A.CC

O
W

T

Earlxr

A

B
v

M
N

o

*.R
T

Indun

D

1

5
J.

FIG* 15 —SOME SIGNS FROM EARLY ALPHABETS
(Adapted from Firth's The Tongues of Men)
are made up of three consonants separated by two intervening vowels,
and the three consonants in a particular order are characteristic of a
particular root This means that if cordite (koidait) were a Hebrew
word, all possible combinations which we can make by putting dif-
ferent vowels between k and d or d and t would have something to do
with the explosive denoted by the usual spelling. This unique regu-