Wednesday, October 9, 2013

How did Z become the last letter of the alphabet

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The ancient Phoenicians had an arrow-like symbol in their alphabet. It was the seventh letter, and called 'zayin'. The ancient Greeks adopted this symbol from the Phoenicians as the sixth letter of their alphabet in 8000 BC. They called it 'zeta,' and gave it its present form. The Romans adopted it from the Greek alphabet in 100 AD, and Z is the last letter to the Roman alphabet to this day. 'Z' is pronounced as 'zed' by 'zee' in America. If you are sending a Morse code, you will have to send two dashes and two dots to represent 'Z'! Another interesting fact about 'Z' is that it was used to represent the Roman number 2000 in medieval times.

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