英语词汇alphabet的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

alphabet. Alphabet, Brewer notes, is our “only word of more than one syllable compounded solely of the names of letters”— the Greek alpha (a) and beta (b). He goes on to say that the En- glish alphabet “will combine into 29 thousand quadrillion combinations [possible words],” that is, 29 followed by 27 zeros (29,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). Others dispute this figure, saying the number of combinations of words possible is “only” 1,906 followed by 25 zeros. In any case, remember that these figures were arrived at by using each of the 26 letters of the alphabet only once in each combination or word—and they do not include possible compound words, homonyms, etc.! I’d guess that there are now at least 10 times as many English words as the half million or so recorded in the most complete dictionary, there being over 1 million scientific words for or- ganic and inorganic chemical compounds alone. Of the 65 al- phabets now used around the world the Cambodian has the most letters, with 72, and the Rotokas, spoken on Bougainville Island in the South Pacific, has the least, with 11. Among oth- ers, the Russian alphabet has 41 letters, the Armenian 38, the Persian 32, the Latin 25, the Greek 24, the French 23, the He- brew 22, the Italian 20, and the Burmese 19. The German and Dutch alphabets, like the English, have 26 letters. Wrote Wil- liam Walsh in 1892: “The 26 letters of the English alphabet may be transposed 620,448,401,733,239,439,369,000 times. All the inhabitants of the globe could not in a thousand millions of years write out all the possible transpositions of the 26 letters, even supposing that each wrote 40 pages daily, each page con- taining 40 different transpositions of the letters.”

词汇	alphabet
词源	alphabet. Alphabet, Brewer notes, is our “only word of more than one syllable compounded solely of the names of letters”— the Greek alpha (a) and beta (b). He goes on to say that the En- glish alphabet “will combine into 29 thousand quadrillion combinations [possible words],” that is, 29 followed by 27 zeros (29,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). Others dispute this figure, saying the number of combinations of words possible is “only” 1,906 followed by 25 zeros. In any case, remember that these figures were arrived at by using each of the 26 letters of the alphabet only once in each combination or word—and they do not include possible compound words, homonyms, etc.! I’d guess that there are now at least 10 times as many English words as the half million or so recorded in the most complete dictionary, there being over 1 million scientific words for or- ganic and inorganic chemical compounds alone. Of the 65 al- phabets now used around the world the Cambodian has the most letters, with 72, and the Rotokas, spoken on Bougainville Island in the South Pacific, has the least, with 11. Among oth- ers, the Russian alphabet has 41 letters, the Armenian 38, the Persian 32, the Latin 25, the Greek 24, the French 23, the He- brew 22, the Italian 20, and the Burmese 19. The German and Dutch alphabets, like the English, have 26 letters. Wrote Wil- liam Walsh in 1892: “The 26 letters of the English alphabet may be transposed 620,448,401,733,239,439,369,000 times. All the inhabitants of the globe could not in a thousand millions of years write out all the possible transpositions of the 26 letters, even supposing that each wrote 40 pages daily, each page con- taining 40 different transpositions of the letters.”
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