Alphabet comes from the first two letters of Greek alpha-beta. Baybayin, our pre...

Alphabet comes from the first two letters of Greek alpha-beta. Baybayin, our pre-Spanish writing, is not an alphabet but a syllabary because we use syllables rather than single letters. Spanish call their alphabet abcedario from a-b-c-d and Pinoys call theirs Abakada from a-b-k-d. It is a mistake to call the baybayin "alibata" because that comes from the first letters in Arabic: aliph-ba-da.


2014