This Semitic symbol, standing originally for the entire word beth and later for the sound of b, ultimately became the b of the English alphabet. The North Semitic alphabet consisted exclusively of consonants. The vowel sounds of a word had to be supplied by the speaker or reader. The present-day Hebrew and Arabic alphabets still consist of consonantal letters only, the former having 22 and the latter 28. Some of these, however, may be used to represent long vowels, and vowels may also be indicated in writing by optional vowel points and dashes placed below, above, or to the side of the consonant.
Writing is from the right to the left.
The South Semitic branch was the ancestor of the alphabets of extinct languages used in the Arabian Peninsula and in the modern languages of Ethiopia. Canaanite was subdivided into Early Hebrew and Phoenician, and the extremely important Aramaic branch became the basis of Semitic and non-Semitic scripts throughout western Asia. After about 500 BC, Greek was regularly written from left to right. The Greek alphabet spread throughout the Mediterranean world, giving rise to various modified forms, including the Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, and Roman alphabets. Because of Roman conquests and the spread of the Latin language , that language's Roman alphabet became the basic alphabet of all the languages of western Europe.