Learning the Alphabet

Question: Which of these is not a letter of the Classical Greek alphabet?

Answer: Rhizomes are vinelike stems that spread out just beneath the surface of the soil. New plants begin to grow from different points of the rhizome.

Question: What is the ancestor of the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets?

Answer: Both the Hebrew and the Arabic alphabets can be traced back to the Aramaic alphabet, which developed in the Middle East in the 10th century BCE.

Question: Approximately how many written characters are there in Mandarin Chinese?

Answer: A standard Chinese dictionary contains about 85,000 different characters.

Question: How many characters does the Russian alphabet have?

Answer: The Russian language has 33 characters—32 letters plus a soft sign.

Question: What is the alphabet used in Russian called?

Answer: The Russian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet. It is named for St. Cyril, who introduced it to Russia.

Question: What is the last letter of the Greek alphabet?

Answer: The last letter of the Greek alphabet is omega, meaning "big o."

Question: How many characters does the Latin alphabet contain?

Answer: The Latin alphabet, which is the alphabet of English and most European languages, has 26 characters.

Question: Which of these languages does not use a Cyrillic alphabet?

Answer: Cyrillic is the alphabet used by Bulgarians, Russians, Ukrainians, and several other groups in Eastern Europe.