wo Extra reading Alphabet world How many letters are there in your alphabet? ABOUT ALPHABETS Runes are an old and mysterious alphabet from Northern Europe. Tolkien uses the runic alphabet in his books The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The word alphabet comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet ~ alpha and beta There are hundreds of different alphabets in the world. Some alphabets use letters and some use symbols. The English language uses the Roman alphabet. It has got 26 letters — five vowels (a, i, 0, u,) and 21 consonants (for example, b, k, m). The modern standard Arabic alphabet has got 28 letters and they are all consonants! The Khmer alphabet from Cambodia has got 74 letters. The Chinese language uses 6,500 different symbols ~ and children at school learn about 3,000 of them! Are these sentences true or false? 1 False. All alphabets in the world use letters. There are 26 letters in the English language. The Arabic alphabet has got 28 consonants. The Khmer alphabet is from Europe. ‘The Chinese language has got 3,000 symbols. 1 2 3 4 5