Show Ethiopian Tongue Traced Back About Years Yeal's Alphabet Reformed at Start of Christian Era Washington Revolutionizing Re the alphabet I That Is a daring deed In any day and age ne nut lint the Ethiopians Ethiopian did It What Is more the clever old alphabet Invention In of Ethiopia has beets been Invented all over again In mod mod- modern modern ern America with applause and ap pro aJ Ethiopia's alphabet Inventing took place away back at the beginning of the Christian era ern says fays Dr John P. P Harrington linguistic specialist of the Smithsonian Institution Ethiopians explains Doctor Har Bar Harrington Harrington rington Inherited the old Semitic alphabet In common with the Hebrews and Arabs It was a cum cumbersome cumbersome system s stem of writing consonants of words and then placing the vowels If written at nt all nIl outside the contours contour as dots and dashes not dashes not unlike some forms of o shorthand Books Bools In Hebrew are filled tilled with this over-dotting over which Germans aptly call eye Cut Out the Frills Ancestors of Emperor Halle Se Se- Selassie Selassie lassie did id away with all this a brie brac outside the contours of letters thereby helping eyesight per cent They noticed that each consonant let let- letter letter letter ter had four corners and their bright Idea was to Join a tick to each corner to express one or another of the vow vow- vowels vowels els following the consonant This gave them an alphabet of o syllables but syl syl- syllables syllables easy casy to remember Ethiopians also reversed the order of o writing so that the eye moves mo from left to right as In modern English print Instead 1 of the reverse as In old Hebrew and modern Yiddish When the American Indian Se- Se Sequoyah Sequoyah Invented an nn alphabet for or writ writ- writIng writIng Ing lag the Cherokee Indian language over overa a hundred years rears ago ngo he was repeating the very Invention Ethiopians had hall made some 2000 years earlier Doctor Harrington ton finds Sequoyah's alpha alpha- alphabetic alphabetic betic symbols represent a consonant plus a vowel Unlike the Ethiopians however the Indian alphabet maker was weak on system and his alphabet Is about five times ashard ns as hard to learn as ns the old Ethiopian product It Is quite possible Doctor Harring Harring- Harrington ton believes belle that Sequoyah ah had heard something of the ancient Hebrew and nn 1 Ethiopian systems s from missionaries Repeated by Indians Coming to still more recent times French Canadian missionaries among the Cree Indians In of the Hudson Bay I region repeated the same discovery In Inthe Inthe inthe the ISSOs Working Worl In collaboration with Cree Indians themselves and anel certainly with some knowledge of Ethiopian and Hebrew writing In the back bad of their heads heads ns as Doctor Har Har- Harrington Harrington rington points out the out the missionaries In In- Invented Invented Invented vented a system whereby Crees could write their own language e. e Their system system system tem Is more like the Ethiopian than Sequoyah's had been Using simple geometric figures to represent con con- consonants consonants consonants they turned the consonant symbols In various positions to Indi Indicate cate the vowel following While While bold In n Improving their written writ writ- written written ten language Inn Ethiopians have conservatively conservatively nth ely preserved the spoken language langua e of their ancestors down through years Sounds of the oldest language In the world can be heard In the royal palace and churches In the city of Ad Ad- Addis Addis dis Ababa The words are arc more primi primi- primitive primitive primitive tive In sound and form orm says Bays Doctor Harrington than the dialects of the language Inn Hebrew language Hebrew and Ara ATa Aramaic male tn In which the Bible was written Proto Semitic the language student would call these ancient primitive speech forms heard In Ethiopia By proto Semitic he means menns the basic lan Ian language language guage spoken about B. B O. O by peo peo- people pie who founded civilization In the theOld theOld theOld Old world |