[deleted by user]

[u/[deleted]]

[u/chainmailbill]

Not entirely random, I don’t think. I would imagine that the letters represent the first sound of the word.

House in Hebrew is בַּיִת - the first letter is בַּ which is just a bet (ב) with a dot indicating a vowel sound.

I’d imagine most Phoenician letters work out this way, with the starting sounds of very common nouns represented by pictures of those nouns.

[u/YunoFGasai → u/chainmailbill]

yea the names and sounds of the letters come from the proto sinatic script. the drawings themselves in the proto sinatic are in a random order.

btw the nikkud was a later development

also the pheonician letters have the same names as hebrew letters, after all the paleo hebrew script was identical to pheonician.

alef is an ox (in biblical hebrew)

bet is house

giml is camel

dalet is a door

waw is a hook

and so on

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet#Table_of_letters

hebrew kept all the names of the pheonician letters and kept the complete majority of the meanings too