Ideally, each letter in an alphabet represents one and only one of the distinctsounds ("phonemes") of the language it is used to write. Although the fitbetween the Latin alphabet and the English language is far from perfect (whichis the reason why English spelling is so notoriously hard to learn), it remainstrue thatall letters represent sounds (although some are silent in somesituations)the number of phonemes in English (roughly 45) is reasonably close tothe number of letters in the alphabet (26)Contrast this with the case of theancient Egyptian language, which had about 25 consonant phonemes (vowels werenot written), and yet was recorded with a writing system containing hundreds oreven thousands of symbols. Some hieroglyphs represented entire words. This was the origin of the system; the word 'dog' would have been a picture of a dog. (an example)
