Aleph is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ʾālep 𐤀, Hebrew ʾālef א, Aramaic ʾālap 𐡀, Syriac ʾālap̄ ܐ, Arabic ʾalif ا, and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez ʾälef አ.
Image: Tipos de letras durante la historia
In a writing system, a letter is a grapheme that generally corresponds to a phoneme—the smallest functional unit of speech—though there is rarely total one-to-one correspondence between the two. An alphabet is a writing system that uses letters.
Ancient inscription on a vase featuring Greek letters
The American manual alphabet, an example of letters in fingerspelling
Engravings of decorated Latin letters, from the 18th century (note the lack of a J and a U)
Image: Decorated Roman alphabet MET DP855610