Now we come to Q and R, the letters which were mentioned above as those
probably coming from the head. Whether Q (koph) was derived from the
picture of the back view of the head and neck, or whether it represents
a knot, which, no doubt, was as important to navigators then as it is
now, is a mooted question. The Q sound is guttural and the tail of the
letter is supposed to indicate the throat sound. The Greeks soon
discarded “koppa,” as it was called, and the Romans went back to the
original source for their Q (koo).
The back view of the head is the unusual one, for as we look at the
drawing of the early races, or memory pictures, or the delineations of a
child of seven or eight we find they are almost without exception
profile pictures. The Phoenician “resh” represents the profile and shows
very little resemblance to a human being, although at first the features
may have been more clearly indicated. The Greeks, as was to be expected,
turned the letter around, and later, oddly enough, introduced a curve
making it exactly like the Roman letter P. The extra stroke which we
find in the Roman letter was no doubt due to the carelessness in
copying. They pronounced it R (air).
S
There is a common legend explaining S, the letter with the hissing
sound. Because of its curved shape and its hissing sound many people
believe it to be derived from a snake. Its real history is easily
followed from Phoenician “shin” or “sin” (teeth) to the present day. Its
form closely resembled our W. The Greeks made it perpendicular for their
“sigma” and the Romans simplified and curved it giving S (ess).
T
Our twentieth letter, T, is particularly interesting because it is
derived from “tahv” a mark or cross made by people who could not write,
and no doubt their signature frequently resembled it. We must not forget
that even Charlemagne and other kings of the middle ages had to make
their mark or trace their initials through stencil plates. The only
change of “tahv” to Greek “tau,” and to Roman T (tay) was the raising of
the cross bar.