True alphabet

Peter T. Daniels distinguishes true alphabets—which use letters to represent both consonants and vowels—from both abugidas and abjads, which only need letters for consonants. Abugidas represent them with diacritics added to letters, while abjads generally lack vowel indicators altogether. In this narrower sense, the Greek alphabet was the first true alphabet; it was originally derived from the Phoenician alphabet, which was an abjad.