注：机翻，未校。
Why Was Z Once Removed From The Alphabet?
December 12, 2018
Poor lonely Z finishes up the alphabet at number 26. But, that’s not the only insult this lonely letter suffers!Z’s history includes a time when it was so infrequently used that it was removed from the alphabet altogether.
可怜的孤独字母 Z 在字母表中排在第26位。但这并不是这个孤独字母所遭受的唯一侮辱！Z 的历史中曾经有一个时期，它使用得非常少，以至于被完全从字母表中移除。
Where did Z come from? Z 从何而来？
The Greek zeta is the origin of the humble Z. The Phoenician glyph zayin, meaning “weapon,” had a long vertical line capped at both ends with shorter horizontal lines and looked very much like a modern capital I.
希腊字母 zeta 是谦逊的字母 Z 的起源。腓尼基字母 zayin 意为“武器”，其形状是一个长竖线，两端分别有短横线，看起来非常像现代的大写字母 I。
By the time it evolved into the Greek zeta, the top and bottom lines had become elongated, and the vertical line slanted, connecting to the horizontal lines at the top right and the bottom left.
到它演变成希腊字母 zeta 时，上下的横线已经变得更长，竖线则倾斜，与右上角和左下角的横线相连。
It finally looked like what we call Z today.
最终，它的形状变得与我们今天所称的 Z 相似。
Why did Z get removed from the alphabet? 为什么 Z 从字母表中被删除？
Around 300 BC, the Roman Censor Appius Claudius Caecus removed Z from the alphabet. His justification was that Z had become archaic: the pronunciation of /z/ had become /r/ by a process called rhotacism, rendering the letter Z useless.
大约在公元前300年，罗马的审查官阿皮乌斯·克劳狄乌斯·凯库斯将字母 Z 从字母表中移除。他的理由是 Z 已经变得过时：/z/ 的发音通过一种叫做“卷舌音化”的过程变成了 /r/，这使得字母 Z 变得没有用处。
At the same time, S was also removed, and G was added … but that’s another story.
与此同时，字母 S 也被移除，字母 G 则被添加进来……不过那是另一个故事。
How did Z get added back? Z 是如何被添加回来的？
Clearly there’s good news for all the zebras and zither lovers out there, though. Z made its way back to the alphabet so kids could learn an alphabet that stretched all the way from A to Z.
显然，对于所有的斑马和竖琴爱好者来说，这都是个好消息。字母 Z 重新回到了字母表中，以便孩子们能够学习一个从 A 到 Z 的完整字母表。
Two hundred years after Appius Claudius Caecus was giving the letter the boot, Z was reintroduced to the Latin alphabet. At the time, it was used only in words taken from Greek. Because of its absence and reintroduction, zeta is one of the only two letters to enter the Latin alphabet directly from Greek and not Etruscan.
在阿皮乌斯·克劳狄乌斯·凯库斯将字母 Z 移除两百年后，Z 被重新引入拉丁字母表。当时，它只用于从希腊语中借用的单词。由于它的缺失和再引入，zeta 是唯一两个直接从希腊语而不是来自于伊特鲁里亚语进入拉丁字母表的字母之一。
What about the 27th letter? 第 27 个字母呢？
Z was not always the final letter of the modern English alphabet, although it has always been in the 26th position. For years the & symbol (now known as the ampersand) was the final, pronounced “and” but recited with the Latin “per se,” meaning “by itself.” The position and pronunciation eventually ran together: “X, Y, Z, and per se and” became “X, Y, Z, ampersand.”
字母 Z 并不总是现代英语字母表中的最后一个字母，尽管它一直处于第26位。多年来，& 符号（现在称为“和号”）是字母表的最后一个符号，发音为“and”，但在朗读时使用拉丁语“per se”，意为“本身”。最终，这个位置和发音合并在一起：“X, Y, Z, and per se and” 变成了 “X, Y, Z, ampersand”。
These days Z is the most rarely used letter in the alphabet; however, American English uses it more often than British English.
如今，Z 是字母表中使用最少的字母；然而，美式英语对它的使用频率比英式英语更高。
Early English—it should be noted—did not have a Z but used S for both voiced and unvoiced sibilants. Words in English that originated as loanwords from French and Latin are more likely to be spelled with a Z than an S, such as blazon or buzzard. Also, American standardization modified /z/ suffixes to more accurately reflect their pronunciation, changing –ise and –isation to –ize and –ization.
需要注意的是，古英语并没有字母 “Z”，而是用 “S” 来表示清浊两种齿擦音。从法语和拉丁语借用到英语中的词汇更可能用 “Z” 而非 “S” 来拼写，例如 blazon（纹章）或 buzzard（秃鹫）。此外，美国的标准拼写规则对 /z/ 结尾的后缀进行了修改，以更准确地反映它们的发音，将–ise 和–isation 改为–ize 和–ization。
We’ve covered the end of the alphabet, so let’s jump to the beginning: Not only did the letter A once look different, but it sounded different as well.
我们已经讨论了字母表的末尾，现在让我们跳到开头：字母 A 不仅外形曾经不同，发音也有所不同。
Meet The Animal That Inspired The Letter A
October 31, 2014
There is quite a bit of mystery surrounding the letter A. From its prestigious first place position to its interesting shape, tracing the first letter of the English alphabet uncovers a history that begins with, of all things, an ox.
围绕字母 A 存在相当多的谜团。从其久负盛名的第一位位置到其有趣的形状，追溯英文字母表的第一个字母，揭示了一段始于牛的历史。
Where does the letter A come from? 字母 A 从何而来？
The letter A is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph—a western Semitic word referring to the aforementioned beast of burden. Aleph can be traced back to the Middle Bronze Age and the Proto-Sinaitic script found in parts of Egypt and Canaan from around 1850 BCE (Before the Common Era). The character comes from an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph or pictogram depicting an ox’s head. Interestingly, the original image was reminiscent of the modern letter K. The letter originally served as a glottal stop (a stop consonant) in the Phoenician language such as a t or p in the middle of a word.
字母 A 源自腓尼基字母 “aleph”，这是一个指代前述驮兽的西闪米特词汇。Aleph 可以追溯到中青铜器时代以及公元前 1850 年左右在埃及和迦南发现的原始西奈文字。这一字符源于一种古埃及象形文字或图画，描绘了一头牛的头部。有趣的是，最初的图像与现代字母 K 相似。该字母最初在腓尼基语言中用作声门塞音（停顿辅音），如单词中间的 t 或 p。
Some linguists believe the aleph was placed at the beginning of the Phoenician alphabet to honor the ox, important for its muscle power and as a food source. However this theory has been contested. As David Sacks puts it in his history of the alphabet, Letter Perfect, “How and why aleph was chosen for first place, we will never know.”
一些语言学家认为，aleph 被放在腓尼基字母表的开头是为了纪念牛，这种动物因其肌肉力量和作为食物来源而重要。然而，这一理论受到质疑。正如大卫・萨克斯在他的字母历史著作《完美字母》中所说：“我们永远无法知道 aleph 是如何以及为何被选择为第一位。”
From aleph to alpha 从 aleph 到 alpha
During the 8th century BCE, the ancient Greeks formed their own alphabet primarily based on the Phoenician alphabet. Since the Greeks had little use for a glottal stop, the aleph was used to denote the vowel a which was re-named alpha, possessing the phoneme a as in father. The Greeks revised the former k-like character by turning it upright – similar to the modern day capital, or majuscule, letter A. The Romans adopted the Greek alphabet by way of the Etruscans. Like the Etruscans before them, the Romans kept the character and phoneme intact; thus the Modern English vowel A was born.
在公元前 8 世纪，古希腊人基于腓尼基字母表形成了自己的字母表。由于希腊人很少使用声门塞音，因此 aleph 被用来表示元音 a，该元音被重新命名为 alpha，具有与 father 一样的音素 a。希腊人通过将其竖直来修改以前的 k 字——类似于现代的大写字母 A。罗马人通过伊特鲁里亚人采用了希腊字母。就像他们之前的伊特鲁里亚人一样，罗马人保持了字符和音素的完整性;因此，现代英语元音 A 诞生了。
The most used letters in the alphabet 字母表中最常用的字母
A is the third most commonly used letter in the English alphabet (the letter e is in first place, followed closely by the letter t). The letter A likes to multitask, possessing three distinct phonemes: The æ, also referred to as a near-open front un-rounded vowel, denotes the a sound in apple and cat, the open-back un-rounded vowel, or a:, denotes the long a sound heard in father and March, and the ā, an orthographic vowel, exhibits the ei sound heard in the words made and fade.
A 是英语字母表中使用频率第三高的字母（字母 e 排名第一，紧随其后的是字母 t）。字母 A 喜欢多任务处理，拥有三个不同的音素：æ，也称为近开前不圆元音，表示 apple 和 cat 中的 a 音，开后不圆元音或 a：，表示在 father 和 march 中听到的长 a 音，而 ā 是一个正字元音，表现出在单词 made 和 fade 中听到的 ei 音。
via:
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Why Was Z Once Removed From The Alphabet? - Dictionary.com
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Meet The Animal That Inspired The Letter A - Dictionary.com
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