How did the Phoenician alphabet influence modern European alphabets?

The Phoenician alphabet is the foundational ancestor of most modern Western writing systems, including the Latin alphabet used for many European languages today.123

The influence occurred through a process of adaptation and evolution:

• Transmission to Greece: In the 8th century BCE, the Greeks adopted the 22-letter Phoenician system through commercial contact. While the Phoenician script consisted only of consonants, the Greeks introduced a major innovation by repurposing certain letters to represent vowels, creating the Greek alphabet.4
• The Etruscan Link: The Greek alphabet subsequently spread to Italy. The Etruscan alphabet served as the critical intermediary, adapting the Greek script before it was eventually adopted and modified by the Romans to form the Latin alphabet.5
• Legacy: Through this lineage, the Phoenician system provided the structural basis for the alphabets that dominate the modern world.43

By facilitating the transition from complex writing systems to a simplified, phonetic-based alphabet, the Phoenician script remains one of the most significant contributions to human civilization.23