Their _beth_ was a house in the tent form; their _gimel_ a camel, represented by its head and neck; their _daleth_ a door, and so on.

The object intended is not always positively known; but, where it is known, there is no difficulty in tracing the original picture in the later conventional sign.
The Phoenician alphabet was not without its defects.

The most remarkable of these was the absence of any characters expressive of vowel sounds.
The Phoenician letters are, all of them, consonants; and the reader is expected to supply the vowel sounds for himself.

There was not even any system of pointing, so far as we know, whereby, as in Hebrew and Arabic, the proper sounds were supplied.

Again, several letters were made to serve for two sounds, as _beth_ for both _b_ and _v_, _pe_ for both _p_ and _f_, _shin_ for both _s_ and _sh_, and _tau_ for both _t_ and _th_.
There were no forms corresponding to the sounds _j_ or _w_.