V. The Demotic 'Alphabet'
To start with deciphering Demotic is to learn all of the signs which denote one single consonant in Demotic. These signs are used in all stages of Demotic and are thus very important. In advance, it should be noted that certain letters have a different shape due to their position within a word or surrounding signs. Furthermore, the interested reader will notice that there are indeed five distinct phonemes for the h-sound as well as five distinct phonemes for dentals (although d is hardly used in Demotic any more). The following excerpts have been taken from Johnson's Introductory Grammar (pages 2-4). They list from left to right the letter of transliteration, the Demotic sign, its hieroglyphic predecessor as well as additional commentary.
These signs should be learned by heart as they are essential for every Demotic text. A knowledge of these letters is already sufficient for reading some easy names as is shown in Exercise I later on.