It's actually not very different. Hebrew works in the same way, except it's not cursive. They share a common ancestor in Phoenician script I think, also used for a Semitic language, for which it works well. The Greek alphabet (and thence ours) was derived the Phoenician script that worked in a similar fashion, by adding vowels.
It is a writing system found in Eurasia. Hit its wikipedia pages, on the right hand side there'll be a little thingie that lists 'parent systems', you can follow it back to Phoenician which also happens to be an ancestor of the Latin alphabet.