Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today.

Evolution

:See for the history of alphabets leading up to the Roman alphabet.

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It is generally held that the Latins adopted the western variant of the Greek alphabet in the 7th century BC from Cumae, a Greek colony in southern Italy. From the Cumae alphabet, the Etruscan alphabet was derived and the Latins finally adopted 21 of the original 26 Etruscan letters.

Related Topics:
Latins - Greek alphabet - 7th century BC - Cumae - Greek - Italy - Cumae alphabet - Etruscan alphabet

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The original Latin alphabet was:

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• C stood for both g and k.
• I stood for both i and j.
• V stood for both u and v.

Later the Z was dropped and a new letter G was placed in its position. An attempt by the emperor Claudius to introduce three additional letters was short-lived, but after the conquest of Greece in the first century BC the letters Y and Z were, respectively, adopted and readopted from the Greek alphabet and placed at the end. Now the new Latin alphabet contained 23 letters:

Related Topics:
Claudius - Additional letters - Greece - First century BC

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W is a letter made up from two V's or U's. It was added in late Roman times to represent a Germanic sound. The letters U and J, similarly, were originally not distinguished from V and I, respectively.

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The Latin names of some of the letters are disputed. In general, however, the Romans did not use the traditional (Semitic-derived) names as in Greek: the names of the stop consonant letters were formed by adding {{IPA|}} to the sound (except for C, K, and Q which needed different vowels to distinguish them) and the names of the continuants consisted either of the bare sound, or the sound preceded by {{IPA|}}. The letter Y when introduced was probably called hy {{IPA|}} as in Greek (the name upsilon being not yet in use) but was changed to i Graeca ("Greek i") as the {{IPA|}} and {{IPA|}} sounds merged in Latin. Z was given its Greek name, zeta. For the Latin sounds represented by the various letters see Latin spelling and pronunciation; for the names of the letters in English see English alphabet.

Related Topics:
Stop consonant - Continuant - Upsilon - Zeta - Latin spelling and pronunciation - English alphabet

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Medieval and later developments

It was not until the Middle Ages that the letter J (representing non-syllabic I) and the letters U and W (to distinguish them from V) were added.

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The alphabet used by the Romans consisted only of capital (upper case or majuscule) letters. The lower case (minuscule) letters developed in the Middle Ages from cursive writing, first as the uncial script, and later as minuscule script. The old Roman letters were retained for formal inscriptions and for emphasis in written documents. The languages that use the Latin alphabet generally use capital letters to begin paragraphs and sentences and for proper nouns. The rules for capitalization have changed over time, and different languages vary in their rules for capitalization. Old English and modern English of the 18th century, for example, used to capitalise all nouns, in the same way that Modern German does today, e.g., "All the Sisters of the old Town had seen the Birds."

Related Topics:
Majuscule - Minuscule - Uncial - Old English - German

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Spread of the Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet spread from Italy, along with the Latin language, to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The eastern half of the Roman Empire, including Greece, Asia Minor, the Levant, and Egypt, continued to use Greek as a lingua franca, but Latin was widely spoken in the western half of the Empire, and as the western Romance languages, including Spanish, French, Catalan, Portuguese and Italian, evolved out of Latin they continued to use and adapt the Latin alphabet. With the spread of Western Christianity the Latin alphabet spread to the peoples of northern Europe who spoke Germanic languages, displacing their earlier Runic alphabets, as well as to the speakers of Baltic languages, such as Lithuanian and Latvian, and several (non-Indo-European) Finno-Ugric languages, most notably Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian language. During the Middle Ages the Latin alphabet also came into use among the peoples speaking West Slavic languages, including the ancestors of modern Poles, Czechs, Croats, Slovenes, and Slovaks, as these peoples adopted Roman Catholicism; the speakers of East Slavic languages generally adopted both Orthodox Christianity and the Cyrillic alphabet.

Related Topics:
Italy - Latin language - Mediterranean Sea - Roman Empire - Greece - Asia Minor - Levant - Egypt - Greek - Lingua franca - Romance languages - Spanish - French - Catalan - Portuguese - Italian - Western Christianity - Northern Europe - Germanic languages - Runic alphabet - Baltic languages - Lithuanian - Latvian - Indo-European - Finno-Ugric languages - Hungarian - Finnish - Estonian language - Middle Ages - West Slavic languages - Poles - Czechs - Croats - Slovenes - Slovaks - East Slavic languages - Orthodox Christianity - Cyrillic alphabet

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As late as 1492, the Latin alphabet was limited primarily to the languages spoken in western, northern and central Europe. The Orthodox Christian Slavs of eastern and southern Europe mostly used the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Greek alphabet was still in use by Greek-speakers around the eastern Mediterranean. The Arabic alphabet was widespread within Islam, both among Arabs and non-Arab nations like the Iranians, Indonesians, Malays, and Turkic peoples. Most of the rest of Asia used a variety of Brahmic alphabets or the Chinese script.

Related Topics:
1492 - Arabic alphabet - Arab - Iranians - Indonesians - Malay - Turkic peoples - Brahmic alphabets - Chinese script

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Over the past 500 years, the Latin alphabet has spread around the world. It spread to the Americas, Australia, and parts of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific with European colonization, along with the Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch languages. In the late eighteenth century, the Romanians adopted the Latin alphabet; although Romanian is a Romance language, the Romanians were predominantly Orthodox Christians, and until the nineteenth century the Church used the Cyrillic alphabet. Vietnam, under French rule, adapted the Latin alphabet for use with the Vietnamese language, which had previously used Chinese characters. The Latin alphabet is also used for many Austronesian languages, including Tagalog and the other languages of the Philippines, and the official Malaysian and Indonesian languages, replacing earlier Arabic and indigenous Brahmic alphabets. In 1928, as part of Kemal Atatürk's reforms, Turkey adopted the Latin alphabet for the Turkish language, replacing the Arabic alphabet. Most of Turkic-speaking peoples of the former USSR, including Tatars, Bashkirs, Azeri, Kazakh, Kyrgyz etc. used the Uniform Turkic alphabet in the 1930s. In the 1940s all those alphabets were replaced by Cyrillic. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, several of the newly-independent Turkic-speaking republics adopted the Latin alphabet, replacing Cyrillic. Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan have officially adopted the Latin alphabet for Azeri, Uzbek, and Turkmen, respectively. In the 1970s, the People's Republic of China developed an official transliteration of Mandarin Chinese into the Latin alphabet, called Pinyin, although use of Chinese characters is still predominant.

Related Topics:
The Americas - Australia - Asia - Africa - Spanish - Portuguese - English - French - Dutch - Romanian - Romanian - Vietnam - Vietnamese language - Austronesian languages - Tagalog - Languages of the Philippines - Malaysian - Indonesian language - 1928 - Kemal Atatürk - Turkey - Turkish language - Turkic - USSR - Tatars - Bashkirs - Azeri - Kazakh - Kyrgyz - Uniform Turkic alphabet - 1930s - 1940s - Soviet Union - 1991 - Azerbaijan - Uzbekistan - Turkmenistan - Azeri - Uzbek - Turkmen - People's Republic of China - Mandarin Chinese - Pinyin

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West Slavic and most South Slavic languages use the Latin alphabet rather than the Cyrillic, a reflection of the dominant religion practiced among those peoples. Among these, Polish uses a variety of diacritics and digraphs to represent special phonetic values, as well as the l with stroke - ? - for a sound similar to w. Czech uses diacritics as in Dvo?ák — the term há?ek (caron) originates from Czech. Croatian and the Latin version of Serbian use carons in ?, ?, ?, an acute in ? and a bar in ?. The languages of Eastern Orthodox Slavs generally use Cyrillic instead which is much closer to the Greek alphabet. The Serbian language uses two alphabets.

Related Topics:
West Slavic - South Slavic - Cyrillic - Polish - L with stroke - Czech - Diacritic - Há?ek - Croatian - Serbian - Acute - Bar - Eastern Orthodox

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