The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the
ancient Romans to write the
Latin language and its extensions used to write modern languages.
Etymology
The term ''Latin alphabet'' may refer to either the alphabet used to write Latin (as described in this article) or other alphabets based on the
Latin script, which is the basic set of letters common to the various alphabets descended from the classical Latin alphabet, such as the
English alphabet. These
Latin-script alphabets may discard letters, like the
Rotokas alphabet, or add new letters, like the
Danish and
Norwegian alphabets.
Letter shapes have evolved over the centuries, including the development in
Medieval Latin of
lower-case, forms which did not exist in the Classical period alphabet.
Evolution
Due to its use in writing Germanic, Romance and other languages first in Europe and then in other parts of the world and due to its use in
Romanizing writing of other languages, it has become widespread (see
Latin script). It is also used officially in Asian countries such as China (separate from its
ideographic writing), Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam, and has been adopted by Baltic and some Slavic states.
The Latin alphabet evolved from the visually similar
Etruscan alphabet, which evolved from the
Cumaean Greek version of the
Greek alphabet, which was itself descended from the
Phoenician alphabet, which in turn derived from
Egyptian hieroglyphics. The
Etruscans ruled early Rome; their alphabet evolved in Rome over successive centuries to produce the Latin alphabet.
During the
Middle Ages, the Latin alphabet was used (sometimes with modifications) for writing
Romance languages, which are direct descendants of
Latin, as well as
Celtic,
Germanic,
Baltic and some
Slavic languages. With the
age of colonialism and
Christian evangelism, the
Latin script spread beyond
Europe, coming into use for writing indigenous
American,
Australian,
Austronesian,
Austroasiatic and
African languages. More recently,
linguists have also tended to prefer the Latin script or the
International Phonetic Alphabet (itself largely based on the Latin script) when transcribing or creating written standards for non-European languages, such as the
African reference alphabet.
Diacritics
Although it does not seem that classical Latin used
diacritics (accents etc), modern English is the only major modern
language of European origin that does not have any for native words.
Signs and abbreviations
Although Latin did not use diacritical signs, signs of truncation of words, often placed above the truncated word or at the end of it, were very common. Furthermore, abbreviations or smaller overlapping letters were often used. This was due to the fact that if the text was engraved on the stone, the number of letters to be written was reduced, while if it was written on paper or parchment, it was spared the space, which was very precious. This habit continued even in the Middle Ages. Hundreds of symbols and abbreviations exist, varying from century to century.
History
Origins
It is generally believed that the Latin alphabet used by the
Romans was derived from the
Old Italic alphabet used by the
Etruscans.
That alphabet was derived from the
Euboean alphabet used by the
Cumae, which in turn was derived from the
Phoenician alphabet.
Old Italic alphabet
Archaic Latin alphabet
Old Latin alphabet
Latin included 21 different characters. The letter was the western form of the Greek
gamma, but it was used for the sounds and alike, possibly under the influence of
Etruscan, which might have lacked any voiced
plosives. Later, probably during the 3rd century BC, the letter – unneeded to write Latin properly – was replaced with the new letter , a modified with a small vertical stroke, which took its place in the alphabet. From then on, represented the
voiced plosive , while was generally reserved for the voiceless plosive . The letter was used only rarely, in a small number of words such as ''
Kalendae'', often interchangeably with .
Classical Latin alphabet
After the
Roman conquest of Greece in the 1st century BC, Latin adopted the Greek letters and (or readopted, in the latter case) to write
Greek loanwords, placing them at the end of the alphabet. An attempt by the emperor
Claudius to introduce three
additional letters did not last. Thus it was during the
classical Latin period that the Latin alphabet contained 23 letters:
The Latin names of some of these letters are disputed; for example, may have been called or . In general the Romans did not use the traditional (
Semitic-derived) names as in Greek: the names of the
plosives were formed by adding to their sound (except for and , which needed different vowels to be distinguished from ) and the names of the
continuants consisted either of the bare sound, or the sound preceded by .
The letter when introduced was probably called "hy" as in Greek, the name
upsilon not being in use yet, but this was changed to "i Graeca" (Greek i) as Latin speakers had difficulty distinguishing its foreign sound from . was given its Greek name,
zeta. This scheme has continued to be used by most modern European languages that have adopted the Latin alphabet. 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.
Diacritics were not regularly used, but they did occur sometimes, the most common being the
apex used to mark
long vowels, which had previously sometimes been written doubled. However, in place of taking an apex, the letter i was written
taller: . For example, what is today transcribed ''Lūciī a fīliī'' was written in the inscription depicted.
The primary mark of punctuation was the
interpunct, which was used as a
word divider, though it fell out of use after 200 AD.
Old Roman cursive script, also called
majuscule cursive and capitalis cursive, was the everyday form of handwriting used for writing letters, by merchants writing business accounts, by schoolchildren learning the Latin alphabet, and even
emperors issuing commands. A more formal style of writing was based on
Roman square capitals, but cursive was used for quicker, informal writing. It was most commonly used from about the 1st century BC to the 3rd century, but it probably existed earlier than that. It led to
Uncial, a
majuscule script commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes.
New Roman cursive script, also known as
minuscule cursive, was in use from the 3rd century to the 7th century, and uses letter forms that are more recognizable to modern eyes; , , , and had taken a more familiar shape, and the other letters were proportionate to each other. This script evolved into the medieval scripts known as
Merovingian and
Carolingian minuscule.
Medieval and later developments

It was not until the
Middle Ages that the letter (originally a
ligature of two s) was added to the Latin alphabet, to represent sounds from the
Germanic languages which did not exist in medieval Latin, and only after the
Renaissance did the convention of treating and as
vowels, and and as
consonants, become established. Prior to that, the former had been merely
allographs of the latter.
With the fragmentation of political power, the
style of writing changed and varied greatly throughout the Middle Ages, even after the invention of the
printing press. Early deviations from the classical forms were the
uncial script, a development of the
Old Roman cursive, and various so-called minuscule scripts that developed from
New Roman cursive, of which the
insular script developed by Irish literati & derivations of this, such as
Carolingian minuscule were the most influential, introducing the
lower case forms of the letters, as well as other writing conventions that have since become standard.
The languages that use the
Latin script generally use
capital letters to begin paragraphs and sentences and
proper nouns. The rules for
capitalization have changed over time, and different languages have varied in their rules for capitalization.
Old English, for example, was rarely written with even proper nouns capitalized, whereas
Modern English writers and printers of the 17th and 18th century frequently capitalized most and sometimes all nouns, which is still systematically done in Modern
German, e.g. in the preamble and all of the United States Constitution: ''We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.''
Spread

The Latin alphabet spread, along with the
Latin language, from the
Italian Peninsula to the lands surrounding the
Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the
Roman Empire. The
eastern half of the Empire, including
Greece,
Anatolia, the
Levant, and
Egypt, continued to use
Greek as a
lingua franca, but Latin was widely spoken in the
western half, and as the western
Romance languages evolved out of Latin, they continued to use and adapt the Latin alphabet.
With the spread of
Western Christianity during the
Middle Ages, the script was gradually adopted by the peoples of
northern Europe who spoke
Celtic languages (displacing the
Ogham alphabet) or
Germanic languages (displacing earlier
Runic alphabets),
Baltic languages, as well as by the speakers of several
Uralic languages, most notably
Hungarian,
Finnish and
Estonian. The Latin alphabet came into use for writing the
West Slavic languages and several
South Slavic languages, as the people who spoke them adopted
Roman Catholicism.
Later, it was adopted by non-Catholic countries.
Romanian, most of whose speakers are
Orthodox, was the first major language to switch from
Cyrillic to Latin script, doing so in the 19th century, although
Moldova only did so after the
Soviet collapse.
It has also been increasingly adopted by
Turkic-speaking countries, beginning with
Turkey in the 1920s. After the Soviet collapse,
Azerbaijan,
Turkmenistan, and
Uzbekistan all switched from Cyrillic to Latin. The government of
Kazakhstan announced in 2015 that the Latin alphabet would replace Cyrillic as the writing system for the Kazakh language by 2025.
Kazakh language to be converted to Latin alphabet – MCS RK
Inform.kz (30 January 2015). Retrieved on 2015-09-28.
The spread of the Latin alphabet among previously illiterate peoples has inspired the creation of new writing systems, such as the Avoiuli alphabet in Vanuatu, which replaces the letters of the Latin alphabet with alternative symbols.
See also
*Latin spelling and pronunciation
*Calligraphy
*Euboean alphabet
*Latin script in Unicode
*ISO basic Latin alphabet
*Latin-1
*Legacy of the Roman Empire
*Palaeography
*Phoenician alphabet
*Pinyin
*Roman letters used in mathematics
*Typography
*Western Latin character sets (computing)
Notes
References
Further reading
* Transl. of , as revised by the author
*
*
*: Peter Lang.
*
*
External links
Lewis and Short ''Latin Dictionary'' on the letter ''G''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Latin Alphabet
Category:Typography
Category:History of the Roman Empire