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69-565: 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

138-518: A diaeresis was sometimes used to indicate the start of a new syllable within a sequence of letters that could otherwise be misinterpreted as being a single vowel (e.g., "coöperative", "reëlect"), but modern writing styles either omit such marks or use a hyphen to indicate a syllable break (e.g. "co-operative", "re-elect"). Some modified letters, such as the symbols ⟨ å ⟩ , ⟨ ä ⟩ , and ⟨ ö ⟩ , may be regarded as new individual letters in themselves, and assigned

207-652: 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 Latin alphabet was gradually adopted by the peoples of Northern Europe who spoke Celtic languages (displacing the Ogham alphabet) or Germanic languages (displacing earlier Runic alphabets ) or Baltic languages , as well as by

276-475: A ⟩ , ⟨ e ⟩ , ⟨ i ⟩ , ⟨ o ⟩ , ⟨ u ⟩ . The languages that use the Latin script today 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 of

345-500: A European CEN standard. In the course of its use, the Latin alphabet was adapted for use in new languages, sometimes representing phonemes not found in languages that were already written with the Roman characters. To represent these new sounds, extensions were therefore created, be it by adding diacritics to existing letters , by joining multiple letters together to make ligatures , by creating completely new forms, or by assigning

414-476: A distinct letter in the alphabetic order until the 19th century. By the 1960s, it became apparent to the computer and telecommunications industries in the First World that a non-proprietary method of encoding characters was needed. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) encapsulated the Latin alphabet in their ( ISO/IEC 646 ) standard. To achieve widespread acceptance, this encapsulation

483-569: A doubled V (VV) used to represent the Voiced labial–velar approximant / w / found in Old English as early as the 7th century. It came into common use in the later 11th century, replacing the letter wynn ⟨Ƿ ƿ⟩ , which had been used for the same sound. In the Romance languages, the minuscule form of V was a rounded u ; from this was derived a rounded capital U for the vowel in

552-554: A process termed romanization . Whilst the romanization of such languages is used mostly at unofficial levels, it has been especially prominent in computer messaging where only the limited seven-bit ASCII code is available on older systems. However, with the introduction of Unicode , romanization is now becoming less necessary. Keyboards used to enter such text may still restrict users to romanized text, as only ASCII or Latin-alphabet characters may be available. Kalends The calends or kalends ( Latin : kalendae )

621-641: A proposal endorsed by the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People to switch the Crimean Tatar language to Latin by 2025. In July 2020, 2.6 billion people (36% of the world population) use the Latin alphabet. By the 1960s, it became apparent to the computer and telecommunications industries in the First World that a non-proprietary method of encoding characters was needed. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) encapsulated

690-458: A single language. For example, in Spanish, the character ⟨ ñ ⟩ is considered a letter, and sorted between ⟨ n ⟩ and ⟨ o ⟩ in dictionaries, but the accented vowels ⟨ á ⟩ , ⟨ é ⟩ , ⟨ í ⟩ , ⟨ ó ⟩ , ⟨ ú ⟩ , ⟨ ü ⟩ are not separated from the unaccented vowels ⟨

759-532: A small symbol that can appear above or below a letter, or in some other position, such as the umlaut sign used in the German characters ⟨ ä ⟩ , ⟨ ö ⟩ , ⟨ ü ⟩ or the Romanian characters ă , â , î , ș , ț . Its main function is to change the phonetic value of the letter to which it is added, but it may also modify the pronunciation of a whole syllable or word, indicate

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828-470: A special function to pairs or triplets of letters. These new forms are given a place in the alphabet by defining an alphabetical order or collation sequence, which can vary with the particular language. Some examples of new letters to the standard Latin alphabet are the Runic letters wynn ⟨Ƿ ƿ⟩ and thorn ⟨Þ þ⟩ , and the letter eth ⟨Ð/ð⟩ , which were added to

897-504: A specific place in the alphabet for collation purposes, separate from that of the letter on which they are based, as is done in Swedish . In other cases, such as with ⟨ ä ⟩ , ⟨ ö ⟩ , ⟨ ü ⟩ in German, this is not done; letter-diacritic combinations being identified with their base letter. The same applies to digraphs and trigraphs. Different diacritics may be treated differently in collation within

966-624: A unified writing system for the Inuit languages in the country. The writing system is based on the Latin alphabet and is modeled after the one used in the Greenlandic language . On 12 February 2021 the government of Uzbekistan announced it will finalize the transition from Cyrillic to Latin for the Uzbek language by 2023. Plans to switch to Latin originally began in 1993 but subsequently stalled and Cyrillic remained in widespread use. At present

1035-640: Is also used by the Faroese alphabet . Some West, Central and Southern African languages use a few additional letters that have sound values similar to those of their equivalents in the IPA. For example, Adangme uses the letters ⟨Ɛ ɛ⟩ and ⟨Ɔ ɔ⟩ , and Ga uses ⟨Ɛ ɛ⟩ , ⟨Ŋ ŋ⟩ and ⟨Ɔ ɔ⟩ . Hausa uses ⟨Ɓ ɓ⟩ and ⟨Ɗ ɗ⟩ for implosives , and ⟨Ƙ ƙ⟩ for an ejective . Africanists have standardized these into

1104-476: Is language-dependent, as only the first letter may be capitalized, or all component letters simultaneously (even for words written in title case, where letters after the digraph or trigraph are left in lowercase). A ligature is a fusion of two or more ordinary letters into a new glyph or character. Examples are ⟨ Æ æ⟩ (from ⟨AE⟩ , called ash ), ⟨ Œ œ⟩ (from ⟨OE⟩ , sometimes called oethel or eðel ),

1173-537: Is the first day of every month in the Roman calendar . The English word " calendar " is derived from this word. The Romans called the first day of every month the calends , signifying the start of a new lunar phase . On this day, the pontiffs would announce the number of days until the next month at the Curia Calabra ; in addition, debtors had to pay off their debts on this day. These debts were inscribed in

1242-540: The African reference alphabet . Dotted and dotless I — ⟨İ i⟩ and ⟨I ı⟩ — are two forms of the letter I used by the Turkish , Azerbaijani , and Kazakh alphabets. The Azerbaijani language also has ⟨Ə ə⟩ , which represents the near-open front unrounded vowel . A digraph is a pair of letters used to write one sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to

1311-683: The Carolingian minuscule . It was not until the Middle Ages that the letter ⟨ W ⟩ (originally a ligature of two ⟨ V ⟩ 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 ⟨ I ⟩ and ⟨ U ⟩ as vowels , and ⟨ J ⟩ and ⟨ V ⟩ as consonants , become established. Prior to that,

1380-556: The Crimean Tatar language uses both Cyrillic and Latin. The use of Latin was originally approved by Crimean Tatar representatives after the Soviet Union's collapse but was never implemented by the regional government. After Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 the Latin script was dropped entirely. Nevertheless, Crimean Tatars outside of Crimea continue to use Latin and on 22 October 2021 the government of Ukraine approved

1449-965: 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. 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 hieroglyphs . The Etruscans ruled early Rome ; their alphabet evolved in Rome over successive centuries to produce

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1518-509: The English alphabet . Later standards issued by the ISO, for example ISO/IEC 10646 ( Unicode Latin ), have continued to define the 26 × 2 letters of the English alphabet as the basic Latin alphabet with extensions to handle other letters in other languages. The DIN standard DIN 91379 specifies a subset of Unicode letters, special characters, and sequences of letters and diacritic signs to allow

1587-646: The Etruscans . That alphabet was derived from the Euboean alphabet used by the Cumae , which in turn was derived from the Phoenician alphabet . Latin included 21 different characters. The letter ⟨C⟩ was the western form of the Greek gamma , but it was used for the sounds /ɡ/ and /k/ alike, possibly under the influence of Etruscan , which might have lacked any voiced plosives . Later, probably during

1656-635: The Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia . The Greek alphabet was altered by the Etruscans , and subsequently their alphabet was altered by the Ancient Romans . Several Latin-script alphabets exist, which differ in graphemes, collation and phonetic values from the classical Latin alphabet. The Latin script is the basis of the International Phonetic Alphabet , and

1725-588: The Hadiyya and Kambaata languages. On 15 September 1999 the authorities of Tatarstan , Russia, passed a law to make the Latin script a co-official writing system alongside Cyrillic for the Tatar language by 2011. A year later, however, the Russian government overruled the law and banned Latinization on its territory. In 2015, the government of Kazakhstan announced that a Kazakh Latin alphabet would replace

1794-584: The International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The numeral system is called the Roman numeral system, and the collection of the elements is known as the Roman numerals . The numbers 1, 2, 3 ... are Latin/Roman script numbers for the Hindu–Arabic numeral system . The use of the letters I and V for both consonants and vowels proved inconvenient as the Latin alphabet was adapted to Germanic and Romance languages. W originated as

1863-713: The Iranians , Indonesians , Malays , and Turkic peoples . Most of the rest of Asia used a variety of Brahmic alphabets or the Chinese script . Through European colonization the Latin script has spread to the Americas , Oceania , parts of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, in forms based on the Spanish , Portuguese , English , French , German and Dutch alphabets. It is used for many Austronesian languages , including

1932-788: The Kazakh Cyrillic alphabet as the official writing system for the Kazakh language by 2025. There are also talks about switching from the Cyrillic script to Latin in Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan , and Mongolia . Mongolia, however, has since opted to revive the Mongolian script instead of switching to Latin. In October 2019, the organization National Representational Organization for Inuit in Canada (ITK) announced that they will introduce

2001-576: The People's Republic of China introduced a script reform to the Zhuang language , changing its orthography from Sawndip , a writing system based on Chinese, to a Latin script alphabet that used a mixture of Latin, Cyrillic, and IPA letters to represent both the phonemes and tones of the Zhuang language, without the use of diacritics. In 1982 this was further standardised to use only Latin script letters. With

2070-700: The Turkic -speaking peoples of the former USSR , including Tatars , Bashkirs , Azeri , Kazakh , Kyrgyz and others, had their writing systems replaced by the Latin-based Uniform Turkic alphabet in the 1930s; but, in the 1940s, all were replaced by Cyrillic. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, three of the newly independent Turkic-speaking republics, Azerbaijan , Uzbekistan , Turkmenistan , as well as Romanian-speaking Moldova , officially adopted Latin alphabets for their languages. Kyrgyzstan , Iranian -speaking Tajikistan , and

2139-399: The abbreviation ⟨ & ⟩ (from Latin : et , lit.   'and', called ampersand ), and ⟨ ẞ ß ⟩ (from ⟨ſʒ⟩ or ⟨ſs⟩ , the archaic medial form of ⟨s⟩ , followed by an ⟨ ʒ ⟩ or ⟨s⟩ , called sharp S or eszett ). A diacritic, in some cases also called an accent, is

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2208-539: The insular script developed by Irish literati and 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,

2277-433: The kalendaria , effectively an accounting book. Modern calendars count the number of days after the first of each month; by contrast, the Roman calendar counted the number of days until certain upcoming dates (such as the calends, the nones or the ides ). The day before the calends was called pridie kalendas , but the day before that was counted as the "third day", as Romans used inclusive counting . To calculate

2346-708: The languages of the Philippines and the Malaysian and Indonesian languages , replacing earlier Arabic and indigenous Brahmic alphabets. Latin letters served as the basis for the forms of the Cherokee syllabary developed by Sequoyah ; however, the sound values are completely different. Under Portuguese missionary influence, a Latin alphabet was devised for the Vietnamese language , which had previously used Chinese characters . The Latin-based alphabet replaced

2415-407: The 16th century, while a new, pointed minuscule v was derived from V for the consonant. In the case of I, a word-final swash form, j , came to be used for the consonant, with the un-swashed form restricted to vowel use. Such conventions were erratic for centuries. J was introduced into English for the consonant in the 17th century (it had been rare as a vowel), but it was not universally considered

2484-665: The 18th century had frequently all nouns capitalized, in the same way that Modern German is written today, e.g. German : Alle Schwestern der alten Stadt hatten die Vögel gesehen , lit.   'All of the Sisters of the old City had seen the Birds';. Words from languages natively written with other scripts , such as Arabic or Chinese , are usually transliterated or transcribed when embedded in Latin-script text or in multilingual international communication,

2553-472: The 26 most widespread letters are the letters contained in the ISO basic Latin alphabet , which are the same letters as the English alphabet . Latin script is the basis for the largest number of alphabets of any writing system and is the most widely adopted writing system in the world. Latin script is used as the standard method of writing the languages of Western and Central Europe, most of sub-Saharan Africa,

2622-709: The 26 × 2 letters of the English alphabet as the basic Latin alphabet with extensions to handle other letters in other languages. The Latin alphabet spread, along with Latin , 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, Turkey, the Levant , and Egypt, continued to use Greek as

2691-428: The 3rd century BC, the letter ⟨Z⟩ – not needed to write Latin properly – was replaced with the new letter ⟨G⟩ , a ⟨C⟩ modified with a small vertical stroke, which took its place in the alphabet. From then on, ⟨G⟩ represented the voiced plosive /ɡ/ , while ⟨C⟩ was generally reserved for the voiceless plosive /k/ . The letter ⟨K⟩

2760-458: The Americas, and Oceania, as well as many languages in other parts of the world. The script is either called Latin script or Roman script, in reference to its origin in ancient Rome (though some of the capital letters are Greek in origin). In the context of transliteration , the term " romanization " ( British English : "romanisation") is often found. Unicode uses the term "Latin" as does

2829-666: The Chinese characters in administration in the 19th century with French rule. In the late 19th century, the Romanians switched to using the Latin alphabet, dropping the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet . Romanian is one of the Romance languages . In 1928, as part of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 's reforms, the new Republic of Turkey adopted a Latin alphabet for the Turkish language , replacing a modified Arabic alphabet. Most of

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2898-497: The Latin alphabet in their ( ISO/IEC 646 ) standard. To achieve widespread acceptance, this encapsulation was based on popular usage. As the United States held a preeminent position in both industries during the 1960s, the standard was based on the already published American Standard Code for Information Interchange , better known as ASCII , which included in the character set the 26 × 2 (uppercase and lowercase) letters of

2967-526: 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

3036-400: 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,

3105-450: 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 . Although Latin did not use diacritical marks, signs of truncation of words (often placed above or at the end of the truncated word) were very common. Furthermore, abbreviations or smaller overlapping letters were often used. This

3174-667: The Law on Official Use of the Language and Alphabet. As late as 1500, the Latin script was limited primarily to the languages spoken in Western , Northern , and Central Europe . The Orthodox Christian Slavs of Eastern and Southeastern Europe mostly used Cyrillic , and the Greek alphabet was in use by Greek speakers around the eastern Mediterranean. The Arabic script was widespread within Islam, both among Arabs and non-Arab nations like

3243-498: The alphabet of Old English . Another Irish letter, the insular g , developed into yogh ⟨Ȝ ȝ⟩ , used in Middle English . Wynn was later replaced with the new letter ⟨w⟩ , eth and thorn with ⟨ th ⟩ , and yogh with ⟨ gh ⟩ . Although the four are no longer part of the English or Irish alphabets, eth and thorn are still used in the modern Icelandic alphabet , while eth

3312-619: The appearance of a ligature ⟨ij⟩ very similar to the letter ⟨ÿ⟩ in handwriting . A trigraph is made up of three letters, like the German ⟨ sch ⟩ , the Breton ⟨ c'h ⟩ or the Milanese ⟨oeu⟩ . In the orthographies of some languages, digraphs and trigraphs are regarded as independent letters of the alphabet in their own right. The capitalization of digraphs and trigraphs

3381-543: The breakaway region of Transnistria kept the Cyrillic alphabet, chiefly due to their close ties with Russia. In the 1930s and 1940s, the majority of Kurds replaced the Arabic script with two Latin alphabets. Although only the official Kurdish government uses an Arabic alphabet for public documents, the Latin Kurdish alphabet remains widely used throughout the region by the majority of Kurdish -speakers. In 1957,

3450-661: The collapse of the Derg and subsequent end of decades of Amharic assimilation in 1991, various ethnic groups in Ethiopia dropped the Geʽez script , which was deemed unsuitable for languages outside of the Semitic branch . In the following years the Kafa , Oromo , Sidama , Somali , and Wolaitta languages switched to Latin while there is continued debate on whether to follow suit for

3519-531: The correct representation of names and to simplify data exchange in Europe. This specification supports all official languages of European Union and European Free Trade Association countries (thus also the Greek and Cyrillic scripts), plus the German minority languages . To allow the transliteration of names in other writing systems to the Latin script according to the relevant ISO standards all necessary combinations of base letters and diacritic signs are provided. Efforts are being made to further develop it into

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3588-406: The day of the calends of the upcoming month, counting the number of days remaining in the current month is necessary, then adding two to that number. For example, April 22 is the 10th day before the calends of May (ante diem decimum Kalendas Maius), because eight days are left in April and both end dates are included in the total. The following lines of poetry aid calculations relating to the day of

3657-427: 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

3726-402: 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. This is still systematically done in modern German . Latin script The Latin script , also known as the Roman script , is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet , derived from a form of

3795-425: The letter i was written taller : ⟨ á é ꟾ ó v́ ⟩ . For example, what is today transcribed Lūciī a fīliī was written ⟨ lv́ciꟾ·a·fꟾliꟾ ⟩ in the inscription depicted. Some letters have more than one form in epigraphy . Latinists have treated some of them especially such as ⟨ Ꟶ ⟩ , a variant of ⟨H⟩ found in Roman Gaul . The primary mark of punctuation

3864-404: The month from the calends: Principium mensis cujusque vocato kalendas: Sex Maius nonas, October, Julius, et Mars; Quattuor at reliqui: dabit idus quidlibet octo. This means that the first day is called the calends ; six days after the calends is the nones of May, October, July and March, while the nones comes only four days later for the other months; the ides comes eight days after

3933-521: The names of the continuants consisted as a rule either of the bare sound, or the sound preceded by /e/ . The letter ⟨Y⟩ when introduced was probably called "hy" /hyː/ 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 /y/ from /i/ . ⟨Z⟩ was given its Greek name, zeta . This scheme has continued to be used by most modern European languages that have adopted

4002-608: The nones. The calends was a feature of the Roman calendar , but it was not included in the Greek calendar . Consequently, to postpone something ad Kalendas Graecas ("until the Greek calends ") was a colloquial expression for postponing something forever. This phrase survived for many centuries in Greek ( Greek : εἰς τὰς ἑλληνικάς καλένδας ) and in the Romance languages ( Spanish : hasta las calendas griegas ; Italian : alle calende greche ; French : aux calendes grecques ; Romanian : la calendele grecești ; Portuguese : às calendas gregas  ; etc.). The Latin term

4071-508: The speakers of several Uralic languages , most notably Hungarian , Finnish and Estonian . The Latin script also came into use for writing the West Slavic languages and several South Slavic languages , as the people who spoke them adopted Roman Catholicism . The speakers of East Slavic languages generally adopted Cyrillic along with Orthodox Christianity . The Serbian language uses both scripts, with Cyrillic predominating in official communication and Latin elsewhere, as determined by

4140-445: The start of a new syllable, or distinguish between homographs such as the Dutch words een ( pronounced [ən] ) meaning "a" or "an", and één , ( pronounced [e:n] ) meaning "one". As with the pronunciation of letters, the effect of diacritics is language-dependent. English is the only major modern European language that requires no diacritics for its native vocabulary . Historically, in formal writing,

4209-475: The written letters in sequence. Examples are ⟨ ch ⟩ , ⟨ ng ⟩ , ⟨ rh ⟩ , ⟨ sh ⟩ , ⟨ ph ⟩ , ⟨ th ⟩ in English, and ⟨ ij ⟩ , ⟨ee⟩ , ⟨ ch ⟩ and ⟨ei⟩ in Dutch. In Dutch the ⟨ij⟩ is capitalized as ⟨IJ⟩ or the ligature ⟨IJ⟩ , but never as ⟨Ij⟩ , and it often takes

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4278-470: 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. Tironian notes were a shorthand system consisting of thousands of signs. New Roman cursive script, also known as minuscule cursive,

4347-456: Was based on popular usage. As the United States held a preeminent position in both industries during the 1960s, the standard was based on the already published American Standard Code for Information Interchange , better known as ASCII , which included in the character set the 26 × 2 (uppercase and lowercase) letters of the English alphabet . Later standards issued by the ISO, for example ISO/IEC 10646 ( Unicode Latin ), have continued to define

4416-427: Was due to the fact that if the text was engraved on stone, the number of letters to be written was reduced, while if it was written on paper or parchment, it saved precious space. This habit continued even in the Middle Ages. Hundreds of symbols and abbreviations exist, varying from century to century. It is generally believed that the Latin alphabet used by the Romans was derived from the Old Italic alphabet used by

4485-558: Was during the classical Latin period that the Latin alphabet contained 21 letters and 2 foreign letters: The Latin names of some of these letters are disputed; for example, ⟨H⟩ may have been called [ˈaha] or [ˈaka] . In general the Romans did not use the traditional ( Semitic -derived) names as in Greek: the names of the plosives were formed by adding /eː/ to their sound (except for ⟨K⟩ and ⟨Q⟩ , which needed different vowels to be distinguished from ⟨C⟩ ) and

4554-455: Was in use from the 3rd century to the 7th century, and uses letter forms that are more recognizable to modern eyes; ⟨a⟩ , ⟨b⟩ , ⟨d⟩ , and ⟨e⟩ had taken a more familiar shape, and the other letters were proportionate to each other. This script evolved into a variety of regional medieval scripts (for example, the Merovingian , Visigothic and Benevantan scripts), to be later supplanted by

4623-415: 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; for example, from the preamble 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

4692-399: 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

4761-459: Was used only rarely, in a small number of words such as Kalendae , often interchangeably with ⟨C⟩ . After the Roman conquest of Greece in the 1st century BC, Latin adopted the Greek letters ⟨Y⟩ and ⟨Z⟩ (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

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