Latin alphabet
| Table of contents |
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2 Evolution 3 History 4 Use in other languages 5 Collating in other languages 6 References |
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M |
| N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m |
| n | o | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z |
The Latin, or Roman, alphabet was created in the 7th century BC. It was based on the Etruscan alphabet, which was derived from the Greek. Of the original twenty-six Etruscan letters the Romans adopted twenty-one. The original Latin alphabet was A, B, C (which stood for both g and k), D, E, F, I (the Greek zeta), H, I (which stood for both i and j), K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R (though for a long time this was written P), S, T, V (which stood for u, v, and w), and X. Later the Greek zeta (I) was dropped and a new letter G was placed in its position. After the conquest of Greece in the first century BC the letters Y and Z were adopted from the Greek alphabet and placed at the end. Now the new Latin alphabet contained twenty-three letters. It was not until the Middle Ages that the letter J (to distinguish it from I) and the letters U and W (to distinguish them from V) were added. [1]
The Latin alphabet developed from the Etruscan alphabet at some time before 600 BC, it can be traced through Etruscan, Greek, and Phoenician scripts to the North Semitic alphabet used in Syria and Palestine about 1100 BC. The earliest inscription in the Latin alphabet appears on the Praeneste Fibula, a cloak pin dating from about the 7th century BC, which reads, MANIOS MED FHEFHAKED NUMASIOI (in Classical Latin: Manius me fecit Numerio, meaning Manius made me for Numerius). According to HammarstrÃÂöm (in Jensen 521), the letters for B, D, O, X hail from a Southern Italian Greek alphabet. However, there are Etruscan abecedaria with B, D, O, X (Sampson 108). Rix (203) claims that the sound values of those letters in Latin are to be attributed to Greek influence, the letters themselves were probably all present when the Romans took over the alphabet from the Etruscans (Wachter 33).
It is uncontested that the alphabet is mainly of Etruscan origin. The sound value of C proves that clearly. Etruscan had no voiced plosives, so this symbol - derived from the Greek gamma - came to stand for the unvoiced /k/ in Etruscan - as later in Latin. Jensen (521) notes that the letters C, K, Q were originally used in Latin according to Etruscan usage: C in front of /e, i/; K in front of /a/; Q in front of /u, o/. The letters thus stand for different allophones of /k/ (in the case of Latin, also /g/ and probably the phonemes /k_w/ and /g _w/ in the case of QU and GU). These spelling rules are due to the names of the letters: gamma or gemma; kappa; qoppa or quppa (Wachter 15). In Etruscan there was no /o/, so Q was used both in front of /o/ and /u/ in Latin. Y and Z were later additions taken from the Greek alphabet. G was created by Spurius Carvilius Ruga (around 230 BC) as a modification of C (Sampson 109). F (digamma) stood for /w/ in both Etruscan and Latin, but the Romans simplified the FH-/f/combination to F /f/. The semi-vowels /w, j/ and the vowels /u, u:, i, i:/ were written with the same letters, namely V and I respectively.
There was no 'U'; instead, there was the semi-vowel 'V'. There was no 'W', although 'V' was pronounced as the modern English 'W'. They didn't have the letter 'J', instead they had the semi-vowel 'I'.
Compare:
In the course of its history, the Latin alphabet was used for new languages, and therefore, some new letters and diacritics were created, e.g.:
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. U and J were originally not distinguished from V and I respectively.
In Old English, eth ð and the Runic letters thorn þ, and wynn ƿ were added. Eth and thorn were replaced with 'th', and wynn with the new letter 'w'. In modern Icelandic, thorn and eth are still used.
The additional letters added in German are special presentations of earlier ligature forms (ae → ä, ue → ü or ſss → ß). French adds the circumflex to record elided consonants that were present in earlier forms and are often still present in the modern English cognate forms (Old French hostel → French hôtel = English hotel or Late Latin pasta → Middle French paste → French pâte and English paste).
Some Slavic languages use the latin alphabet rather than the Cyrillic. Among these, Polish uses a variety of digraphs with z to represent special phonetic values, and a dark l - ł - for a sound similar to w. Czech uses diacritics as in DvořÃÂák. Croatian uses hÃÂáčekss č š ž and also ć and đ. The Slavic regions which stayed with the Orthodox church generally use Cyrillic instead which is much closer to the Greek alphabet.
The African language Hausa uses three additional consonants: ɓ, ɗ and ƙ.
Alphabets derived from the Latin have varying collating rules:
Evolution
History
Use in other languages
Please see 'Alphabets derived from the Latin' for a more complete list.Collating in other languages
References