Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is an alphabet that was originally used to write Latin. Today it is used to write hundreds of languages. 70% of the global population uses the Latin alphabet, making it the most commonly used writing system in the world.

Usage
The Latin alphabet, in it's base form, has 26 letters, though some languages use less. The pronunciation of the letters can vary drastically depending on the language. There are different forms for upper and lower case letters. In many languages there is a printed and cursive form of the script.

Diacritics and additional letters
In addition to the "base" letters, many languages also make use of diacritics and additional characters.

The exact usage of diacritics can vary greatly between languages. They most commonly appear on vowels. Diacritics can indicate many things, including, but not limited to: general chances in pronunciation, vowel roundness, letters that are pronounced when they'd normally be silent, nasalization, vowel length, tone, or stress.


 * 1) These letters are no longer used by any language.

Other symbols
In addition to the letters the Latin script has a decimal numeral system based on the Hindu-Arabic numerals. Words are seperated with a space. Sentences are seperated with punctuation marks, such as the period ⟨.⟩, question mark ⟨?⟩, and exclimation point ⟨!⟩. A variety of other punctuation characters appear in the Latin script, such commas, apostrophes, colons, and senicolons among others. The convention for punction varies by language.

History

 * 1) G was created as a modified C, made to distinguish the /k/ and /g/ sound, which was not distinguished in Etruscan.
 * 2) J was a variation of I, used to distinguish new sounds that developed in the Romance languages. It was introduced to English through French.
 * 3) U was developed as a variation of V used in the middle of words (while V was used at the beginning of word). It was now recognized as a letter distinct from V until the 17th century.
 * 4) W was originally a ligature of two Vs (or two Us, at the time U and V were considered the same letter), to write sounds found in Germanic languages.
 * 5) Y and Z were adopted from the Greek alphabet and used to write Greek loanwords

Early history
The Latin alphabet evolved from the Etruscan alphabet when the Etruscans invaded early Rome. They adopted 21 of the 26 Etruscan letters, as the rest were not necessary to write Latin. From there the alphabet went through several archaic versions. In the earliest versions of Latin K was rarely used, with C being strongly preferred, which stood for both /ɡ/ and /k/. Old Latin could be written from right to left, like Etruscan, or boustrophedon. During the 3rd century BC, the original Etruscan Z was dropped. A new letter, G, was placed in its position. G was a modified version of C, used to distinguish the /k/ and /g/ sounds.

By the 1st century BC the alphabet entered the Classical Latin period and had, for the most part, taken the form that would be recognized today. Y and Z were introduced (or reintroduced in the case of Z), being adopted from Greek. Writing was almost always left-to-right. An interpunct was used as a word divider, though it fell out of use after 200 AD.

Medieval period
The Latin alphabet spread along with the Latin language, with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The eastern half of the Empire used Greek as a lingua franca, but Latin, along with the Latin alphabet was used in the western half. During the Middle Ages, the Latin alphabet was used to write Romance languages and with the spread of Christianity it was adopted to write Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, and some Uralic and Slavic languages.

It was in the medieval period that the script made most of the final changes that would bring it to its modern form. Lower case letters developed out of cursive handwriting. The old Roman letters (what's now known as upper case letters) were used for words that were considered important, such as the beginning of sentences and proper names, though the rules for capitalization have changed over time and vary between languages. The letter W was created (originally a ligature of two Vs) to represent sounds from Germanic languages which did not exist in medieval Latin. J and U were created as variations of I and V respectively, used in certain contexts. However, they were not commonly recognized as letters separate from I and V until the 17th century.

Modern spread
During the age of European colonization the Latin script spread around the world alongside the Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch languages. The usage of the Latin alphabet was usually in attempts to Christianize and 'civilize' the local population. In some cases the Latin alphabet replaced existing scripts, in other cases it was used for languages that were previously were not written down. It is used in the Americas, Oceania, and parts of Asia and Africa (until about 1880 mostly limited to the coastal areas).

Unicode
Over a thousand characters from the Latin script are encoded in the Unicode Standard, grouped in several blocks.