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The Latin script originated in archaic antiquity in the Latium region in central Italy.It is generally held that the Latins, one of many ancient Italic tribes, adopted the western variant of the Greek alphabet in the 7th century BCE [1] from Cumae, a Greek colony in southern Italy – making the early Latin alphabet one among several Old Italic scripts emerging at the time.
Population actively using (in millions) Languages associated with Regions using script de facto Latin Latin Alphabet: 4900+ [2] [note 2] Latin [note 3] and Romance languages (languages that evolved from Latin: Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Romanian) Germanic languages (English, Dutch, German, Nordic languages) [note 4]
The Latin script is the basis of the International Phonetic Alphabet, and 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 [1] and is the most widely adopted writing ...
The lists and tables below summarize and compare the letter inventories of some of the Latin-script alphabets.In this article, the scope of the word "alphabet" is broadened to include letters with tone marks, and other diacritics used to represent a wide range of orthographic traditions, without regard to whether or how they are sequenced in their alphabet or the table.
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.
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 have varied in their rules for capitalization.
Global distribution of the Latin alphabet. The dark green areas show the countries where this alphabet is the sole main script. The light green shows the countries where the alphabet co-exists with other scripts. A tribe known as the Latins, who became the Romans, also lived in the Italian peninsula like the Western Greeks.
A Latin-script alphabet (Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet) is an alphabet that uses letters of the Latin script. The 21-letter archaic Latin alphabet and the 23-letter classical Latin alphabet belong to the oldest of this group. [1] The 26-letter modern Latin alphabet is the newest of this group.