The Roman alphabet

The modern Latin alphabet is the base for the written language of the Germanic and Romanic languages as well as for many other languages and consists of 26 letters. Letters are called differently in different languages of the world.

The Roman alphabet comes from the Etruscan alphabet based on one of the variants of the Greek alphabet. The Latin alphabet formed in about 7th century BC and first had only 21 letters.

The letter "Z" was excluded from the alphabet in 312 BC but was added again later. The letter "C" was used to determine the sounds [k] and [g]. But in 234 BC the separate letter was invented, it was "G" adding the line to the letter "C". In the first century BC the letters Y and Z were added to write the words down that were borrowed from the Greek. In the end the traditional Latin alphabet was formed that had 26 letters.

The Roman imperator Claudius tried to add the letter to determine the sound "oe" in the word Phoebus, ps/bs, and "v" unlike "u". But his attempt didn't have any success. After the death of Claudius these letters were forgotten.

During the modern time the division of letters I, V, J, U, and the letter VV that was transformed into W was created. In the result the modern alphabet of 26 letters was created.