The Latin alphabet, or the Latin alphabet, is a special alphabetic script that first appeared in the 2nd-3rd century BC, and then spread throughout the world. Today it is the basis for most languages and has 26 characters that have different pronunciations, names and additional elements.
Features
One of the most common writing options is the Latin alphabet. The alphabet originates in Greece, but it was fully formed in the Latin language of the Indo-European family. Today, this script is used by most of the peoples of the world, including all of America and Australia, most of Europe, and half of Africa. Translation into Latin is becoming more and more popular, and at the moment it is strongly replacing Cyrillic and Arabic script. Such an alphabet is rightfully considered a universal and universal option, and every year it becomes more and more popular.
Especially common English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and Italian Latin. Often states use it along with other types of writing, in particular in India, Japan, China and other countries.
History
It is believed that the Greeks, in particular the Estrus, are the original authors of the writing, which later became known as "Latin". The alphabet has undeniable similarities with the Etruscan script, but this hypothesis has many controversial points. In particular, it is not known exactly how this culture was able to get to Rome.
Words in the Latin alphabet began to appear in the 3rd-4th century BC, and already in the 2nd century BC. writing was formed and consisted of 21 signs. In the course of history, some letters were modified, others disappeared and reappeared centuries later, and the third characters were divided into two. As a result, in the 16th century, the Latin alphabet became what it is to this day. Despite this, different languages have their own distinctive features and additional national versions, which, however, are only a certain modification of already existing letters. For example, Ń, Ä, etc.
Different from Greek writing
Latin is a script that originates from the Western Greeks, but it also has its own unique features. Initially, this alphabet was rather limited, truncated. Over time, the signs were optimized, and a rule was developed that the letter should go strictly from left to right.
In terms of differences, the Latin alphabet is more rounded than the Greek alphabet and also uses severalgraphemes for sound transmission [k]. The difference lies in the fact that the letters K and C began to perform almost identical functions, and the sign K, in general, went out of use for some time. This is evidenced by historical evidence, as well as the fact that the modern Irish and Spanish alphabets still do not use this grapheme. The letter also has other differences, including the modification of the sign C into G and the appearance of the symbol V from the Greek Y.
Features of letters
The modern Latin alphabet has two basic forms: majuscule (capital letters) and minuscule (lowercase characters). The first option is more ancient, since it began to be used in the form of artistic graphics as early as the 1st century BC. Mayusculus dominated the scriptoria of Europe almost until the beginning of the 12th century. The only exceptions were Ireland and Southern Italy, where the national script was used for a long time.
By the 15th century, the minuscule was also fully developed. Such famous personalities as Francesco Petrarch, Leonardo da Vinci, as well as other personalities of the Renaissance, did a lot to introduce lowercase Latin writing. Based on this alphabet, national types of writing gradually developed. German, French, Spanish and other versions had their own changes and additional characters.
Latin alphabet as international
This type of writing is familiar to almost every person on Earth who can read. This is related to the fact thatthis alphabet is either native to a person, or he gets acquainted with it in the lessons of a foreign language, mathematics and others. This allows us to assert that the Latin alphabet is the writing of the international level.
Also, many countries that do not use this alphabet use the standard version in parallel. This applies, for example, to countries such as Japan and China. Almost all artificial languages use the Latin alphabet as their basis. Among them are Esperanto, Ido, etc. Quite often you can also find transliteration in Latin letters, since sometimes there is no generally accepted name for a particular term in the national language, which makes it necessary to translate into a generally accepted sign system. Write in Latin, so you can use any word.
Romanization of other alphabets
The Latin script is used all over the world to modify languages that use a different type of writing. This phenomenon is known under the term "transliteration" (as translation into Latin is sometimes called). It is used to simplify the process of communication between representatives of different nationalities.
Practically all languages that use non-Latin writing have official transliteration rules. Most often, such procedures are called romanization, since they have a roman, i.e. Latin origin. Each language has certain tables, for example, Arabic, Persian, Russian, Japanese, etc., which allow you to transliterate almost any national word.
Latin is the mostthe most common alphabet in the world, which originates from the Greek alphabet. It is used by most languages as a basis, and is also known to almost every person on Earth. Every year its popularity is growing, which allows us to consider this alphabet generally accepted and international. For languages that use other types of writing, special tables with national transliteration are offered, allowing you to romanize almost any word. This makes the process of communication between different countries and peoples simple and easy.
