The letters of the Latin alphabet are taken from Greek, but scholars believe indirectly from the ancient Italian people known asEtruscans. AEtruscan potfound near Veii (a city sacked by Rome in the 5th century BC) the Etruscan abecedary was engraved on it, reminding the excavators of his Roman descendants. In the 7th century BC, this alphabet was used not only to reproduce Latin in written form, but also for several otherIndo-European languagesin the Mediterranean region, including Umbria, Sabellic and Oscan.
The Greeks themselves based their written language on a Semitic alphabet, the Proto-Canaanite script, which may have emerged as early as the second millennium BC. The Greeks passed it on to the Etruscans, the ancient people of Italy, and sometime before 600 B.C.Greek alphabetwas changed to the Roman alphabet.
Creating a Latin Alphabet – C to G
One of the main differences between the Roman alphabet and the Greek alphabet is that the third sound in the Greek alphabet is a g sound:
- Greek:1. bogstav = Alpha A, 2. = Beta B, 3. = Gamma C...
while in the Latin alphabet the third letter is C and G is the sixth letter of the Latin alphabet.
- Latin:1. bogstav = A, 2. = B, 3. = C, 4. = D, 5. = E, 6. = G
This shift is due to changes in the Latin alphabet over time.
The third letter of the Latin alphabet was C, just like in English. This "C" can be pronounced hard, like a K, or soft like an S. In linguistics, this hard c/k sound is calledvoiceless velaire plosive- you make the sound with your mouth open and from your throat. Not only C, but also the letter K, in the Roman alphabet, was pronounced as a K (again a hard or voiceless velar plosive). Like the word-initial-K in English, the Latin K was rarely used. Usually – perhaps always – the vowel A followed K, as in icalendar'Kalends' (refers to the first day of the month), from which we get the English word calendar. The use of C was less restricted than K. You can find a Latin C before any vowel.
The same third letter of the Latin alphabet, C, also served the Romans for the sound of G - a reflection of its origins in the Greek gamma (Γ or γ).
Latin:The letter C = the sound of K or G
The difference is not as great as it seems, as the difference between K and G is what is colloquially called a voicing difference: the G sound is the voiced (or "throaty") version of the K (this K is the hard C, as in "short" [the soft C is pronounced like the c in the cell, like "suh" and not relevant here]). Both are velar plosives, but G is voiced and K is not. It seems that the Romans were unaware of this pronunciation for a time, so the praenomen Caius is an alternate spelling of Gaius; both are abbreviated C.
When the velar plosives (C and G sounds) were separated and given different letter shapes, the second C was given a tail, making it a G, and moved to sixth place in the Latin alphabet, where the Greek letter zeta would have stood as this had been a productive letter to the Romans. It was not.
Add Z back
An early version of the alphabet used by some ancient people in Italy actually included the Greek letter zeta. Zeta is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet, after alpha (Roman A), beta (Roman B), gamma (Roman C), delta (Roman D) and epsilon (Roman E).
- Greek:Alpha Α, Beta Β, Gamma Γ, Delta Δ, Epsilon Ε,ZetaG
Where zeta (Ζ or ζ) was used in Etruscan Italy, it retained its 6th place.
The Latin alphabet originally had 21 letters in the first century BC, but when the Romans became Hellenized they added two letters to the end of the alphabet, a Y for the Greek upsilon and a Z for the Greek zeta, which at the time was not had equivalent. in the Latin language.
Latin:
- a.) Tidligt-alfabet: A B C D E F H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X
- b.) Senere Alfabet: A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X
- c.) Stadig senere: A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z
Sources
- Gordon AE. 1969.On the origin of the Latin alphabet: modern views. California Studies in Classical Antiquity2:157-170.
- Verbrugge GP. 1999.Transliteration or transcription of Greek.The classical world92(6):499-511.
- Willi A. 2008.Queues, houses, corners: the Greek-Semitic letter names as a chapter in the history of the alphabet.The classic quarterly magazine58(2):401-423.
