Latin alphabet (with macrons)
Alphabētum Latīnum
The Latin alphabet — the writing system of Cicero, Virgil, and the Roman Empire, and the direct ancestor of every Western European script alive today. Classical Latin used 23 letters; modern editions of Latin texts add macrons (ā ē ī ō ū ȳ) to mark long vowels, a distinction the Romans heard but rarely wrote down.
All 28 letters
History
The Latin alphabet was adapted from the Etruscan alphabet around the 7th century BCE, which itself came from the Greek alphabet, which came from the Phoenician abjad — a chain that ultimately reaches back to Egyptian hieroglyphs. Classical Latin had no "J", no "U" (only V), and no "W". "K" was rare. "Y" and "Z" were imported from Greek for borrowed words. "J", "U", and "W" emerged in the medieval period — the modern 26-letter English alphabet is medieval Latin's children.
Things you might not know
- Classical Latin had no separate letters for vowel I/J or U/V — Caesar wrote his name IVLIVS, pronounced YOO-lee-oos.
- Macrons (ā ē ī ō ū) are a 19th-century editorial invention. The Romans heard the difference between "malum" (apple) and "mālum" (evil) but wrote them the same way.
- The letter K was so rare in classical Latin that grammarians called it "the unnecessary letter" — its only common use was in the abbreviation K. for Kalendae (the first of the month).
- Every letter in this list is a direct ancestor of the corresponding modern English letter, with the same shape and (mostly) the same sound.