Latin script

U 0000- U 02 AF
U 1 E00 -U 1 EFF
U 2 C60 -U 2 C7F
U A720 -U A7FF

The Latin alphabet (also called the Roman alphabet, late Latin: Abecedarium ) was transferred from the Latin language on many Roman, Germanic, Slavic, Finno- Ugric and other languages and is the most widely used alphabet in the world.

Letters of the Latin alphabet and their pronunciation

The modern Latin alphabet contains 26 characters. These are ( in capital letters): A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z; and lower case letters: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z

There are still the German umlauts Ä, ä ( from AE, ae ), Ö, ö ( from OE, oe ), Ü, ü ( from UE, ue ) and the ß ( a ligature of s ( Long or medially -S ) and s ( round or final sound - S)).

The names of the letters are country-specific, see, for example German alphabet names of the letters.

There are also so-called Morse Code, which are used for example when telephonic traffic to the spelling of words ( in German-speaking about how Anton A, B as Berta, etc.).

History

Exclusively Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet in addition to other writing systems

The Latin alphabet was, through the agency of the Etruscans, borrowed from the western Greek alphabet. The archaic Latin alphabet consisted of 21 letters: ABCDEFZHIKLMNOPQRSTV X.

The sign for the Greek According to [ dz ] was handed down in seventh place in the alphabet, though there was no use for these and similar combinations of sounds in latin. The abolition of this sign is to go back to Spurius Carvilius, a freed slave, who opened the first school with zahlungspflichtigem lessons.

C was used for the voiceless velar plosive [k] and the velar voiced plosive [g ]. The show even the abbreviations C. for Gaius and Cn. for Gnaeus and epigraphic forms such CRATIA. Spurius Carvilius it should have been, who introduced by adding a diacritic stroke to C the difference of C = [ k] and G = [ g] without both forms of writing would have been but already named as various letters and counted. As a result, the classical Latin alphabet consisted of (without G) 20 letters ABCDEF (G ) HIKLMNOPQRSTV X.

More changes occurred after the Greek mainland in 146 BC and subjected to the territory of the Roman Republic had been incorporated and increased demand arose to reproduce Greek names and foreign words in Latin script. The Greek Ypsilon, which in the Etruscan form of writing V as early as the Archaic period to the spelling of the vowel [ u] ( in accordance with the phonetic value also in the archaic Greek, cf Latin Burrus < πυρρός "red") and the semi- consonants [ w] Latin in the alphabet was adopted, was with the now given in the classical Greek phonetic value [ u ] again, this time in the form of writing Y and from the Greek directly taken over in classical times, stayed here in Latin but as a foreign character for the spelling of Greek names and foreign words reserved ( example: κύκλος heterocycle "circle, cycle "). For the same purpose as Z was another foreign characters again for / dz / borrowed and this time, as now found still common at the end of the alphabet (for example: ζώνη zona " belt zone").

In the late ancient grammar, the counting and differentiation of the Latin letters then consolidated at 23: ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTVX Y Z. The Latin Middle Ages put on this number also about particular value because it between the letters numbers of the Hebrew (22) and the Greek ( 24) alphabet lies and Latin Christianity saw itself confirmed in his position as heir to both cultures.

The Romans and the Middle Ages used the letters I and V for the case of both vocalic as well halbkonsonantischer or consonantal phonetic values : I was equally for vocalic [i] and the semi- consonants [j ] and the resulting therefrom in Late Antiquity affricate [ dʒ ] used as V for vocalic [u] and the semi- consonants [ w] (about as in engl. waterfall ) or since late antiquity resulting therefrom fricative [v ]. Although existed since late antiquity next to V and the rounded form of writing U and also in addition I also J, but these spellings are not used to mark the phonetic difference of vowel compared to (semi-) consonant phonetic value, and also in the counting and naming the letters - the as " I" and " U" was derived from each of the vocalic use - these were each classified only as a single letter. It was only in the wake of humanist reform projects of the Renaissance - by Alberti and Trissino in Italy and Tory and Meigret in France - the differences in the forms of writing were also used to represent the phonetic difference, so that by the distinction between I = [i ] vs. J yielded = [ j] and U = [ u] with respect to V = [ v] two more letters of the alphabet. Also nachmittelalterlich in the assessment as a separate letter is the resultant of a ligature of two V Letter W (hence its English name "double u" or French "double v" ).

This was the one alphabet, which is today understood by the term Latin alphabet, complete. It consists of the following 26 letters:

Except in Switzerland and Liechtenstein - - In the German alphabet nor the letters Ä ä Ö ö Ü ü and applicants and the small letter added ß.

A transcription of other alphabets in the Latin alphabet is called romanization.

The Romans knew only capital letters ( upper case ). It was only in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages arose lowercase ( minuscule congregation ). History of the Latin script compare the article "Latin palaeography ".

Diacritics, ligatures, variations

In many languages, the Latin alphabet was supplemented by diacritics (eg å, é ï ò, û ) to represent more language-specific sounds can. Extreme is this phenomenon in Vietnamese pronounced that late received a Latin alphabet as Turkish. On the other hand contains the Indonesian or Malay, another Southeast Asian language, which is also relatively late received a Latin alphabet, as well as no diacritics.

In addition, combinations of letters were ( like ch, sh, th, ng, sz) developed out of which could over time also ligatures, which later (like W from VV in Late Latin, English, German and Polish, æ of a and e in Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic or the small ß from long s (s ) and round s (s ) or the Germans from s and z ) often separate letters were. Only in recent decades, however, eventually developed a large ß ( ẞ ), which was officially recognized in 2008, which came into force supplement to the ISO / IEC 10646 standard.

But new characters created also by the fact that so far were differentiated, modified or supplemented in shape, such as the G in distinction to the C already in classical Latin, as are the Ð, eg in Iceland, or the Ŋ, eg in Sami, the so came to the alphabet.

A further extension of the alphabet yielded by the fact that from the original versions ( Allografen ) of a letter to the two independent time points were about later Latin J next to the I or the U adjacent to the V

In addition, the Latin alphabet but was supplemented by letters from other ( non-Latin ) alphabets. So already reached at the time of classical Latin Y and Z from the Greek to the end of the Latin alphabet, and in the Icelandic letter Þ ( Thorn ) was taken from the runic alphabet.

Pronunciation

The pronunciation of each letter has changed even within the Roman Empire ( sound change ) and also differs today more or less from one language to another. The international phonetic alphabet ( IPA), based in large part on the Latin alphabet ( which has a variant of the Latin alphabet, the alphabet pannigerianische, turn characters from the IPA adopted ).

Typography and characteristics of Latin letters

The letters of the Latin alphabet can be in terms of their graphical implementation and classify under secondary contexts (based on prototypical forms).

Encoding

The 26 basic letters of the Latin alphabet and the main punctuation marks and special characters are included in the 7 bits to be addressed (ie comprehensive 128 code positions ) ASCII code, which was introduced in 1968. To include the additional required depending on the country or language special characters, 646 derivative of this code have been created in the framework of ISO, in which individual characters from the 7 -bit codes have been exchanged.

Later were designed on the ASCII -building, depending on the region of the earth different 8 -bit codes that can address each 128 additional characters. The most common of these 8 -bit codes are Latin - 1 to Latin -10 international standard ISO 8859 (ASCII ANSI ) and ISO 6937th At this stage of development of each computer system went his own way, common implementations are the Windows code pages ( for example, Windows -1252 for Western Europe), Macintosh Roman and the IBM code pages (eg code page 437 or 850).

To summarize the need for all languages of the world characters into a single code, 1991, the first 16 bits comprehensive ( and now expandable to over one million characters) Unicode was created, the Latin in a series of so-called blocks of letters with diacritical characters ( for details among Latin characters in Unicode). The corresponding ISO standard is the ISO 10646 Universal Character Set, which is built in parallel and kept compliant.

Trivia

To small children to learn the alphabet, the alphabet song is often used.

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