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Its alphabet, the Latin alphabet, emerged from the Old Italic alphabets, which in turn were derived from the Etruscan, Greek and Phoenician scripts. Historical Latin came from the prehistoric language of the Latium region, specifically around the River Tiber, where Roman civilization first developed.
The alphabet developed from Old Italic script, which had developed from a variant of the Greek alphabet, which had developed from a variant of the Phoenician alphabet. The Latin alphabet most resembles the Greek alphabet that can be seen on black-figure pottery dating to c. 540 BC.
As late as 1492, the Latin alphabet was limited primarily to the languages spoken in western, northern and central Europe. The Orthodox Christian Slavs of eastern and southeastern Europe mostly used the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Greek alphabet was still in use by Greek-speakers around the eastern Mediterranean.
Oct 22, 2024 · Originally spoken by small groups of people living along the lower Tiber River, Latin spread with the increase of Roman political power, first throughout Italy and then throughout most of western and southern Europe and the central and western Mediterranean coastal regions of Africa.
- The Latin language is an Indo-European language in the Italic group and is ancestral to the modern Romance languages. During the Middle Ages and un...
- A “dead” language is one no longer learned as a first language or used in ordinary communication. Classical Latin, the language of Cicero and Virgi...
- Latin was the lingua franca of scientific work in the West during the Middle Ages, so Western scientists used Latin for naming species of organisms...
4 days ago · The Classical Latin alphabet consisted of 23 letters, 21 of which were derived from the Etruscan alphabet. In medieval times the letter I was differentiated into I and J and V into U , V , and W , producing an alphabet equivalent to that of modern English with 26 letters.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
According to Roman legend, the Cimmerian Sibyl, Carmenta, created the Latin alphabet by adapting the Greek alphabet used in the Greek colony of Cumae in southern Italy. This was introduced to Latium by Evander, her son. 60 years after the Trojan war.
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Even in ancient times, many Greeks attributed the invention of their alphabet, not to one of their fellow countrymen, but to a far-wandering Phoenician prince named Cadmus. Cadmus hailed from the city of Tyre, a rich and powerful trading emporium situated along the sandy shores of the Mediterranean, nowadays in modern Lebanon.
