The Latin alphabet is the basis of many modern languages of the world

The Latin alphabet (Latin letter or Latin) is the basis of writing in many languages of the world, in particular the Romance and Germanic groups. Includes 26 letters, which in different parts of the planet can be called quite differently.

Written language, based on the Latin alphabet, is used in all languages of the Baltic, Celtic, Germanic and Romance groups, as well as in some of the Iranian, Semitic, Türkic, Fino-Ugric and Slavic groups, Basque and Albanian. Also this style of writing can be found in the dialects of Indochina, in particular in Vietnam, the Philippines, Africa, Oceania, Australia and North and South America.

Latin alphabet: the history of origin and development

This writing is far from being as ancient as many are inclined to believe. Her "grandfather" can be called the Greek (or South Italian) alphabet, on the basis of which the Etruscan alphabet was later based. And that's it from the last about the 7th century BC. And there was a Latin, originally consisting of only 21 letters.

History changes, and with the alphabet, too, there are various metamorphoses.

For example, there was a time when the letter "Z" was completely ruled out, considering it completely unnecessary. "C" originally designated two sounds "k" and "d", and only in 234 it was decided to create a separate letter "G". In the first century BC, when a lot of borrowing words from the Greek language appear, a new letter "Y" is introduced and the already forgotten "Z" is restored.

As a result, the usual set of letters for us now took shape only in 800 AD. Although it should be noted that there are still disputes concerning the "W": some linguistic scientists consider it to be separate, while others tend to believe that this is only a combination of two "V", so sometimes one can find an alphabet, In which 25 letters are used instead of 26.

To date, the Latin alphabet with transcription (special signs that help to correctly reproduce the word in accordance with the rules of reading this language) can be found in any dictionary.

In the next section, I would like to talk about how to correctly pronounce the letters of the Latin alphabet.

Latin alphabet: pronunciation

One can not help but dwell on the fact that all sounds, like in Russian, are divided into vowels and consonants consisting only of a voice , which are also formed with the help of some other important articulation organs, for example, teeth, tongue, palate or lips.

The Latin vowels include:

A / a /, E / e /, I / and /, O / o /, U / y /

The consonants in the Latin alphabet are:

B / Be /, C / keh /, D / de /, F / eff /, G / he /, H / ha /, K / ka /, L / ehl, M / em /, N / en /, P / pe /, Q / ku /, R / er /, S / es /, T / te /, X / ex /, Y / pypera /, Z / zeta /.

Latin alphabet: its popularity and relevance in modern society

At the moment we can say with certainty that on the ground there is practically no adult who does not know him.

Best of all, of course, the Latin alphabet is known to students and students, since they widely use it, studying, for example, physics, algebra, geometry, chemistry, or foreign languages.

Do you know that the Latin alphabet can be rightly called the source of international communication? Why?

You just can not do without it. The main reasons, I would say, are two:

First, as I mentioned before, most of the world's languages are based on the Latin alphabet, both artificially and artificially created (for example Ido, Interlingua, Esperanto).

Secondly, there are a number of languages, the manner of writing which is so complex that it has to be simplified with the help of a so-called auxiliary letter. By the way, in China and Japan, Latin is studied as such an auxiliary letter, and is a compulsory subject for study, both in school and in universities.