Where does the Latin alphabet come from?
Mainly, the Latin script comes from Mesopotamia, which currently corresponds to the Near East. It was here that the writing system that would later become Latin was created.
Therefore, our alphabet has a Semitic origin. Egyptian hieroglyphics gave rise to the Phoenician cuneiform writing . Later, the Greeks took the Phoenician alphabet to create their own.
Then, more recently, the Etruscans are the ones who created the Latin alphabet that we know today: they took the Greek alphabet to create the alphabet that we know today. However, the Etruscan language remains a mystery. A priori, the peoples came from Asia Minor, but experts, although they can read the language, are unable to understand it.
The Etruscan civilization spread throughout Italy. In the 3rd century, the Latin alphabet already had 20 letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X.
Originally, writing was used as an instrument to transcribe poems, literary texts and speeches, so Latin was primarily an oral language. It was only written in capital letters until Charlemagne, who completely reformed the writing by introducing lowercase in the year 771.
During the Renaissance, the arrival of the printing press confirmed the Latin alphabet with 26 letters , which would not later undergo any modification. The writing was evolving giving rise to the different languages and hence the vocabulary was varying in each one of them.
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