Latin script
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The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, and technically Latin writing system, is an
The Latin script is the basis of the International Phonetic Alphabet, and the 26 most widespread letters are the letters contained in the ISO basic Latin alphabet, which are the same letters as the English alphabet.
Latin script is the basis for the largest number of alphabets of any writing system[1] and is the
Name
The script is either called Latin script or Roman script, in reference to its origin in ancient Rome (though some of the capital letters are Greek in origin). In the context of transliteration, the term "romanization" (British English: "romanisation") is often found.[2][3] Unicode uses the term "Latin"[4] as does the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).[5]
The numeral system is called the Roman numeral system, and the collection of the elements is known as the Roman numerals. The numbers 1, 2, 3 ... are Latin/Roman script numbers for the Hindu–Arabic numeral system.
ISO basic Latin alphabet
Uppercase Latin alphabet
|
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 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lowercase Latin alphabet
|
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 |
The use of the letters I and V for both consonants and vowels proved inconvenient as the Latin alphabet was adapted to Germanic and Romance languages. W originated as a doubled V (VV) used to represent the Voiced labial–velar approximant /w/ found in Old English as early as the 7th century. It came into common use in the later 11th century, replacing the letter wynn ⟨Ƿ ƿ⟩, which had been used for the same sound. In the Romance languages, the minuscule form of V was a rounded u; from this was derived a rounded capital U for the vowel in the 16th century, while a new, pointed minuscule v was derived from V for the consonant. In the case of I, a word-final swash form, j, came to be used for the consonant, with the un-swashed form restricted to vowel use. Such conventions were erratic for centuries. J was introduced into English for the consonant in the 17th century (it had been rare as a vowel), but it was not universally considered a distinct letter in the alphabetic order until the 19th century.
By the 1960s, it became apparent to the computer and
Spread
The Latin alphabet spread, along with Latin, from the Italian Peninsula to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The eastern half of the Empire, including Greece, Turkey, the Levant, and Egypt, continued to use Greek as a lingua franca, but Latin was widely spoken in the western half, and as the western Romance languages evolved out of Latin, they continued to use and adapt the Latin alphabet.
Middle Ages
With the spread of
The Latin script also came into use for writing the
Since the 16th century
As late as 1500, the Latin script was limited primarily to the languages spoken in
Through
It is used for many
Under Portuguese missionary influence, a Latin alphabet was devised for the
Since the 19th century
In the late 19th century, the
Since 20th century
In 1928, as part of
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, three of the newly independent Turkic-speaking republics, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, as well as Romanian-speaking Moldova, officially adopted Latin alphabets for their languages. Kyrgyzstan, Iranian-speaking Tajikistan, and the breakaway region of Transnistria kept the Cyrillic alphabet, chiefly due to their close ties with Russia.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the majority of
In 1957, the People's Republic of China introduced a script reform to the Zhuang language, changing its orthography from Sawndip, a writing system based on Chinese, to a Latin script alphabet that used a mixture of Latin, Cyrillic, and IPA letters to represent both the phonemes and tones of the Zhuang language, without the use of diacritics. In 1982 this was further standardised to use only Latin script letters.
With the collapse of the Derg and subsequent end of decades of Amharic assimilation in 1991, various ethnic groups in Ethiopia dropped the Geʽez script, which was deemed unsuitable for languages outside of the Semitic branch.[7] In the following years the Kafa,[8] Oromo,[9] Sidama,[10] Somali,[10] and Wolaitta[10] languages switched to Latin while there is continued debate on whether to follow suit for the Hadiyya and Kambaata languages.[11]
21st century
On 15 September 1999 the authorities of Tatarstan, Russia, passed a law to make the Latin script a co-official writing system alongside Cyrillic for the Tatar language by 2011.[12] A year later, however, the Russian government overruled the law and banned Latinization on its territory.[13]
In 2015, the government of Kazakhstan announced that a Kazakh Latin alphabet would replace the Kazakh Cyrillic alphabet as the official writing system for the Kazakh language by 2025.[14] There are also talks about switching from the Cyrillic script to Latin in Ukraine,[15] Kyrgyzstan,[16][17] and Mongolia.[18] Mongolia, however, has since opted to revive the Mongolian script instead of switching to Latin.[19]
In October 2019, the organization National Representational Organization for Inuit in Canada (ITK) announced that they will introduce a unified writing system for the Inuit languages in the country. The writing system is based on the Latin alphabet and is modeled after the one used in the Greenlandic language.[20]
On 12 February 2021 the government of Uzbekistan announced it will finalize the transition from Cyrillic to Latin for the Uzbek language by 2023. Plans to switch to Latin originally began in 1993 but subsequently stalled and Cyrillic remained in widespread use.[21][22]
At present the Crimean Tatar language uses both Cyrillic and Latin. The use of Latin was originally approved by Crimean Tatar representatives after the Soviet Union's collapse[23] but was never implemented by the regional government. After Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 the Latin script was dropped entirely. Nevertheless, Crimean Tatars outside of Crimea continue to use Latin and on 22 October 2021 the government of Ukraine approved a proposal endorsed by the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People to switch the Crimean Tatar language to Latin by 2025.[24]
In July 2020, 2.6 billion people (36% of the world population) use the Latin alphabet.[25]
International standards
By the 1960s, it became apparent to the computer and
As the United States held a preeminent position in both industries during the 1960s, the standard was based on the already published American Standard Code for Information Interchange, better known as
National standards
The DIN standard DIN 91379 specifies a subset of Unicode letters, special characters, and sequences of letters and diacritic signs to allow the correct representation of names and to simplify data exchange in Europe. This specification supports all official languages of European Union and European Free Trade Association countries (thus also the Greek and Cyrillic scripts), plus the German minority languages.[clarification needed] To allow the transliteration of names in other writing systems to the Latin script according to the relevant ISO standards all necessary combinations of base letters and diacritic signs are provided.[26] Efforts are being made to further develop it into a European CEN standard.[27]
As used by various languages
In the course of its use, the Latin alphabet was adapted for use in new languages, sometimes representing
Letters
Some examples of new letters to the standard Latin alphabet are the
Some West, Central and
Dotted and dotless I — ⟨İ i⟩ and ⟨I ı⟩ — are two forms of the letter I used by the Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Kazakh alphabets.[28] The Azerbaijani language also has ⟨Ə ə⟩, which represents the near-open front unrounded vowel.
Multigraphs
A
A
Ligatures
A
Diacritics
A diacritic, in some cases also called an accent, is a small symbol that can appear above or below a letter, or in some other position, such as the
English is the only major modern European language that requires no diacritics for its native vocabulary[note 1]. Historically, in formal writing, a diaeresis was sometimes used to indicate the start of a new syllable within a sequence of letters that could otherwise be misinterpreted as being a single vowel (e.g., "coöperative", "reëlect"), but modern writing styles either omit such marks or use a hyphen to indicate a syllable break (e.g. "co-operative", "re-elect"). [note 2][29]
Collation
Some modified letters, such as the symbols ⟨å⟩, ⟨ä⟩, and ⟨ö⟩, may be regarded as new individual letters in themselves, and assigned a specific place in the alphabet for collation purposes, separate from that of the letter on which they are based, as is done in Swedish. In other cases, such as with ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨ü⟩ in German, this is not done; letter-diacritic combinations being identified with their base letter. The same applies to digraphs and trigraphs. Different diacritics may be treated differently in collation within a single language. For example, in Spanish, the character ⟨ñ⟩ is considered a letter, and sorted between ⟨n⟩ and ⟨o⟩ in dictionaries, but the accented vowels ⟨á⟩, ⟨é⟩, ⟨í⟩, ⟨ó⟩, ⟨ú⟩, ⟨ü⟩ are not separated from the unaccented vowels ⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩.
Capitalization
The languages that use the Latin script today generally use
Romanization
Words from languages natively written with other scripts, such as Arabic or Chinese, are usually transliterated or transcribed when embedded in Latin-script text or in multilingual international communication, a process termed romanization.
Whilst the romanization of such languages is used mostly at unofficial levels, it has been especially prominent in computer messaging where only the limited seven-bit ASCII code is available on older systems. However, with the introduction of Unicode, romanization is now becoming less necessary. Keyboards used to enter such text may still restrict users to romanized text, as only ASCII or Latin-alphabet characters may be available.
See also
- Western Latin character sets (computing)
- European Latin Unicode subset (DIN 91379)
- H with left hook
- Latin letters used in mathematics
- Latin omega
Notes
- ^ In formal English writing, however, diacritics are often preserved on many loanwords, such as "café", "naïve", "façade", "jalapeño" or the German prefix "über-".
- ^ As an example, an article containing a diaeresis in "coöperate" and a cedilla in "façade" as well as a circumflex in the word "crêpe": Grafton, Anthony (23 October 2006). "Books: The Nutty Professors, The history of academic charisma". The New Yorker.
References
Citations
- ^ Haarmann 2004, p. 96.
- ^ "Search results | BSI Group". Bsigroup.com. Retrieved 12 May 2014.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "Romanisation_systems". Pcgn.org.uk. Archived from the original on 27 June 2014. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
- ^ "ISO 15924 – Code List in English". Unicode.org. Archived from the original on 26 May 2013. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
- ^ "Search – ISO". International Organization for Standardization. Archived from the original on 13 May 2014. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
- ^ "Zakon O Službenoj Upotrebi Jezika I Pisama" (PDF). Ombudsman.rs. 17 May 2010. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 5 July 2014.
- from the original on 16 November 2021. Retrieved 16 November 2021 – via Taylor & Francis.
- ISBN 9789027275844.
- ^ Gemeda, Guluma (18 June 2018). "The History and Politics of the Qubee Alphabet". Ayyaantuu. Archived from the original on 16 November 2021. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
- ^ from the original on 22 February 2021. Retrieved 16 November 2021 – via Springer Link.
- ^ Pasch, Helma (2008). "Competing scripts: The Introduction of the Roman Alphabet in Africa" (PDF). International Journal of the Sociology of Language (191): 8. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 November 2021. Retrieved 16 November 2021 – via ResearchGate.
- ISBN 978-3-319-70926-0.
- ISBN 978-963-9776-84-5.
- ^ "Kazakh language to be converted to Latin alphabet – MCS RK". Kazinform. 30 January 2015. Archived from the original on 19 February 2017. Retrieved 28 September 2015.
- ^ "Klimkin welcomes discussion on switching to Latin alphabet in Ukraine". UNIAN. 27 March 2018. Archived from the original on 3 October 2021. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
- ^ Goble, Paul (12 October 2017). "Moscow Bribes Bishkek to Stop Kyrgyzstan From Changing to Latin Alphabet". Jamestown. Archived from the original on 21 February 2021. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
- ^ Rickleton, Chris (13 September 2019). "Kyrgyzstan: Latin (alphabet) fever takes hold". Eurasianet. Archived from the original on 2 July 2021. Retrieved 16 September 2019.
- ^ Mikovic, Nikola (2 March 2019). "Russian Influence in Mongolia is Declining". Global Security Review. Archived from the original on 24 February 2021. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
- from the original on 22 April 2021. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
- ^ "Canadian Inuit Get Common Written Language". High North News (8 October 2019). Archived from the original on 17 August 2021. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
- ^ Sands, David (12 February 2021). "Latin lives! Uzbeks prepare latest switch to Western-based alphabet". The Washington Times. Archived from the original on 15 February 2021. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
- ^ "Uzbekistan Aims For Full Transition To Latin-Based Alphabet By 2023". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 12 February 2021. Archived from the original on 31 December 2022. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
- ISBN 978-3-8382-5761-7.
- ^ "Cabinet approves Crimean Tatar alphabet based on Latin letters". Ukrinform. 22 October 2021. Archived from the original on 7 October 2021. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
- ^ "The world's scripts and alphabets". WorldStandards. Archived from the original on 9 August 2020. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
- ^ "DIN 91379:2022-08: Characters and defined character sequences in Unicode for the electronic processing of names and data exchange in Europe, with CD-ROM". Beuth Verlag. Archived from the original on 19 August 2022. Retrieved 19 August 2022.
- ^ Koordinierungsstelle für IT-Standards (KoSIT). "String.Latin+ 1.2: eine kommentierte und erweiterte Fassung der DIN SPEC 91379. Inklusive einer umfangreichen Liste häufig gestellter Fragen. Herausgegeben von der Fachgruppe String.Latin. (zip, 1.7 MB)" [String.Latin+ 1.2: Commented and extended version of DIN SPEC 91379.] (in German). Archived from the original on 19 January 2022. Retrieved 19 March 2022.
- ^ "Localize Your Font: Turkish i". Glyphs. Archived from the original on 28 January 2021. Retrieved 28 January 2021.
- ^ "The New Yorker's odd mark — the diaeresis". 16 December 2010. Archived from the original on 16 December 2010. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
Sources
- Haarmann, Harald (2004). Geschichte der Schrift [History of Writing] (in German) (2nd ed.). München: C. H. Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-47998-4.
Further reading
- Boyle, Leonard E. 1976. "Optimist and recensionist: 'Common errors' or 'common variations.'" In Latin script and letters A.D. 400–900: Festschrift presented to Ludwig Bieler on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Edited by John J. O'Meara and Bernd Naumann, 264–74. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
- Morison, Stanley. 1972. Politics and script: Aspects of authority and freedom in the development of Graeco-Latin script from the sixth century B.C. to the twentieth century A.D. Oxford: Clarendon.
External links
- Unicode collation chart—Latin letters sorted by shape
- Diacritics Project – All you need to design a font with correct accents