Latin is ... Words in Latin

The Latin alphabet, or Latin alphabet, is a special alphabetic script that first appeared in the 2-3th century BC, and then spread throughout the world. Today it is the basis for most of the languages and has 26 characters, which have different pronunciation, name and additional elements.

Features

One of the most common variants of writing is the Latin script. The alphabet originates in Greece, but it was fully formed in the Latin language of the Indo-European family. To date, this writing is used by most of the world's peoples, including the whole of America and Australia, most of Europe, and half of Africa. Translation into the Latin alphabet is becoming more popular, and at the moment it strongly replaces the Cyrillic alphabet and Arabic script. Such an alphabet is considered to be a universal and universal option, and every year it becomes more and more popular.

Especially common are English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and Italian Latin. Often states use it along with other types of writing, in particular in India, Japan, China and other countries.

History

It is believed that the Greeks, in particular estrus, are the original authors of the writing, which later was called "Latin." The alphabet has undeniable similarities with the Etruscan letter, but this hypothesis has many controversial points. In particular, it is not known how this culture could get to Rome.

Words in Latin began to appear in the 3-4 century BC, and already in the 2nd century BC. The writing was formed and totaled 21 characters. In the course of history, some letters changed, others disappeared, and centuries later they reappeared, and the third symbols were divided into two. As a result, in the 16th century the Latin alphabet became the same as it is today. Despite this, different languages have their own distinctive features and additional national versions, which, however, are only a certain modification of already existing letters. For example, Ń, Ä, etc.

The difference from the Greek script

Latin is a writing that originates from the Western Greeks, but it also has its own unique features. Initially, this alphabet was rather limited, truncated. Over time, the signs were optimized, and it was also developed the rule that the letter should go strictly from left to right.

As for the differences, the Latin alphabet is more rounded than the Greek alphabet, and also uses several graphemes to transmit the sound [k]. The difference lies in the fact that the letters K and C began to perform almost identical functions, and the sign of K, in general, for a while went out of use. This is evidenced by historical evidence, as well as the fact that the modern Irish and Spanish alphabets still do not use this grapheme. The letter also has other differences, among which the modification of the sign of C in G and the appearance of the symbol V from the Greek Y.

Characteristics of letters

The modern Latin alphabet has two basic forms: majuskul (capital letters) and minuscule (lowercase characters). The first option is more ancient, since it began to be used in the form of artistic graphics as far back as the 1st century BC. Maiuskul dominated the scripts of Europe almost until the beginning of the 12th century. The only exceptions were Ireland and Southern Italy, where the national variant of writing was used for a long time.

By the 15th century the minuscule was fully developed. Such famous personalities as Francesco Petrarca, Leonardo da Vinci, as well as other Renaissance personalities, have done a lot to introduce the Latin alphabet of lowercase letters. On the basis of this alphabet the national types of writing gradually developed. German, French, Spanish and other variants had their own changes and additional signs.

The Latin alphabet as an international

This type of writing is familiar to almost every person on Earth who can read. This is due to the fact that this alphabet or native for a person, or he gets acquainted with him in the lessons of a foreign language, mathematics and others. This allows us to assert that the Latin alphabet is a writing of the international level.

Also, many countries that do not use this alphabet, in parallel, use its standard version. This concerns, for example, countries such as Japan and China. Virtually all artificial languages use the Latin alphabet at their core. Among them, Esperanto, Ido, etc. Quite often one can also meet transliteration in Latin letters, because sometimes there is no generally accepted name for a specific term in the national language, which makes translation into a conventional sign system necessary. Write a Latin, so you can any word.

Romanization of other alphabets

Latin is used all over the world for the purpose of modifying languages that use a different type of writing. This phenomenon is known by the term "transliteration" (this is sometimes referred to as a Latin translation). It is used to simplify the process of communication between representatives of different nationalities.

Almost all languages that use non-Latin letters have official transliteration rules. Most often, these procedures are called romanization, because they have a Romance, i. E. Latin origin. Each language has specific tables, for example, Arabic, Persian, Russian, Japanese, etc., which allow you to transliterate almost any national word.

Latin - this is the most common in the world of alphabet writing, which originates from the Greek alphabet. It is used by most languages as a basis, and is also known to almost every person on Earth. Every year its popularity grows, which makes it possible to consider this alphabet as generally accepted and international. For languages that use other types of writing, special tables with national transliteration are proposed, allowing you to romanize almost any word. This makes the process of communication between different countries and peoples simple and easy.