Latin Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! == Orthography == {{Main|Latin alphabet}} [[File:Duenos inscription.jpg|thumb|The [[Duenos Inscription]], from the 6th century BC, is one of the earliest known [[Old Latin]] texts. It was found on the [[Quirinal Hill]] in Rome.]] Latin was written in the Latin alphabet ([[A]], [[B]], [[C]], [[D]], [[E]], [[F]], [[G]], [[H]], [[I]], [[K]], [[L]], [[M]], [[N]], [[O]], [[P]], [[Q]], [[R]], [[S]], [[T]], [[V]], [[X]]), derived from the [[Etruscan alphabet]], which was in turn drawn from the [[Greek alphabet]] and ultimately the [[Phoenician alphabet]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Diringer|1996|pp=451, 493, 530}}</ref> This alphabet has continued to be used over the centuries as the script for the Romance, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Finnic and many Slavic languages ([[Polish language|Polish]], [[Slovak language|Slovak]], [[Slovene language|Slovene]], [[Croatian language|Croatian]], [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]], [[Serbian language|Serbian]] and [[Czech language|Czech]]); and it has been adopted by many languages around the world, including [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]], the [[Austronesian languages]], many [[Turkic languages]], and most languages in [[sub-Saharan Africa]], the Americas and Oceania, making it by far the world's single most widely used writing system. The number of letters in the Latin alphabet has varied. When it was first derived from the Etruscan alphabet, it contained only 21 letters.<ref>{{Harvnb|Diringer|1996|p=536}}</ref> Later, ''G'' was added to represent {{IPA|/ɡ/}}, which had previously been spelled ''C'', and ''Z'' ceased to be included in the alphabet, as the language then had no [[voiced alveolar fricative]].<ref name=D538>{{Harvnb|Diringer|1996|p=538}}</ref> The letters ''Y'' and ''Z'' were later added to represent Greek letters, [[upsilon]] and [[zeta]] respectively, in Greek loanwords.<ref name=D538/> ''W'' was created in the 11th century from ''VV''. It represented {{IPA|/w/}} in Germanic languages, not Latin, which still uses ''V'' for the purpose. ''J'' was distinguished from the original ''I'' only during the late Middle Ages, as was the letter ''U'' from ''V''.<ref name=D538/> Although some Latin dictionaries use ''J'', it is rarely used for Latin text, as it was not used in classical times, but many other languages use it. ===Punctuation=== Classical Latin did not contain sentence [[punctuation]], letter case,<ref>{{Harvnb|Diringer|1996|p=540}}</ref> or [[interword spacing]], but [[apex (diacritic)|apices]] were sometimes used to distinguish length in vowels and the [[interpunct]] was used at times to separate words. The first line of [[Catullus 3]] ("Mourn, O [[Venus (mythology)|Venuses]] and [[Cupid]]s") was originally written as: {| class="wikitable" ! simply | {{sm|lv́géteóveneréscupidinésqve}} |- ! with [[long I]] | {{Smallcaps|lv́géteóveneréscupIdinésqve}} |- ! with interpunct | {{sm|lv́géte·ó·venerés·cupidinésqve}} |} It would be rendered in a modern edition as: {| class="wikitable" ! simply | {{lang|la|Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque}} |- ! with macrons | {{lang|la|Lūgēte, ō Venerēs Cupīdinēsque}} |- ! with apices | {{lang|la|Lúgéte, ó Venerés Cupídinésque}} |} [[File:Hocgracili.jpg|thumb|upright=1.33|A modern Latin text written in the Old Roman Cursive inspired by the [[Vindolanda tablets]], the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain. The word ''Romani'' ('Romans') is at bottom left.]] The [[Roman cursive]] script is commonly found on the many [[wax tablet]]s excavated at sites such as forts, an especially extensive set having been discovered at Vindolanda on [[Hadrian's Wall]] in [[Great Britain|Britain]]. Most notable is the fact that while most of the [[Vindolanda tablets]] show spaces between words, spaces were avoided in monumental inscriptions from that era. ===Alternative scripts=== Occasionally, Latin has been written in other scripts: * The [[Praeneste fibula]] is a 7th-century BC pin with an Old Latin inscription written using the Etruscan script. * The rear panel of the early 8th-century [[Franks Casket]] has an inscription that switches from [[Old English]] in [[Anglo-Saxon runes]] to Latin in Latin script and to Latin in runes. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page