Roman alphabet

Dark green: Countries using only the Latin alphabet
Light green Countries with more than one alphabet officially.

The Roman alphabet is the alphabet used for many modern-day languages. It came from the Greek alphabet. The earliest alphabet was in Egypt^[source?]. It was first used to write Latin. Many languages are written with it today. It is also called the Latin alphabet.

Letters of the alphabet

Original Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet used by the Romans:

Symbol

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

V

X

Y

Z

Latin name of letter:

ā

bē

cē

dē

ē

ef

gē

hā

ī

kā

el

em

en

ō

pē

qū

er

es

tē

ū

ex

ī Graeca

zēta

Latin name (IPA):

[aː]

[beː]

[keː]

[deː]

[eː]

[ɛf]

[geː]

[haː]

[iː]

[kaː]

[ɛl]

[ɛm]

[ɛn]

[oː]

[peː]

[kuː]

[ɛr]

[ɛs]

[teː]

[uː]

[ɛks]

[iː 'graɪka]

['zeːta]

Modern alphabet

The modern version of the alphabet is used for writing many languages. European languages are mostly written with the Latin alphabet. These languages include German, English, and Spanish. Some languages, like Việtnamese, use an extended Latin alphabet, including diacritics for things such as tones. It uses the following letters:

Uppercase

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

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

Other versions

Sign in Portuguese, which uses ç

Some other languages have different characters based on this alphabet. A few are: á, é, í, ó, ẹ, ị, ọ, ụ, ã, ả, ẻ, ỉ, ỏ, ủ, ñ, č, ď, ě, í, ň, ř, š, ť, ú, ů, ž and đ. Some languages that use these characters are Finnish, Esperanto, Czech, Polish, Romanian, Vietnamese, and Igbo.

Many languages changed their writing systems to the Roman alphabet. In many countries, European settlers have made native people use the Latin alphabet. When the Soviet Union broke up, many Eastern European countries began using the Roman alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet. After World War II, many Turkish countries changed their original alphabets (Arab, Persian or Cyrillic) to the Latin alphabet. The Latin Alphabet in Turkish countries started to be used by Kemal Ataturk in Turkey. It is now used in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan.^[source?] See also Romanization of Japanese.