Primary
Latin Alphabet ▢𓏺｜Definition｜1st｜20260117143037-00-⌔
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet is the set of letters used by the ancient Romans to write Classical Latin, later augmented with lower-case letters to write Medieval Latin, and continued in a slightly altered form today to write Modern Latin.
The core 26-letter modern inventory is standardized as the ISO basic Latin alphabet. This slightly expanded inventory resulted from two splits in the Early Modern era: ⟨ J ⟩ from ⟨I⟩ and ⟨ U ⟩ from ⟨V⟩; and one addition: ⟨ W ⟩. This modern form is the basis of the Latin script, which is the most widely used writing system in the world, often with diacritics or additional letters beyond the basic 26. The Latin script is used to write over 3,000 languages, spoken by about 70% of the global population, principally in western and central Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas and Oceania.12
Printed 2026-06-28.
(echo:: @ ⌗)
Link to original Footnotes
Jeff Desjardins (8 November 2025). “Mapped: Writing Systems of the World”. Visual Capitalist. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-writing-systems-of-the-world/ ↩
Milestone Localization (4 February 2025). “Latin Alphabet: Languages That Use It & Variations”. Milestone Localization. https://www.milestoneloc.com/latin-alphabet-usage-and-variations/ ↩
Secondary
• • •