Latin Alphabet Definition

Noun

Singular Latin alphabet

Plural countable and uncountable; plural Latin alphabets

Latin alphabet (countable and uncountable; plural Latin alphabets)

  1. (uncountable) The 26-letter alphabet consisting of the following letters (presented in majuscule and minuscule pairs):
    A a, B b, C c, D d, E e, F f, G g, H h, I i, J j, K k, L l, M m, N n, O o, P p, Q q, R r, S s, T t, U u, V v, W w, X x, Y y, Z z
  2. (countable) Any relatively minor variation of the 26-letter Latin alphabet.

From Wiktionary under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Thu Jun 18 23:11:35 2009

Latin Alphabet Facts

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.

During the Middle Ages, it was adapted to the Romance languages, the direct descendants of Latin, as well as to the Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, and some Slavic languages, and finally to most of the languages of Europe.

With the age of colonialism and Christian proselytism, the Latin alphabet was spread overseas, and applied to Amerindian, Indigenous Australian, Austronesian, East Asian, and African languages. More recently, western linguists have also tended to prefer the Latin alphabet or the International Phonetic Alphabet (itself largely based on the Latin alphabet) when transcribing or devising written standards for non-European languages, such as the African reference alphabet.

In modern usage, the term "Latin alphabet" is used for any straightforward derivation of the alphabet first used to write Latin. These variants may discard letters from the classical Roman script (like the Rotokas alphabet) or add new letters to it (like the Danish and Norwegian alphabet). Letter shapes have changed over the centuries, including the creation of entirely new lower case forms.

From Wikipedia under the GNU Free Documentation License
Wed Jul 8 19:39:09 2009

Latin Alphabet News
Aryabhata a Hindu Mathematician - Examiner.com
news.google.com
Aryabhata a Hindu Mathematician

Examiner.com

Place value system and zero: In Aryabhatiya he used letters of the alphabet to form words with consonants giving digits and vowels denoting place value. ...



and more »
GeoFitness, Inc. is Now GeoMotion Group, an Innovative and Fast ... - PR Newswire (press release)
news.google.com
GeoFitness, Inc. is Now GeoMotion Group, an Innovative and Fast ...

PR Newswire (press release)

Curriculum is designed to get children up moving while learning numbers, colors, alphabet , time, and more... Multi-sensory integration allows more success ...



and more »
Letter substitutions used to hide government contracts - MOSNEWS
news.google.com
Letter substitutions used to hide government contracts

MOSNEWS

Several letters are identical in appearance in the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets . However, while apple and ppl (with the first and last letters printed ...



and more »

From Google News Search: "latin alphabet"
Sat Jul 4 01:24:56 2009

Latin Alphabet Answers
Can you write Russian words using the Latin alphabet?
Q. You can write some Asian languages several ways, including in Latin characters. (Like R maji for Japanese words.) Can you do this with Russian? I don't mean translate it into an English word. Is there a website I can go to to do this? I want to type in an English word and get a result in Russian, in Latin characters.
Asked by 4087 - Sat Apr 11 14:45:52 2009 - - 3 Answers - 0 Comments

A. You will need to translate English words into Russian first and then use transliteration programs to get a result in Latin characters.
Answered by RussianTeacher - Wed Apr 15 10:56:04 2009

How many people read and write in a language without the latin alphabet?
Q. It seems somewhat simpler as an english-speaker to understand, or at least guess, what words mean and what they sound like in other latin-based languages. Would it be impossible for everyone to transliterate their languages into the latin alphabet, or would it make more sense for everyone to just continue how they are writing already? Surely, a majority of the people in the world write in a latin based script of some sort, right? If not, which alphabet is more prominent and would it be feasible to switch to that? Charles C., not the majority, but the latin alphabet is the most widely used... look here:
Asked by justin r - Sat Oct 27 12:46:35 2007 - - 5 Answers - 0 Comments

A. Chinese is best written in Chinese characters. The poor sods have only got about 450 different sounding words - they are all monosyllabic - (and that's including the tones!) so to write it in the Latin alphabet would lead to much confusion. Turkish used to be written in Arabic script and they saw the light. Russian and Ukrainian are best written in Cyrillic as it's more phonetic for their languages than the Latin alphabet. You comment about Latin-based languages - most of which are written in Latin letters. History plays a major part: Serbs and Croatians speak virtually the same language; but one is written in Cyrillic and the other in Latin. Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible; but one is written in Devanagari script and the other… [cont.]
Answered by JJ - Sat Oct 27 12:57:01 2007

In Russian, what would be the proper trasliteration to Latin Alphabet for this?
Q. In Russian, what would be the proper trasliteration to Latin Alphabet for this?
Asked by jose g - Sat Nov 3 18:45:30 2007 - - 3 Answers - 0 Comments

A. The proper transliteration would be: "Starij Major"
Answered by Graham - Sat Nov 3 19:36:27 2007

From Yahoo Answer Search: "latin alphabet"
Wed Jun 24 04:27:27 2009