# What is the Latin alphabet?



## BlueWolf

Almost everywhere you check this topic, you'll read something like this:_

The default Latin alphabet is the Roman, supplemented with G, J, U, W, Y, Z, and lower-case variants:_
_

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
_ 

_Additional letters may be formed. [...]_
_However, these glyphs are not always considered independent letters of the alphabet._


_[From Wikipedia]
_​ 

Now, I know this alphabet formed by 26 letters is the one used in English, but why is it considered the "default Latin alphabet"? The letter W is simply formed by two V's, why should it be considered part of the standard Latin alphabet? Letters like æ_, _ç, ñ, ð, etc. aren't, why should W? Just because it's used in English?


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## Outsider

BlueWolf said:


> The letter W is simply formed by two V's, why should it be considered part of the standard Latin alphabet?


By the same line of reasoning, the letter G is just a C with a little vertical line added to it. 
"W" works as an independent letter in the (not many) languages that use it regularly.



BlueWolf said:


> Letters like æ_, _ç, ñ, <eth>, etc. aren't, why should W? Just because it's used in English?


The ligatures are rare, in the sense that they're used in very few languages. As for ç and ñ, they can be seen as accented versions of c and n. (I know that ñ is considered a letter of its own in Spanish, but graphically it's still n + ~).


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## BlueWolf

Outsider said:


> By the same line of reasoning, the letter G is just a C with a little vertical line added to it.



I know that, but G was actually used by Latins as well as Y and Z (even if they came after), W wasn't.



> "W" works as an independent letter in the (not many) languages that use it regularly.



Well, Ñ is as well. And since they aren't so many, why is it "default Latin alphabet"?



> The ligatures are rare, in the sense that they're used in very few languages. As for ç and ñ, they can be seen as accented versions of c and n. (I know that ñ is considered a letter of its own in Spanish, but graphically it's still n + ~).



But W is a ligature! Between two V's.


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## Outsider

BlueWolf said:


> I know that, but G was actually used by Latins as well as Y and Z (even if they came after), W wasn't.


But J and U weren't either, and K seldom was -- are you going to remove them from the alphabet?



BlueWolf said:


> Well, Ñ is as well. And since they aren't so many, why is it "default Latin alphabet"?
> 
> [...]
> 
> But W is a ligature! Between two V's.


W could be considered a ligature, but not Ñ, I think. 
What matters (I suppose; I'm not going to be dogmatic about this) is that "W" is used by an appreciable fraction of the languages that are written with the Latin alphabet nowadays, while the other ligatures are not.


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## BlueWolf

Outsider said:


> But J and U weren't either, and K seldom was -- are you going to remove them from the alphabet?



But J and U are modificated version of I and V, and they are used in almost all the languages (differently to W) and they was created to distinguish between the couple of sounds that I and V had. 
W on the other hand is a necessity of Germanic languages only.



> W could be considered a ligature, but not Ñ, I think.



No, Ñ isn't, but as Ñ is a modificated N, W are two V's. Doesn't they have (under this point of view) the same status?



> What matters (I suppose; I'm not going to be dogmatic about this) is that "W" is used by an appreciable fraction of the languages that are written with the Latin alphabet nowadays, while the other ligatures are not.



Letters like Ç, Č, Š, Ž are used in many languages. I don't see why W would have a special status.


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## Outsider

BlueWolf said:


> But J and U are modificated version of I and V, and they are used in almost all the languages (differently to W) and they was created to distinguish between the couple of sounds that I and V had.
> W on the other hand is a necessity of Germanic languages only.


It's not just Germanic languages (actually, several Germanic languages do not use the letter W regularly): also some Celtic languages, Polish (a Slavic language), and several African languages. Plus, it's widely used in the transcription of languages not written with the Latin alphabet, such as Chinese and Japanese.



BlueWolf said:


> No, Ñ isn't, but as Ñ is a modificated N, W are two V's. Doesn't they have (under this point of view) the same status?
> 
> [...]
> 
> Letters like Ç, C<caron>, S<caron>, Z<caron> are used in many languages. I don't see why W would have a special status.


It makes sense to me that Ñ, Ç, etc., would be considered compound characters, rather than "atomic" letters, for the sake of graphic simplicity. If you included all those symbols in the Latin alphabet, how many letters would it end up having?...


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## BlueWolf

Outsider said:


> It makes sense to me that Ñ, Ç, etc., would be considered compound characters, rather than "atomic" letters, for the sake of graphic simplicity. If you included all those symbols in the Latin alphabet, how many letters would it end up having?...



I didn't mean to say "Let's add all the letters used in the languages that use a variant of Latin language". But I mean, there's a reason because it's called Latin Alphabet. The languages which use it say "This is a thing we inherit by our common Latin origins." 
The letter W, on the other hand, was born by some Germanic languages. And when you say:


> It's not just Germanic languages (actually, several Germanic languages do not use the letter W regularly): also some Celtic languages, Polish (a Slavic language), and several African languages. Plus, it's widely used in the transcription of languages not written with the Latin alphabet, such as Chinese and Japanese.


In all these cases, it's used because many of those languages _didn't_ derived their alphabet from Latin. Roman Empire never included those areas. They use that alphabet, because the "power" (Germanic) used it. Afrikaans is from English. Chinese and Japanese use the English alphabet because it's the dominant power (and language) (and even because they need letter to be able to transcribe their language ). Finnish uses W, but it's not an Indo-European language, it simply took it from its neighbours (Germanic).


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## Outsider

BlueWolf said:


> I didn't mean to say "Let's add all the letters used in the languages that use a variant of Latin language". But I mean, there's a reason because it's called Latin Alphabet. The languages which use it say "This is a thing we inherit by our common Latin origins."


Yes, we inherited it from the Romans, but we've also modified it, for example adding subscript letters, and splitting I and V into I/J and U/V. Why not accept one more little addition? You wouldn't want to make these fellas cry, would you? 



BlueWolf said:


> The letter W, on the other hand, was born by some Germanic languages. And when you say:
> 
> In all these cases, it's used because many of those languages _didn't_ derived their alphabet from Latin. Roman Empire never included those areas. They use that alphabet, because the "power" (Germanic) used it. Afrikaans is from English. Chinese and Japanese use the English alphabet because it's the dominant power (and language) (and even because they need letter to be able to transcribe their language ). Finnish uses W, but it's not an Indo-European language, it simply took it from its neighbours (Germanic).


One correction: Afrikaans got the "W" from Dutch, its parent language. And when I mentioned African languages, I was also thinking of Swahili, Wolof, etc., which also use the Latin alphabet. Yes, it's due to their European colonial heritage, but then we can also say that the Latin alphabet is part of _our_ Roman colonial heritage.


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## BlueWolf

Outsider said:


> Yes, we inherited it from the Romans, but we've also modified it, for example adding subscript letters, and splitting I and V into I/J and U/V. Why not accept one more little addition? You wouldn't want to make these fellas cry, would you?



I didn't know that association.
But I'm not agree about that because while J and U had invented to distinguish some sounds _in Latin_ (and in fact you can (and many do) write Latin with J and U), where do you see W in Latin? W has nothing to do with Latin world.

P.S. About that what's W's name? Double u/v.


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## Outsider

BlueWolf said:


> I didn't know that association.
> But I'm not agree about that because while J and U had invented to distinguish some sounds _in Latin_ (and in fact you can (and many do) write Latin with J and U), where do you see W in Latin? W has nothing to do with Latin world.


J and U were not invented to distinguish different Latin sounds. Latin never needed them, because the pronunciations of I and V were predictable from their position in a word. The letters were split because of languages other than Latin, such as French, where the pronunciation of I and V had ceased to be predictable.



BlueWolf said:


> P.S. About that what's W's name? Double u/v.


But what about: 

Y: Greek I
Z: zède/zed (zeta)


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## papillon

BlueWolf said:


> Now, I know this alphabet formed by 26 letters is the one used in English, but why is it considered the "default Latin alphabet"? ... Just because it's used in English?


My short answer would be Yes. 

Since German had other letters (estset, letters with umlaut) that _didn't_ make it into "the standard" alphabet, I would assume that the current convention on the standard alphabet is heavily influenced by English. I take the designation "Latin" in this case not as a statement that the alphabet was used by the Romans, but simply as an acknowledgement of it's _origins_ in Classical Rome. In the same way as Latin America was not part of the Roman Empire, but is in a way connected to Rome as a result of being colonialized by "romanic" countries.

Interestingly, in recent years the concept of a standard Latin alphabet is becoming less and less relevant. A mechanical typewriter can only have a fixed number of characters, and so the manufacturer, say Underwood, needs to decide which letters to include in the carriage. If W is omitted, you've lost the English-speaking market. If Č is omitted you've lost some Slavic countries. You make your decision.

With computer fonts, adding new characters requires no effort. More and more, you see English-language media featuring Serbian and Czech names in all of their original glory, with all the diacritic marks.


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## Blackleaf

Shakespeare invented the letters J and U in the way that we use them today. The Elizabethan alphabet originally had only 24 letters. In the English alphabet at that time, J was the capital of i before I became the capital. Shakespeare made J a completely separate letter.

Shakespeare also gave us the letter U. Even though that letter originally dated back to the Anglo-Saxon times, it was Shakespeare who started using it like we do now and made it common.

He also invented about 1700 words, including "assassination" and "bump."


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## Fernando

I do not know what you call "Standard Latin Alphabet". Certainly, every language has its alphabet.

From the list you give to us "K" and "W", as an example, are used in Spanish just for foreign words. If you have any doubt check how "large" are these words in any Spanish dictionary.

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

In Spanish you should add "ñ", which is certainly a separate letter and (possibly) the digraphs "ll", "rr" and "ch". I am certain that if we had invented the computer, you should have a key for them. A pity.


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## Lugubert

I always find it strange when I see our å, ä, ö referred to as "accented letters". There are definitions of accents that would allow his usage, but for example a with a superscript o -> å is from the 15th century, so it certainly isn't regarded as accented in Sweden (or, I suppose, in Norway, where aa -> å is from 1917, or even in Denmark, where that switch was in 1948).

Our o + superscript e -> ö, a + superscript e -> ä is 16th C. As "accented" as the T is an accented I.

My middle name would look unfamiliar if we replaced the W by a V, but in Swedish alphabetical listings, the  rule is that there is no differentiation between the single v and the "dubbelve". I'm getting close to the "translating names" thread, but I would have no problem if we made the W to V substitution wholesale. However, for foreign names I'm in favour of writing/printing them as close to their domestic form as practically possible.


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## Outsider

Fernando said:


> I do not know what you call "Standard Latin Alphabet". Certainly, every language has its alphabet.


Certainly, not _every_ language... 

Anyway, that's arguable. It can be said that Spanish, English and Italian all use the Latin alphabet, but in different ways (and amounts).


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## Outsider

Lugubert said:


> I always find it strange when I see our å, ä, ö referred to as "accented letters".


Well, I always find it strange to see them referred to as "letters". And don't get me started on digraphs... 

_Chacun à son goût_, I say.


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## Fernando

Outsider said:


> Certainly, not _every_ language...
> 
> Anyway, that's arguable. It can be said that Spanish, English and Italian all use the Latin alphabet, but in different ways (and amounts).



Agreed. What is strange to me is the notion of "Standard". The common ones are the abovementioned (let us accept W and K in Romanic languages) I think no language share all the letters.


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## BlueWolf

Outsider said:


> J and U were not invented to distinguish different Latin sounds. Latin never needed them, because the pronunciations of I and V were predictable from their position in a word. The letters were split because of languages other than Latin, such as French, where the pronunciation of I and V had ceased to be predictable.


Yes, but they was sounds from Latin, and French was Vulgar Latin. And since they was Latin sounds, today we actually use to write "vivere" instead of "uiuere", and often "Julius" instead of "Iulius". W? It doesn't for Latin, it doesn't need for any other language that comes from Latin.
English, German and so on needed a new letter and "invented" W from a ligature between two V's. What's the difference with Sweden and å?


> But what about:
> 
> Y: Greek I
> Z: zède/zed (zeta)


 Ok, I see Y, but what's your problem with Z? 


> A mechanical typewriter can only have a fixed number of characters, and so the manufacturer, say Underwood, needs to decide which letters to include in the carriage. If W is omitted, you've lost the English-speaking market. If Č is omitted you've lost some Slavic countries. You make your decision.


 I'm talking about Latin alphabet. You can include W in a typewriter even without including it in the "official Latin alphabet".
[quoteI do not know what you call "Standard Latin Alphabet". Certainly, every language has its alphabet.[/quote]
First, it's not my definition, since I don't agree with it , but however I clearly give the definition in my first post. And if you read a introduction to a language, let's pretend Spanish, you'll read:
_Spanish alphabet is based on Latin one, but it doesn't use K and W and it add the letter Ñ.
_So "every language's alphabet" is compared with the "standard Latin", that, you can see, is actually the English one.


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## Outsider

BlueWolf said:


> Yes, but they was sounds from Latin, and French was Vulgar Latin. And since they was Latin sounds, today we actually use to write "vivere" instead of "uiuere", and often "Julius" instead of "Iulius".


Arguable. Classical Latin did not have the sounds of the "j" and the "v", such as they are pronounced today in most Romance languages. What we now rewrite as "j" and "v" were originally pronounced as English "y" and "w". Vivere = wiwere, Iulius = Yulyus. Still think "W" does not stand for a Latin sound? 



BlueWolf said:


> Ok, I see Y, but what's your problem with Z?


It's a Greek letter, with a Greek name to boot. Genuine Latin had no use for it. Only pedantic intellectuals used it. 
Shall we throw it out of the alphabet?...


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## BlueWolf

Outsider said:


> Arguable. Classical Latin did not have the sounds of the "j" and the "v", such as they are pronounced today in most Romance languages. What we now rewrite as "j" and "v" were originally pronounced as English "y" and "w". Vivere = wiwere, Iulius = Yulyus. Still think "W" does not stand for a Latin sound?


No, you misunderstood me. I didn't mean it has the same sound they have in Romance languages today. *I* was read _ or [j] (IPAs letters) and *V*  or [w]. So W doesn't stand for a Latin sound, because [w] was written V in Latin.



			It's a Greek letter, with a Greek name to boot. Genuine Latin had no use for it. Only pedantic intellectuals used it. 
Shall we throw it out of the alphabet?... 

Click to expand...

Yes, it's a Greek letter, used in Latin for words which came from Greek, but it isn't a variant of a Latin sound, so Y was actually a sound used Latin, even if come from Greek (IPA pronunce [y]). In fact, a Latin imperator invented a new letter to rappresent this sound (as he does for V) but it didn't become popular and Y was used instead. So Y is Latin, and Latins added it in their alphabet. Why shouldn't we?_


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## Outsider

I think I understand your point of view, but I don't give as much importance to those things as you do. The Latin alphabet itself was a repurposed Etruscan alphabet (which was descended from one of the many varieties of the Greek alphabet...) 
From the moment that other languages started to be written in it, it stopped being _Latin's_ alphabet. We call it the "Latin alphabet" for historical reasons, because that was the first language to be written in it (if we discount Etruscan), but now it's a tool used by many different languages, each in their own different ways. It does not belong to Latin alone anymore.


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## BlueWolf

Outsider said:


> I think I understand your point of view, but I don't give as much importance to those things as you do.


You don't have to think I cry all nights for this reason.  I only think this is only an other prove of how much English has become the "universal point of view".


> From the moment that other languages started to be written in it, it stopped being _Latin's_ alphabet. We call it the "Latin alphabet" for historical reasons, because that was the first language to be written in it (if we discount Etruscan), but now it's a tool used by many different languages, each in their own different ways. It does not belong to Latin alone anymore.


I'm agree, this is the reason I wouldn't call the alphabet ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ the Latin alphabet, but the English alphabet.


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## Outsider

And what would the Latin alphabet be, for you?


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## BlueWolf

If we consider it as the alphabet Latins used, it should be ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTVXYZ (of course, it changed in the centuries, but this was the "most recent").
But if we consider it as an "international one", with the meaning it is the Latin alphabet as used today in modern language, I'd say it is ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVXYZ (and W is just a "ligature between two V's", a character for specific languages).


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## Outsider

BlueWolf said:


> If we consider it as the alphabet Latins used, it should be ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTVXYZ (of course, it changed in the centuries, but this was the "most recent").


You mean the Romans. But Latin continued to be used, even spoken, for a long time after their empire had fallen apart.



BlueWolf said:


> But if we consider it as an "international one", with the meaning it is the Latin alphabet as used today in modern language, I'd say it is ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVXYZ (and W is just a "ligature between two V's", a character for specific languages).


By "international", you mean "multilingual", right?...


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## BlueWolf

> By "international", you mean "multilingual", right?...


I mean that it's the base for all the languages uses it. Some languages could not use all the letters (like my own language) and some languages could add more (almost all created from those letters, like W), but all can recognize in that alphabet a common base from which their alphabet was born.


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## Brioche

Blackleaf said:


> Shakespeare invented the letters J and U in the way that we use them today. The Elizabethan alphabet originally had only 24 letters. In the English alphabet at that time, J was the capital of i before I became the capital. Shakespeare made J a completely separate letter.
> 
> Shakespeare also gave us the letter U. Even though that letter originally dated back to the Anglo-Saxon times, it was Shakespeare who started using it like we do now and made it common.
> 
> He also invented about 1700 words, including "assassination" and "bump."


 
Sorry, but I don't believe this.

It was the  printers who printed Shakespeare's plays and poems who decided how to spell them.

Only 18 of his 38 plays were published during his lifetime, and there is no evidence that The Bard took the slightest interest in the publications.
The printers certainly did not work from manuscripts in Shakespeare's own hand. Spelling was not fixed in those days. Each of the supposedly authentic signatures of Shakespeare spells the name differently.

I know that it is frequently maintained that Shakespeare introduced this or that word into the language, but this merely means that the word _first appears in print_ in something attributed to Shakespeare.


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## BlueWolf

I just found two other interesting news about this old thread.

From Wikipedia:
_There are only five major European languages that use W in native words: English, German, Polish, Dutch and Welsh.

_I bet that if we take some other special letters we can reach the W.

Secondly, after some discussions (I have nothing to do with them ) Wikipedia did remove the claim that the Latin Alphabet would be composed by 26 letters.


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## Thomsen

And don't forget Gutenberg.  I bet standardization of the "Latin alphabet" with Germanic letters had something to do with printing mechanization in northern Europe.


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## Outsider

BlueWolf said:


> I just found two other interesting news about this old thread.
> 
> From Wikipedia:
> _There are only five major European languages that use W in native words: English, German, Polish, Dutch and Welsh.
> 
> _I bet that if we take some other special letters we can reach the W.


The letter W also used to be a part of the alphabets of Northeastern European languages influenced by German, like the Scandinavian languages. It was only recently that they replaced it with V (which was often a variant of U before that).


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## Lemminkäinen

Outsider said:


> The letter W also used to be a part of the alphabets of Northeastern European languages influenced by German, like the Scandinavian languages. It was only recently that they replaced it with V (which was often a variant of U before that).



In addition to W, C, Q, Z and X are almost not used at all here. 

(A political satire show has a contest where the team members have to say one sentence each - the first has to start with A, the next B, &c, all the way to Å. Most of them run into trouble when they reach C, but the other letters listed are also killers  )

I think the reason W isn't considered a ligature is because it signifies a different sound in English than V (Braille for instance, didn't have a specific sign for W for quite some time because it wasn't a specific letter in French at the time). 

I'm not sure if we can still talk about just the Latin alphabet; perhaps the English/French/Danish alphabet is better. 
The letters æ, ø and å are definitely not mere ligatures in the Norwegian alphabet, but "real" letters.


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## Outsider

I was thinking of the following:



> Until recently the letter "W" was treated as a variant form of "V" and this practice is still commonly encountered. However, in 2005 the Swedish Academy separated the two letters in conformity with international lexicographic practice.
> 
> Swedish alphabet





> The English-style w-sound is foreign to Finnish language, but historically "W" was used (as in German) to mark a v-sound. Although this is today considered archaic and "V" is used instead, "W" may still occur in some old surnames as a variant of "V".
> 
> Finnish alphabet


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## Lugubert

Outsider said:


> I was thinking of the following:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Until recently the letter "W" was treated as a variant form of "V" and this practice is still commonly encountered. However, in 2005 the Swedish Academy separated the two letters in conformity with international lexicographic practice.
Click to expand...

And the Academy is so far very much alone in that effort. The telephone book and MS Word sorting algorithms make no difference. The semi-official Nationalencyklopedin has 





> _v,_ _V_, the 22nd letter in the Swedish version of the Latin alphabet. The difference between _v_ and _u _was introduced only in the 10th century. In Swedish, _w_ is used only in proper names and in loan words as an alternative _v_, having no place of its own in the alphabet.


 (My translation.)


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## Outsider

> The difference between _v_ and _u_ was introduced only in the *10th* century.


That can't be right! Perhaps you've misspelled "20th".


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## BlueWolf

Outsider said:


> The letter W also used to be a part of the alphabets of Northeastern European languages influenced by German, like the Scandinavian languages. It was only recently that they replaced it with V (which was often a variant of U before that).



Well, even if you count the language which used W only in the past, I bet it can't reach the languages which use Ç (and note that it is a separate letter in some languages, even if it isn't in French and Portuguese).


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## Outsider

But you can construct a "Ç" by adding a little squiggle to a "C". You can't make a "W" that way!


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## maxiogee

There's a clue in the name of the letter. You make a *w* from a *uu* formation.


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## Outsider

You mean a *vv* formation...


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## mcibor

Outsider said:


> It's not just Germanic languages (actually, several Germanic languages do not use the letter W regularly): also some Celtic languages, Polish (a Slavic language), and several African languages. Plus, it's widely used in the transcription of languages not written with the Latin alphabet, such as Chinese and Japanese.



As for Polish
Q = ku
X = ks
V = W

so these three letters are used only in words taken from nowaday English: taxi, but ksero.

Chałewer  there is a letter, which is similar in pronounciation to English w, it's
Ł ł
which derives from L and is used in Polish, Belarussian latin, Venice language, in Wymysöryś and Navaho language - maybe it should also be put into the "latin letters" as well?

I think that latin in this context mean multilingual, not the roman language, therefore as these 26 letters (Polish has 32) are most commonly used around the EMEAm (Europe, Middle East, and both Americas) and Roman empire or it's descendants are living there we could leave the W letter as is.

Correct me if I'm wrong
Michał


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## BlueWolf

Outsider said:


> But you can construct a "Ç" by adding a little squiggle to a "C". You can't make a "W" that way!



In a computer a W is very easier to write than a Ç (if you don't have the standard version).
And why should the form of a letter affect its presence in the alphabet. Also G is a C with a little line.


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## Outsider

G has been treated as a letter on its own since the Latin alphabet was the Latin alphabet. VV is not quite W.


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## lazarus1907

BlueWolf said:


> Chinese and Japanese use the English alphabet because it's the dominant power (and language) (and even because they need letter to be able to transcribe their language ).


Once again: It is not English, but Latin, with the W added to it, if you want. In Japanese, by the way, they call this alphabet that you have claimed for the English language "*Romanji*", which means "*Roman characters*".



> The letter *W* is the twenty-third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is _double-u_, which is the longest letter to pronounce. /ˈdʌ.bəl.juː/.
> 
> The earliest form of the letter W was a doubled V used in the 7th century by the earliest writers of; it is from this <uu> digraph that the modern name "double U" comes.


Regards.


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## BlueWolf

Outsider said:


> G has been treated as a letter on its own since the Latin alphabet was the Latin alphabet. VV is not quite W.



So is also Æ is not quite AE? W is a legature two V's, even if it's a letter on its own in some alphabets.


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## Outsider

BlueWolf said:


> So is also Æ is not quite AE?


What does the answer to that question have to do with whether W should be included in the main alphabet or not?  



BlueWolf said:


> What does W is a legature two V's, even if it's a letter on its own in some alphabets.


W is a letter on its own in _every_ modern version of the Latin alphabet that includes it.


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## BlueWolf

Outsider said:


> What does the answer to that question have to do with whether W should be included in the main alphabet or not?



In fact, nothing, I'm only answering to your last post:



> VV is not quite W.



W is a letter on its own in _every_ modern version of the Latin alphabet that includes it.[/quote]

No, for example for some alphabets it's simply a variant of an other letter (V).


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## Outsider

BlueWolf said:


> No, for example for some alphabets it's simply a variant of an other letter (V).


Those are alphabets where the use of W is old-fashioned / optional / foreign. And it's never analysed as a ligature, in any case.



BlueWolf said:


> So is also Æ is not quite AE?


Absolutely. Just ask anyone who speaks a North Germanic language.


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## BlueWolf

Outsider said:


> Those are alphabets where the use of W is old-fashioned / optional / foreign. And it's never analysed as a ligature, in any case.



Well, that is the origin of the letter. That's what I meant.


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## Cecilio

Outsider said:


> The Latin alphabet itself was a repurposed Etruscan alphabet (which was descended from one of the many varieties of the Greek alphabet...)



I'm not too sure about this Etruscan step in the origin of the Latin alphabet. I've always assumed that the Latin alphabet (and also the Faliscan one for example) derives directly from the archaic Greek alphabets used in Italy.


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## BlueWolf

Cecilio said:


> I'm not too sure about this Etruscan step in the origin of the Latin alphabet. I've always assumed that the Latin alphabet (and also the Faliscan one for example) derives directly from the archaic Greek alphabets used in Italy.


 
The Greek colonies were only in the southern part of Italy, and that alphabet wasn't used in Rome. On the other hand Romans had strong relationship with Etruscans, in fact three of the legendary seven kings of Rome have Etruscan origins. It is true however that the Greek alphabet influenced the Latin one.


----------



## Cecilio

As far as I know, both the Etruscan and the Latin alphabets derived from Greek alphabets. The Greeks were mainly in southern Italy and their influence spread further north. But it's not only that the Greek alphabet influenced the Latin one: the Latin alphabet is a simple derivation of the Greek archaic alphabets. On the other hand, the territory of the Latins was not only the city of Rome, but the whole region of Latium, whose southern boundary was quite close to the Greek colonies of Campania.


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## Lugubert

Outsider said:


> W is a letter on its own in _every_ modern version of the Latin alphabet that includes it.


Like I said (Jan. 10), in Sweden it isn't.


----------



## Outsider

As you know, Swedes disagree on that point. Like I noted previously (Jan. 9):



> Until recently the letter "W" was treated as a variant form of "V" and this practice is still commonly encountered. However, in 2005 the Swedish Academy separated the two letters in conformity with international lexicographic practice.


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## MarX

Hello!

Hmm, this thread has been "operated" mosty out of a European point of view.
Most of you seem to forget that in Southeast Asia alone, the Latin Alphabet is used by around 444 millions of people.

In Indonesian, we have the same default alphabet as in English, with no accents or modifications (of the alphabet) whatsoever.

C is pronounced as Spanish CH
F and V represent virtually the same sound
H is pronounced as in English, although it's sometimes pronounced so weakly you barely hear it
J as in English
W as in English

C = like in Spanish che
G = Spanish gue
H = ha
J = je
K = ka
Q = ki
V = Spanish fe, or sometimes pe
W = we
X = eks
Y = ye
Z = zet

I skipped most of the thread because it's been quite "eurocentric".
Btw, I'm not criticizing anybody. It's just sad that the fact that the Latin Alphabet is used by such a huge number of people in six Southeast Asian countries seemed to be ignored.

Btw, did Q and K and C in Latin actually represent different sounds?

Salam,


MarX


----------



## Outsider

MarX said:


> Btw, did Q and K and C in Latin actually represent different sounds?


Not in Latin, as far as I know.

Some authors claim they represented different sounds in Etruscan (the Romans were very influenced by the Etruscans, who had ruled them before Rome gained independence). And they did represent different sounds in archaic Greek (as you know, the Latin alphabet developed from an archaic form of the Greek alphabet).


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## berndf

In _Old_ Latin "C" probably represented /g/.


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## Outsider

/g/ interchangeably with /k/ is what I've read. That's why they invented the letter G, to distinguish the two sounds.


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## berndf

Outsider said:


> Well, I always find it strange to see them _[å, ä, ö]_ referred to as "letters". And don't get me started on digraphs...
> 
> _Chacun à son goût_, I say.


 
Sorry, but they are digraphs! I am not so sure about Swedish but there is not a shadow of a doubt that the three _German_ umlauts ä, ö and ü are stylized version of ae, oe and ue respectively.


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## berndf

Outsider said:


> /g/ interchangeably with /k/ is what I've read. That's why they invented the letter G, to distinguish the two sounds.


 
99% agreed: ... originally /g/, later interchangeably with /k/ which is why that letter "K" fell into disuse. Again later a new letter, "G" for introducted for /g/ to separate the sounds again.


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## Outsider

berndf said:


> 99% agreed: ... originally /g/, later interchangeably with /k/ which is why that letter "K" fell into disuse.


Originally /g/ in Greek. But I think that in Latin C always stood for /k/ (_together_ with /g/, initially).


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## berndf

Outsider said:


> Originally /g/ in Greek. But I think that in Latin C always stood for /k/ (_together_ with /g/, initially).


 
Not to my knowledge. "K" was originally used to represent /k/. The letter "K" was used in Old Latin much more often than only for the 3 or 4 words with "K" which made it into classical Latin.


----------



## Outsider

My understanding was that "K" had always been a rare letter in Latin, in all periods. Actually, now I remember reading somewhere that very old Latin systematically used C before E and I, Q before U, and K before A, presumably from Etruscan influence. I don't recall what they're supposed to have used before consonants and at the end of words.


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## berndf

Some people argue that Etruscan didn't distinguish between voiced and unvoiced plosives (though it puzzles me how you would know that as there is only very little known about the Etuscan language) and that Romans ceased to differentiate between "C" and "K" under Etruscan influence. Anyway, by the time of the early republic the state you are describing ("C" being used for /k/ and /g/) was certainly correct. For the purpose of this thread (which is only about the Latin alphabet not its precursors) I think we can leave it at that.


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## Outsider

berndf said:


> [...] though it puzzles me how you would know that as there is only very little known about the Etuscan language [...]


I think I know how. Compare the archaic Etruscan alphabet and the classic Etruscan alphabet here. 

Etruscan was written with a version of the Greek alphabet, but the Greek alphabet seems to not have been very suited for the phonology of Etruscan. In the early period, they used all the letters, but they had dropped some letters by the classical period, including B and D (while keeping P and T). This does suggest that Etruscan made no distinction between voiced and voiceless plosives.


----------



## berndf

Outsider said:


> I think I know how. Compare the archaic Etruscan alphabet and the classic Etruscan alphabet here.
> 
> Etruscan was written with a version of the Greek alphabet, but the Greek alphabet seems to not have been very suited for the phonology of Etruscan. In the early period, they used all the letters, but they had dropped some letters by the classical period, including B and D (while keeping P and T). This does suggest that Etruscan made no distinction between voiced and voiceless plosives.


 
Thank you for investigating!


----------



## Flaminius

I might be haranguing off-topic, off-interest but I find Latin alphabet more pertinent a definition in relation with other alphabetic scripts than with minor variations in languages written in one sub-version or another, of the, ahem, Latin alphabet.

Latin alphabet is a variety of alphabet systems which is not Arabic alphabet, Etruscan alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, Greek alphabet or Aramaic alphabet.  Whether «W» or «Q» or «J» or «ɠ» belongs to the basic set matters very little, if we can agree that by Latin alphabet we mean letter forms derived from the alphabet used by the Romans or letter forms used in a language which is otherwise written in Latin alphabet.  As it matters almost always in humanities and social sciences, an accurate definition of the discussed term is most earnestly sought after.


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## Outsider

I certainly agree with that, Flaminius. From the point of view of a  speaker of Japanese, where there must be many _kanji_ that are hardly ever used, this discussion must appear very academic indeed.


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## KnightMove

As far as I can see, no definite answer has been found...

Related question: In what way do specific languages line and number their letters?

In German, we do count the "default" Latin alphabet A-Z as 1-26, the German letters ä/ö/ü/ß are not counted in. 

What about Spanish? Is Z letter no. 27? Or 29?


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## Cecilio

The Spanish alphabet goes like this:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N Ñ O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z.

That is, 27 letters. The "Ñ" is always counted as a letter of the alphabet.

Some decades ago, the digraphs "CH" and "LL" were also included, and for example dictionaries had a chapter for "CH" after "C" and before "D". But now this old usage has been abandoned.


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## mcibor

The Polish contemporary alphabet goes like this:

A Ą B C Ć D E Ę F G H I J K L Ł M N Ń O Ó P R S Ś T U W X Y Z Ź Ż


The old Polish alphabet goes like this:


A á à ą b b' c ć cz d dz dź dż é è ę f g h ch i j k l ł m m' n ń o ó p p' q r rz s ś sz t u v w w' x y z ź 



But if you start numbering letters or play the "Countries-cities" game, then alphabet is reduct to:


A B C D E F G H I J K L Ł M N O P R S T U W X Y Z Ź Ż


as there weren't any words starting with ą or ę (until few months ago came Ędward Ącki   )
we usually disregard them while saying alphabet.


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## Hulalessar

There is a distinction, not always made, between:

The Latin alphabet = the alphabet developed by the Romans to write Latin

The Roman (or roman) alphabet = the Latin alphabet as extended and used to write many languages.

What the "default" roman alphabet is depends on the language and what the writers of that language consider to be the alphabet. <ö> for example is considered a separate letter in Swedish, but not in German.


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## Cecilio

Hulalessar said:


> There is a distinction, not always made, between:
> 
> The Latin alphabet = the alphabet developed by the Romans to write Latin
> 
> The Roman (or roman) alphabet = the Latin alphabet as extended and used to write many languages.
> 
> What the "default" roman alphabet is depends on the language and what the writers of that language consider to be the alphabet. <ö> for example is considered a separate letter in Swedish, but not in German.



I have never heard about this distinction between Latin and Roman alphabet. I think both terms are generally used as more or less synonyms.


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## Hulalessar

Cecilio said:


> I have never heard about this distinction between Latin and Roman alphabet. I think both terms are generally used as more or less synonyms.


 
Wikipedia seems to make no distinction. _In modern usage, the term "Latin alphabet" is used for any straightforward derivation of the alphabet first used to write Latin_

My dictionary (Collins) simply says that "Latin alphabet" is another name for the Roman alphabet.

_The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems_ does make a clear distinction on the lines of my previous post.

It may be noted that providing a language with the Latin/Roman alphabet is referred to as "Romanisation". Is it ever referred to as Latinisation?

Perhaps I should have said:

_Some people (including me) like to make a distinction between the Latin alphabet and the Roman alphabet_.


----------



## Outsider

Hulalessar said:


> It may be noted that providing a language with the Latin/Roman alphabet is referred to as "Romanisation". Is it ever referred to as Latinisation?


No, because "latinisation" already meant "adaptation into the Latin language" when the concept of romanisation (adaptation into the Latin/Roman alphabet) appeared.

*KnightMove*, you will be interested in this Wikipedia article.


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## Hulalessar

Further research indicates that "latinisation" can mean "romanisation".

See here http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=latinization where you will find one definition as follows:

_To transliterate into the characters of the Latin alphabet; Romanize_.

I have never come across the word being used in that sense.


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## Outsider

Neither had I! Live and learn.


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## KnightMove

Outsider said:


> *KnightMove*, you will be interested in this Wikipedia article.


 
Thx. Indeed I am very much interested, even though it does not precisely answer my question: Collation and role in the alphabet might be the same, but not necessarily. 

For example: In German, umlauts ä/ö/ü are collated in three different ways, of which the article mentions just two (ä = a, ä = ae, or a-ä-b). But they are not insertedinto the alphabet at all, or if so, as an appendix: ...x,y,z,ä,ö,ü,ß.


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## Outsider

Take a look also at the links at the bottom of the page, under "See also".


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## Linnets

BlueWolf said:


> Finnish uses W, but it's not an Indo-European language, it simply took it from its neighbours (Germanic).



As far as I know, Finnish uses W as a variant of V, since it has only /v/, it has neither a /w/ phoneme nor a [w] allophone of /u/.



BlueWolf said:


> So "every language's alphabet" is compared with the "standard Latin", that, you can see, is actually the English one.



Well, I also think that if the world today was dominated by Iceland, Standard Latin Alphabet would include Ð and Þ. But see below.



Outsider said:


> Iulius = Yulyus.



Probaly "Yulius", at least in Classical Latin. The word had three syllables in Latin meter and /Cj/ became common after the II century AD.



BlueWolf said:


> No, you misunderstood me. I didn't mean it has the same sound they have in Romance languages today. Iwas read _ or [j] (IPAs letters) and V  or [w]. So W doesn't stand for a Latin sound, because [w] was written V in Latin._


_

Yes, but since many modern languages have three consonant phonemes /j, v, w/ beside the vowels /i, u/, they need a distinction between all these ones. In Romance language /j, w/ are not very well distinct from /i, u/ so they do not use different graphemes; in Spanish, though, was often written HV to distinguish it graphically from V (/b/, used mainly for as in HVEVO /w-/ vs VELA /b-/.



BlueWolf said:



			In fact, a Latin imperator invented a new letter to rappresent this sound (as he does for V) but it didn't become popular and Y was used instead. So Y is Latin, and Latins added it in their alphabet. Why shouldn't we?
		
Click to expand...


You are referring to emperor Claudius' orthographic reform attempt:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudian_letters

The half H was probably introduced to represent the Latin sonus medius (as in lubet/libet, a short vowel before labials and labiodentals, probably pronounced as Polish y or Russian ы) and not for Greek υ, which had been transcribed with Y since the I century BC, even if in some inscriptions the half H was actually used for the Greek letter.



BlueWolf said:



			I'm agree, this is the reason I wouldn't call the alphabet ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ the Latin alphabet, but the English alphabet.
		
Click to expand...


Yes but ISO/IEC 646 considers the English alphabet as the basic Latin alphabet.



Outsider said:



			That can't be right! Perhaps you've misspelled "20th".
		
Click to expand...


In medieval times U and V were used as graphical variants of the same grapheme. The U/V distinction was made by Pierre de la Ramée (Petrus Ramus) in the XVI century.



Outsider said:



			You mean a vv formation...
		
Click to expand...


That's the same, as VV and UU were not functionally distinct at that time.



MarX said:



			Btw, did Q and K and C in Latin actually represent different sounds?
		
Click to expand...


Probably allophones of /k/ before front central and rear vowels.



berndf said:



			In Old Latin "C" probably represented /g/.
		
Click to expand...

It represented surely both /k/ and /g/: C. stood for Gaius and CN. for Gnaeus. This was due to the fact that Etruscan had no voiced plosived and had /C/ vs /Ch/ (like Chinese, Danish or Icelandic)._


----------



## berndf

Linnets said:


> It represented surely both /k/ and /g/: _C._ stood for _Gaius _and _CN._ for_ Gnaeus. _This was due to the fact that Etruscan had no voiced plosived and had /C/ _vs_ /Ch/ (like Chinese, Danish or Icelandic).


The likely development as I learned it:
Stage 1: "C"=/g/; "K"=/k/
Stage 2: Under Etruscan rule: "C"=/g/ or /k/, not differentiated; "K"=almost unused
Stage 3: After the end of Etruscan rule /g/ and /k/ re-differentiated with "C"=/k/ and /g/ represented by the new letter "G"; "K" still almost unused


----------



## sokol

I'd like to get back to the original question:


BlueWolf said:


> Now, I know this alphabet formed by 26 letters is the one used in English, but why is it considered the "default Latin alphabet"? The letter W is simply formed by two V's, why should it be considered part of the standard Latin alphabet? Letters like æ_, _ç, ñ, ð, etc. aren't, why should W? Just because it's used in English?


I would say _yes _- just because it's used in English, it is as simple as that.

When the ASCII code was defined characters 65 to 90 (capital letters) and 97 to 122 (lower case) only included the English alphabet, for obvious reasons. Other characters only were added later, and only Unicode provided for equal rights among the numerous 'Latin' (and other) alphabets of the world (well, not quite equal yet - but we're at least moving in that direction).

This is how it comes that our computers consider the English version of the Latin alphabet as the 'basic' one from which all others are derived.
Historical development of the numerous Latin alphabets of course is different, as already explained above in many useful posts.

Also we've already established that some of the special characters like /æ č š đ/ etc. are indeed considered being 'standard' letters in their respective national varieties of the Latin alphabet; let me add to this that the German special characters /ä ö ü ß/ _aren't:_ they are considered _varieties _(and sorted as such in dictionaries) of /a o u ss/.


Still, the traditional 'Latin' alphabet of 26 letters (with C J K Q V W X Y Z even though many 'Latin' alphabets don't contain those, but with no additional characters like ligatures or letters with diacritics) at least in German speaking regions (and probably elsewhere too) is somewhat older than the ASCII code, for a simple reason: it was what we learnt in school, that is that the alphabet consists of 26 letters, despite the fact that X Y are not 'German' letters (they appear in plenty of loan words though) and that C only is 'German' in the digraph /ch/ = velar fricative (but also used as C in many loans).

Oh, and please note also that X isn't 'really' an English letter but still part of the English alphabet. So there *had *to be some 'canon' of a '26-letter-alphabet' at least in German and English speaking regions (and probably elsewhere) before computer science made the English variety king.


----------



## origumi

MarX said:


> Hmm, this thread has been "operated" mosty out of a European point of view.
> Most of you seem to forget that in Southeast Asia alone, the Latin Alphabet is used by around 444 millions of people.
> MarX


 
Also worth mentioning that the "Latin" alphabet is of non-Latin origin. Invented in Egypt, migrated to Canaan where the Israelites, Punics and other west-Semitic peoples adopted it and established the 22 letters system. Later from Punics to Greeks, to Etruscans, and finally to the Romans.

It's a long journey - Africa to the Middle East, Balkan, Western Europe, and eventually the Americas, back to Africa, and parts of Asia.


----------



## Linnets

sokol said:


> C only is 'German' in the digraph /ch/ = velar fricative (but also used as C in many loans).


What about the trigraph _sch_?


sokol said:


> Oh, and please note also that X isn't 'really' an English letter but still part of the English alphabet.


Are you sure? Aren't words such as_ box _and _fox _English?


----------



## sokol

Linnets said:


> What about the trigraph _sch_?


Sure, I forgot that one. 



Linnets said:


> Are you sure? Aren't words such as_ box _and _fox _English?


Ah, let me see: 'box' is a Latin loan (that is, Greek by origin according to this source, but found its way to English through Latin).
While fox of course is a Germanic word, and there are more - like ax, for example.

Still the frequency of the letter /x/ is very low in English (see here, scroll down), and it isn't a phoneme in English (while /z/ is even though it has lower frequency; but don't forget that /x/ also is used in many prefixes of foreign origin like /ex/, and in a great many loan words).

Anyway, according to Wiki Old English already used /x/ in Germanic words (weox > wex > waxed).
So I stand corrected. 

Nevertheless, the point I made above still stands: an alphabet consisting of a conventional 26 letters existed well before the invention of ASCII code.
And the German alphabet still is called a "26-letter-alphabet" by us even though there are 4 special characters. In other languages this is not so (or at least special characters are sorted differently from their "standard" counterparts, as are Swedish /ö/ and /o/ or Slovene /c/ and /č/).

So at least some languages using more characters than 26 (like German) consider the 26-letters-alphabet being the "orginal Latin" one.
(Which of course it isn't - it is only the modern understanding of the Latin alphabet.)


----------



## Outsider

origumi said:


> Also worth mentioning that the "Latin" alphabet is of non-Latin origin. Invented in Egypt, migrated to Canaan where the Israelites, Punics and other west-Semitic peoples adopted it and established the 22 letters system.


It wasn't the Latin alphabet that far back in time. You're talking about the Phoenician alphabet, or the alphabet in general.


----------



## Outsider

Linnets said:


> Outsider said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That can't be right! Perhaps you've misspelled "20th".
> 
> 
> 
> In medieval times U and V were used as graphical variants of the same grapheme. The U/V distinction was made by Pierre de la Ramée (Petrus Ramus) in the XVI century.
Click to expand...

But it didn't become commonplace until the 18th or the 19th centuries.



Linnets said:


> Outsider said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You mean a vv formation...
> 
> 
> 
> That's the same, as VV and UU were not functionally distinct at that time.
Click to expand...

It _was_ a joke...


----------



## origumi

Outsider said:


> It wasn't the Latin alphabet that far back in time. You're talking about the Phoenician alphabet, or the alphabet in general.


 
But there's a traceable line of evolution among these alphabets, similar to the phenomena of changes between various modern European languages. Now, if all come from the same ancestory, and if the same change mechanism applies since 2500 BC and not only since 500 BC, I would consider it relevant to the discussion.


----------



## Outsider

> [...] and if the same change mechanism applies since 2500 BC and not only since 500 BC [...]


That's one big "if" you've got there. The same mechanism for what change?


----------



## origumi

Outsider said:


> That's one big "if" you've got there. The same mechanism for what change?


 
We're talking about change in shape and sound, and the nature of "the" Latin alphabet.

Compare the Greek "phi" to the Spanish "n-tilde". Similar need - a sound that isn't originally there, similar solution - take an existing letter, slightly modify its shape.

Compare the change of Greek "g" (gamma) into Latin "c", with the appearance of variants like Ç, Č, Š, Ž. The Etruscan couldn't pronounce "g" and the 3rd letter became "c". See for example how the name Gaius is shortened to "C.", not "G.". That's also the reason why "k", important prior to this shift, demoted in Latin.

We can compare the appearance or mutation of vowels, for example Phoenician "ain" to Greek and later Roman "o", with the emergence of German and Scandinavian vowels. Again, change of shape and sound to meet the language needs.

I'm only saying is that the Latin alphabet is one link in a longer chain. Looking backward may give some clue about what's going on forward.


----------



## Linnets

sokol said:


> Ah, let me see: 'box' is a Latin loan (that is, Greek by origin according to this source, but found its way to English through Latin).


 
I must admit I didn't know it. The etymology is the same of the box tree (_Buxus sempervirens_), from Greek πυξίς ("box") and this, in turn, from πύξος ("box tree"). I have found also an Italian derivative of that Greek word, _bossolo_, meaning "small box".



sokol said:


> While fox of course is a Germanic word, and there are more - like ax, for example.


Also note some modern respellings such as _Red Sox_.



sokol said:


> Still the frequency of the letter /x/ is very low in English (see here, scroll down), and it isn't a phoneme in English (while /z/ is even though it has lower frequency; but don't forget that /x/ also is used in many prefixes of foreign origin like /ex/, and in a great many loan words).


 
This discussion has reminded me of the spelling _ecstasy_ and I have discovered that in Greek existed also -κσ- (beside -ξ-) as in ἔκστασις. 



sokol said:


> Nevertheless, the point I made above still stands: an alphabet consisting of a conventional 26 letters existed well before the invention of ASCII code.
> And the German alphabet still is called a "26-letter-alphabet" by us even though there are 4 special characters.


 
In Italy it is known as a "21 letter-alphabet", even if _j_ has been quite common (especially in the XIX century) as a variant of _i_ when it represents /j/ (but not after consonants) and _x_ is very frequent in modern words taken from Latin such as all those with prefixes like _ex-_ or _extra-_. The other letters_ k_, _w_, _y_ occur only in loanwords (even if there were some extremely rare surnames like _Cybo_ and _De Karolis_ written with them).



sokol said:


> In other languages this is not so (or at least special characters are sorted differently from their "standard" counterparts, as are Swedish /ö/ and /o/ or Slovene /c/ and /č/).


 
May I correct you? Do not use // for letters or graphemes since it is the standard way to transcribe phonemes. Use instead <> or simply italic style.


----------



## sokol

Linnets said:


> Also note some modern respellings such as _Red Sox_.


 Yes, such (non-historic) respellings are very common, also in German by the way.



Linnets said:


> In Italy it is known as a "21 letter-alphabet", even if _j_ has been quite common (especially in the XIX century) as a variant of _i_ when it represents /j/ (but not after consonants) and _x_ is very frequent in modern words taken from Latin such as all those with prefixes like _ex-_ or _extra-_. The other letters_ k_, _w_, _y_ occur only in loanwords (even if there were some extremely rare surnames like _Cybo_ and _De Karolis_ written with them).


 Yep, that's what I meant: the number of letters according to "tradition" in a language, which oddly is smaller than the used number of letters in German (26 traditional, 30 characters used + digraphs <ch sch>), and in Italian though for different reasons (21 traditional - which is news to me, thanks  - but 26 used).

In Slavic languages they count only the 'native' letters, just like in Italian, or at least that's the case for Slovenian (25 letters according to tradition - not counting Q W X Y but counting Č Š Ž).

So German is the exception here: with counting only letters being considered "originally" Latin despite the fact that some of them are not "native German" and that additional "native" characters are not counted.



> May I correct you? Do not use // for letters or graphemes since it is the standard way to transcribe phonemes. Use instead <> or simply italic style.


You may of course; and it is pure laziness on my part for not differentiating here, I know that in scientific style I should use <>.


----------



## Hulalessar

sokol said:


> Oh, and please note also that X isn't 'really' an English letter but still part of the English alphabet.


 


sokol said:


> ...the letter /x/...isn't a phoneme in English


 
Two interesting statements! They prompt the following observations:

1. An alphabet starts with the idea that a language is analysed into what its speakers consider its smallest segments. What is considered a smallest segment can vary from language to language and may in part depend on semantics. Thus in English /ts/ is considered to be two different sounds, partly because (a) no English word begins with the combination, (b) in <cat> as opposed to <cats> and <knit> as opposed to <knits>, the <s> is taken to indicate the bound morpheme /s/ representing respectively the plural and third person singular and (c) there is no separate symbol for /ts/. In Italian and Russian, though, /ts/ is considered a single segment partly because (a) words begin with /ts/, (b) there are no words in which the boundary between /t/ and /s/ is considered significant semantically, and (c) the sound is represented by a single symbol.

2. If, at least provisionally, we equate "smallest segment" with "phoneme", then the "perfect" alphabet is one where there is a one to one correspondence between phoneme and symbol. The Greek alphabet as used to write Classical Greek was near to perfection as (with exceptions that need not detain us) no symbol represented more than one phoneme and no phoneme was represented by more than one symbol. We do however have a bit of a problem as some of the consonant symbols represented what may be termed complex consonants: _zeta_ = /dz/, _xi _= /ks/, _psi_ = /ps/ and _theta_, _phi_ and _chi_ = aspirated /t/, /p/ and /k/ respectively.

3. The form of the Greek alphabet used to write Classical Latin ignored the distinction between long and short vowels, had three ways of writing the phoneme /k/ and used <V> to represent both /u/ and /w/ and <I> to represent both /i/ and /j/. Apart from that, there was a one to one correspondence between phoneme and symbol. Of the Greek letters referred to in the previous paragraph on _xi_ made into Latin (at least to write non-Greek words - _zeta_ together with _upsilon_ were adopted in the first century BC to write Greek loan words). Latin used <X> as /ks/ occurs, though only medially and finally. It could just as easily have written _pax_ as _pacs_, but presumably thought it might as well make use of <X> since it was there.

4. The number of symbols and phonemes in Classical Latin was therefore roughly equal. Unfortunately, for many of the modern languages that use the roman script, the number of phonemes was comparatively low. This means there are not enough letters to go round. Not only are many symbols polyvalent, but many sounds can be represented in more than one way. There can be added to that the fact that some phonemes are represented by digraphs or trigraphs and that some symbols represent sounds that are not, from a strictly phonological point of view, phonemes.

5. The word "phoneme" can be defined in different ways. In phonological terms it may be defined as a sound or set of closely related sounds that, in a given language, serve to distinguish one word from another. In grammatolgical terms it may be defined as a sound or set of closely related sounds represented by a letter of the alphabet in a given alphabetic writing system. Since no system of alphabetic writing is completely chaotic, there is always going to be some correspondence between phonemes and letters. Indeed, it is arguable that the very concept of the phoneme is alphabetically motivated. It can be difficult to analyse the phonology of a written language without being influenced by its orthography. So whilst I said above: "An alphabet starts with the idea that a language is analysed into what its speakers consider its smallest segments" suggesting that any system of writing a language implies that a phonological analysis was made (at least when the language was first written down), it is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. In some cases the situation is complicated by the fact that language A may employ a system of writing used by language B and which may not be entirely suited to language A.

6. It is important not to confuse the sounds of a language with the symbols used to write it. Apart from the points made above, confusion is apt to arise because letters and sounds are classified using the same names, i.e. consonants and vowels. Since linguistics is not taught in schools, even well-educated people tend to equate the number of sounds in a language with the number of letters in the alphabet used to write it.

7. The number of letters in an alphabet is purely a matter of convention. It can depend on whether modified roman letters and digraphs are included as separate symbols with their own names and whether letters which are "available" to write "foreign" words are included.

8. <x> is definitely a letter of the English alphabet (or if you prefer the roman alphabet as used to write English). If it is not, then <z> cannot be a letter of the Italian alphabet - and what are we to make of <h> as used to write, say Spanish, where its continued existence has no justification other an etymological one?!


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## Linnets

Hulalessar said:


> 8. <x> is definitely a letter of the English alphabet (or if you prefer the roman alphabet as used to write English). If it is not, then  cannot be a letter of the Italian alphabet


_Z_ is definitely a letter of the Italian alphabet. I think you meant _K_, _W_, _Y_ present only in loanwords or _J_, _X_; seldom used and not considered part of the tradiational Italian alphabet.





Hulalessar said:


> - and what are we to make of  as used to write, say Spanish, where its continued existence has no justification other an etymological one?!


_H_ has an important diacritical function in Spanish. How would you write _chica_ without _h_?


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## Hulalessar

Linnets said:


> _Z_ is definitely a letter of the Italian alphabet. I think you meant _K_, _W_, _Y_ present only in loanwords or _J_, _X_; seldom used and not considered part of the tradiational Italian alphabet.


 
I am certainly not denying that <z> is a letter of the Italian alphabet. The point I was making was this: if <x> is not a letter of the English alphabet because it represents (among other sounds) /ks/, then <z> cannot be a letter of the Italian alphabet because it also (always) represents two sounds - sometimes /ts/ and sometimes /dz/.  



Linnets said:


> _H_ has an important diacritical function in Spanish. How would you write _chica_ without _h_?


 
I do not think that <h> can properly be described as having a "diacritical" function in Spanish. It is (a) a purely written convention with no phonetic value as in _hombre_ and (b) a part of the digraph <ch> as in _chica_. The digraph could in fact be dispensed with if the sound of <c> in _cita_ was written with a <z> and the sound of <c> in _caer_ was written with a <k>; that would leave <c> for <ch>. In Spanish <h> and the double value of <c> (and indeed <g>) have been preserved for purely etymological reasons. Anyway, the point I was making was that if <x> is not to be called a letter because it represents a double sound, what are to we to make of a letter that has no sound of its own?


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## phosphore

The alphabet of the earliest Latin script:​ 
ABCDEFZHIKLMNOPQRSTVX (21);

The Latin alphabet in the first century BC:

ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTVXYZ (23);

The Latin alphabet in the fifteenth century AD:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVXYZ (25).

(From _the Ancient Languages of Europe_ by Roger Woodard.)


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## Athaulf

Hulalessar said:


> 4. The number of symbols and phonemes in Classical Latin was therefore roughly equal. Unfortunately, for many of the modern languages that use the roman script, the number of phonemes was comparatively low. This means there are not enough letters to go round. Not only are many symbols polyvalent, but many sounds can be represented in more than one way. There can be added to that the fact that some phonemes are represented by digraphs or trigraphs and that some symbols represent sounds that are not, from a strictly phonological point of view, phonemes.



Could you give an example? If I understand correctly, you're saying that there are languages whose alphabets sometimes mark distinctions between allophones of a single phoneme. 



> 5. The word "phoneme" can be defined in different ways. In phonological terms it may be defined as a sound or set of closely related sounds that, in a given language, serve to distinguish one word from another.


Isn't this the standard definition? 



> It can be difficult to analyse the phonology of a written language without being influenced by its orthography. So whilst I said above: "An alphabet starts with the idea that a language is analysed into what its speakers consider its smallest segments" suggesting that any system of writing a language implies that a phonological analysis was made (at least when the language was first written down), it is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. In some cases the situation is complicated by the fact that language A may employ a system of writing used by language B and which may not be entirely suited to language A.


Is this really a problem in practice? As far as I know, analyzing the phonology of a language and devising a phonemic alphabet for it is far from trivial, but it's still done often in practice with very satisfactory results. (Practical problems usually come from dialectal differences and sound changes that will sooner or later make any phonemic alphabet obsolete.)


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## Hulalessar

Athaulf said:


> Could you give an example? If I understand correctly, you're saying that there are languages whose alphabets sometimes mark distinctions between allophones of a single phoneme.


 
If we go by my grammatolgical definition of a phomeme "as a sound or set of closely related sounds represented by a letter of the alphabet in a given alphabetic writing system" then I think that marking distinctions between allophones is ruled out. What I was pointing out was that a grapheme may be polyvalent, and in practice of course the same phoneme may be represented by different graphemes. I do not personally know any languages where allophones of a single phoneme are distinguished. If there are cases they would probably be regarded as separate phonemes! 



Athaulf said:


> Isn't this the standard definition?


 
Indeed, but I was contrasting the phonological with the grammatological.



Athaulf said:


> Is this really a problem in practice? As far as I know, analyzing the phonology of a language and devising a phonemic alphabet for it is far from trivial, but it's still done often in practice with very satisfactory results. (Practical problems usually come from dialectal differences and sound changes that will sooner or later make any phonemic alphabet obsolete.)


 
There are certainly some cases where it seems a careful phonological analysis was made and a script devised to fit the phonology e.g. the Devanagari used to write Sanskrit and the Hangul script used to write Korean. The application of the roman alphabet to many European languages has tended to be rather haphazard.

The point I was trying to make was that in an alphabetic system of writing the phonological segment anaylsed is the phoneme and its written equivalent is the grapheme. This can lead to a confusion between phonemes and graphemes and I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that if there were no graphemes equivalent to phonemes (in other words no alphabets) the concept of the phoneme would not have arisen, at least in the form it takes.


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## Lugubert

Athaulf said:


> As far as I know, analyzing the phonology of a language and devising a phonemic alphabet for it is far from trivial, but it's still done often in practice with very satisfactory results. (Practical problems usually come from dialectal differences and sound changes that will sooner or later make any phonemic alphabet obsolete.)


Today, I suppose devising a script, alphabetic or not, for a so far scriptless language, often will yield satisfactory results. We have problems with existing systems, for example with "historical" spellings, that are great for etymology research but useless for even guessing current pronunciation.


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## sokol

Lugubert said:


> Today, I suppose devising a script, alphabetic or not, for a so far scriptless language, often will yield satisfactory results. We have problems with existing systems, for example with "historical" spellings, that are great for etymology research but useless for even guessing current pronunciation.



Well, it would in theory - I was once part of a project for designing an alphabet (yes indeed!) for a so far not written variety of _Roman _(Burgenland Gypsy language).
The problem however was: we linguists wanted to give them a purely phonemic script, but the people strongly objected: they wanted to write "like German" (with "sch" = /ʃ/ and so on).
So cultural settings may be a problem here.

But let's not elaborate on that story as it would be stuff for a new thread  - to contribute to the topic at hand: yes, the Latin alphabet, as it was and is used, always was "something like" a phonological analysis of a language.
This is the reason why this alphabet was changed many times during its history: some of those changes were made to make the alphabet more suitable for new uses with languages which previously weren't written.

So basically I agree that:
- an alphabet, that is: the Latin alphabet, is in some form a "folkloristic" phonemical analysis;
- and that therefore there is some relation between an alphabet and its graphemes and the phonemes of a language;
- nevertheless, we make this distinction between grapheme and phoneme exactly because the alphabet only is "a kind of" phonemic script, but not a phonemic script in a scientific sense.

But I don't think that there exists a single language written with the Latin alphabet for which one might claim "each grapheme is one phoneme" - not even the (in some cases quite phonological) Slavic versions of the Latin alphabet.

(And _ahem _... what was the question again?  )


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> But I don't think that there exists a single language written with the Latin alphabet for which one might claim "each grapheme is one phonem" - not even the (in some cases quite phonological) Slavic versions of the Latin alphabet.



I think Turkish comes very close. There is some phonological variation among dialects, but as far as I know, in standard Turkish phonemes correspond exactly to the alphabet letters.


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## Lugubert

Athaulf said:


> I think Turkish comes very close. There is some phonological variation among dialects, but as far as I know, in standard Turkish phonemes correspond exactly to the alphabet letters.


I know embarrassingly little of my neighbours, but I think that Finnish (and Estonian?) will be close as well.


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## darnil

origumi said:


> Compare the Greek "phi" to the Spanish "n-tilde". Similar need - a sound that isn't originally there, similar solution - take an existing letter, slightly modify its shape.


 
Well, I'm afraid that, in fact, Spanish _ñ_ is NOT a slightly modified _n_: in origin, it was a digraph, more precisely one (small) N on top of another (try writing that with pen and paper and you'll see how it fits). Its use as the letter to represent the phoneme [ɲ] comes from the fact that latin geminated _n_ evolved into the Spanish palatal _ñ_ (cf. Latin _canna_ > Sp. _caña_; _annu(s)_ > _año_), so if you already used the digraph to write Latin _añu_ (i.e. _annu_), you had no problem in using it for Castilian _año. _(en.wikipedia; es.wikipedia) Shortly after that usage became usual, it spread to other _ñ_s evolved from other Latin etyma (_puño < pugnu(m); piña < pinea,_ etc.)
The same goes for the cedilla: it is a small visigothic ceda (i.e. a small letter _z_) placed under a "normal" _c_ to make it sound like _c_ before _a, o, u._ (see this -English- or esto -español-).
Sorry: they are not _n_ or _c_ modified with a trait, but digraphs.


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## Hulalessar

darnil said:


> Sorry: they are not _n_ or _c_ modified with a trait, but digraphs.


It depends how you define digraph. I think a digraph is generally considered to be a combination of two alphabetic _letters_ to represent a single sound, and "letters" means "letters as currently used in the writing system". Modern Spanish does not use a superscript <n>. Whilst historically <ñ> and <ç> may have developed from digraphs, it is perhaps a misnomer to refer to them as such. It is simply a question of labels. It is best to treat such instances and "true" digraphs according to the conventions of the writing systems in which they appear. Thus in Spanish both <ñ> and <ll> are letters of the alphabet, but in French <ç> is not - it is simply _c cedille_.


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## sokol

Well, there's only a tiny step from ligatures*) to accented letters, and wether you want to draw that line (and where) really is arbitrary in some cases.
*) That's the correct term as digraphs would be German "ch" for [x] or "sch" (trigraph) etc.

In old Latin script (as used in medieval times, in many languages then - not only Spanish or Portuguese; also for Latin for example, even when written by German native speakers who most likely did pronounce their "n"s in their version of Latin pronunciation) the tilde (and also macron = a bar over a letter) was used to signify omitted "n" (which did not mean that "n" wasn't spoken, or that the vowel was nasalised - it only was an abbreviation, a kind of shorthand).

Historically, Spanish eñe thus indeed could be seen as a ligature (or as shorthand, but it doesn't really matter), as well as Portuguese ã.
But if you look at eñe without considering its history it looks very much like an accented letter: the origin is no longer obvious, contrary to /æ œ/ where it is still obvious that they are derived from digraphs "ae" and "oe".

And these examples, then, also show the development of digraph to ligature:
- ae > æ
- oe > œ
Or, with Spanish eñe:
- nn > ñ (shorthand) > ñ (no longer recognised as shorthand)

In some cases ligatures (which originally go back to digraphs) have even lead to the development of a new letter which does not show anymore its origins, like German ß:
- ſz (or also: ſs; in Fraktur script still recognisable as ligature, see explanation and img file in Wiki) > ß (modern fonts: a new letter)
The "ſ" = "long s" mainly was used in Fraktur script (it was also used with Latin fonts but came out of use long ago).

And don't forget that our & originally is Latin "et", written in shorthand, which over time developped into a new character which is used for "and" in all languages.


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## darnil

I think that both of you, Hualessar and Sokol, have settled things perfectly well. Thank you!


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## elirlandes

For information, the Latin alphabet as used in modern Irish contains only the following 18 letters:

a b c d e f g h i l m n o p r s t u

[j k q v w x y z] do not exist and foreign words with these letters are more usually written using only the letters above.

For example, "taxi" (supposedly the same in every language to make things easy for travellers) is rendered as "tacsaí".

"h" does not have a sound of its own but rather provides "lenition" of some other consonants, rendering:
bh => v
ch => kh
dh => dh
fh => silent
gh => gh
mh => w
ph => f
sh => h
th => h


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## 2crudedudes

Outsider said:


> It's not just Germanic languages (actually, several Germanic languages do not use the letter W regularly): also some Celtic languages, Polish (a Slavic language), and several African languages. Plus, it's widely used in the transcription of languages not written with the Latin alphabet, such as Chinese and Japanese.
> 
> It makes sense to me that Ñ, Ç, etc., would be considered compound characters, rather than "atomic" letters, for the sake of graphic simplicity. If you included all those symbols in the Latin alphabet, how many letters would it end up having?...



you keep referring to graphic use of letters as if there aren't any other redundant glyphs. the W sound could easily be represented by a U or a Y without needing the additional symbol, and Asian transcriptions into the Latin alphabet don't HAVE to use W. C, K, and Q all represent the same sound. C and S can have the same sound. W has no place in the LATIN alphabet, and if we're gonna include it, we may as well include ñ and ç


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## berndf

I don't know any transcriptions of an Asian language where k and q represent the same sound. What did you have in mind?


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## fdb

Except, of course, Vietnamese national script (invented by Portuguese Jesuits in the 16th century), which uses c, k, and q all for the phoneme /k/, under fairly well-defined orthographic conditions.


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## Linnets

Hulalessar said:


> I am certainly not denying that <z> is a letter of the Italian alphabet. The point I was making was this: if <x> is not a letter of the English alphabet because it represents (among other sounds) /ks/, then <z> cannot be a letter of the Italian alphabet because it also (always) represents two sounds - sometimes /ts/ and sometimes /dz/.


Actually there's a difference: while English (and Latin) <x> represents _always_ _two_ phonemes (/k + s/), Italian <z> _always_ represents _on_e phoneme (sometimes /ts/ and sometimes /dz/) which can _never_ be analysed as /t + s/ or /d + z/ (except possibly some Northern dialects, but that's not the case of Standard Italian).


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