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- Developed from the Etruscan alphabet at some time before 600 bce, it can be traced through Etruscan, Greek, and Phoenician scripts to the North Semitic alphabet used in Syria and Palestine about 1100 bce.
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The script, named uncial and halfuncial, used, for example, by St. Jerome in translating the Bible, lasted about five centuries; as, after the barbarian invasions of the West, did the Beneventan script of Southern Italy; while Irish forms lasted even longer. The pointed or Gothic, called ‘Black Letter’ type today, and still employed by the ...
Nov 8, 2019 · There was a massive shift in Roman residents' ancestry, the researchers found, but that ancestry came primarily from the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East, possibly because of denser populations there relative to the Roman Empire's western reaches in Europe and Africa.
- Ancient-Origins
In ancient Roman times there were two main types of Latin script, capital letters and cursive. There were also varieties of writing that mixed capitals and cursive or semicursive letters; Latin uncial script developed from such a mixed form in the 3rd century ce.
Upper CaseLower CaseAaBbCcDd- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Overview
- Later development of the Latin alphabet
As already mentioned, the original Etruscan alphabet consisted of 26 letters, of which the Romans adopted only 21. They did not retain the three Greek aspirate letters (theta, phi, and chi) in the alphabet because there were no corresponding Latin sounds but did employ them to represent the numbers 100, 1,000, and 50. Of the three Etruscan s sounds, the Romans kept what had been the Greek sigma. The symbol that represented the aspirate later received the shape H as it did in Etruscan. I was the sign both of the vowel i and the consonant j. X was added later to represent the sound x and was placed at the end of the alphabet. At a later stage, after 250 bce, the seventh letter, the Greek zeta, was dropped because Latin did not require it, and a new letter, G, made by adding a bar to the lower end of C, was placed in its position.
After the conquest of Greece in the 1st century bce, a large number of Greek words were borrowed by the Latin language. At that time the symbols Y and Z were adopted from the contemporary Greek alphabet, but only to transliterate Greek words; hence, they do not appear in normal Latin inscriptions. They were placed at the end of the alphabet, and the Latin script thus became one of 23 symbols.
A few permanent additions or, rather, differentiations from existing letters occurred during the Middle Ages, when the signs for u and v, and i and j, previously written interchangeably for either the vowel or the consonant sound, became conventionalized as u and i for vowels and v and j for consonants. W was introduced by Norman scribes to represent the English sound w (a semivowel) and to differentiate it from the v sound.
The connection of the capital letters of modern writing with the ancient Semitic-Greek-Etruscan-Latin letters is evident even to a layman. The connection of the minuscules (i.e., the small letters) with the ancient Latin letters is not as evident, but in fact both the majuscules and the minuscules descended from the same ancient Latin alphabet. The different shapes of the small letters are the result of a transformation of the ancient letters by the elimination of a part of the letter—as, for instance, h from H or b from B—or by lengthening a part of it—for instance, d from D. Moreover, the change of the Latin writing into the modern script was induced by the nature of the tool, primarily the pen, and the material of writing, mainly papyrus and parchment, and, from the 14th century onward, also paper. It was the pen, with its preference for curves, that eliminated the angular forms; it was the papyrus, and still more the parchment or vellum, and, in modern times, paper, that made these curves possible.
In ancient times the minuscule did not exist, but there were several varieties of the capital and the cursive scripts. There were three varieties of the capitals: the lapidary capitals (used mainly on stone monuments); the elegant book capitals, somewhat rounded in shape; and the rustic capitals, which were less carefully elaborated than the lapidary script and not as round as the book capitals but more easily and quickly written. In everyday life the cursive script—i.e., the current hand—was developed with continuous modifications for greater speed. There were several varieties of it, such as those of Pompeii and Alburnus Major (a town in ancient Dacia, modern Roşia Montană, Romania). Between the monumental and the cursive scripts there was a whole series of types that had some of the peculiarities of each group. There were lapidary mixed scripts and book semicursive scripts, and there was the early uncial, or rather semiuncial, script of the 3rd century ce, which seems to have developed into the beautiful uncial script.
When the various European countries had shaken off the political authority of Rome and the learned communities had been dissolved and their members scattered, a marked change took place in the development of the Latin literary, or book, hand. Several national hands, styles of the Latin cursive, assumed different features. There thus developed on the European continent and in the British Isles the five basic national hands, each giving rise to several varieties: Italian, Merovingian in France, Visigothic in Spain, Germanic, and Insular or Anglo-Irish hands. At the end of the 8th century the Carolingian (Caroline) hand developed and, after becoming the official script and literary hand of the Frankish empire, developed as the main book hand of western Europe in the following two centuries. The combination of the majuscules, or capital letters, and minuscules, or small letters, can be attributed mainly to the Carolingian script.
As already mentioned, the original Etruscan alphabet consisted of 26 letters, of which the Romans adopted only 21. They did not retain the three Greek aspirate letters (theta, phi, and chi) in the alphabet because there were no corresponding Latin sounds but did employ them to represent the numbers 100, 1,000, and 50. Of the three Etruscan s sounds, the Romans kept what had been the Greek sigma. The symbol that represented the aspirate later received the shape H as it did in Etruscan. I was the sign both of the vowel i and the consonant j. X was added later to represent the sound x and was placed at the end of the alphabet. At a later stage, after 250 bce, the seventh letter, the Greek zeta, was dropped because Latin did not require it, and a new letter, G, made by adding a bar to the lower end of C, was placed in its position.
After the conquest of Greece in the 1st century bce, a large number of Greek words were borrowed by the Latin language. At that time the symbols Y and Z were adopted from the contemporary Greek alphabet, but only to transliterate Greek words; hence, they do not appear in normal Latin inscriptions. They were placed at the end of the alphabet, and the Latin script thus became one of 23 symbols.
A few permanent additions or, rather, differentiations from existing letters occurred during the Middle Ages, when the signs for u and v, and i and j, previously written interchangeably for either the vowel or the consonant sound, became conventionalized as u and i for vowels and v and j for consonants. W was introduced by Norman scribes to represent the English sound w (a semivowel) and to differentiate it from the v sound.
The connection of the capital letters of modern writing with the ancient Semitic-Greek-Etruscan-Latin letters is evident even to a layman. The connection of the minuscules (i.e., the small letters) with the ancient Latin letters is not as evident, but in fact both the majuscules and the minuscules descended from the same ancient Latin alphabet. The different shapes of the small letters are the result of a transformation of the ancient letters by the elimination of a part of the letter—as, for instance, h from H or b from B—or by lengthening a part of it—for instance, d from D. Moreover, the change of the Latin writing into the modern script was induced by the nature of the tool, primarily the pen, and the material of writing, mainly papyrus and parchment, and, from the 14th century onward, also paper. It was the pen, with its preference for curves, that eliminated the angular forms; it was the papyrus, and still more the parchment or vellum, and, in modern times, paper, that made these curves possible.
In ancient times the minuscule did not exist, but there were several varieties of the capital and the cursive scripts. There were three varieties of the capitals: the lapidary capitals (used mainly on stone monuments); the elegant book capitals, somewhat rounded in shape; and the rustic capitals, which were less carefully elaborated than the lapidary script and not as round as the book capitals but more easily and quickly written. In everyday life the cursive script—i.e., the current hand—was developed with continuous modifications for greater speed. There were several varieties of it, such as those of Pompeii and Alburnus Major (a town in ancient Dacia, modern Roşia Montană, Romania). Between the monumental and the cursive scripts there was a whole series of types that had some of the peculiarities of each group. There were lapidary mixed scripts and book semicursive scripts, and there was the early uncial, or rather semiuncial, script of the 3rd century ce, which seems to have developed into the beautiful uncial script.
When the various European countries had shaken off the political authority of Rome and the learned communities had been dissolved and their members scattered, a marked change took place in the development of the Latin literary, or book, hand. Several national hands, styles of the Latin cursive, assumed different features. There thus developed on the European continent and in the British Isles the five basic national hands, each giving rise to several varieties: Italian, Merovingian in France, Visigothic in Spain, Germanic, and Insular or Anglo-Irish hands. At the end of the 8th century the Carolingian (Caroline) hand developed and, after becoming the official script and literary hand of the Frankish empire, developed as the main book hand of western Europe in the following two centuries. The combination of the majuscules, or capital letters, and minuscules, or small letters, can be attributed mainly to the Carolingian script.
Differences from Roman script. While Roman script would ultimately replace runes in most contexts, it differed significantly from runic script. For example, on the differences between the use of Anglo-Saxon runes and the Latin script that would come to replace them, runologist Victoria Symons says:
- Runic
- Germanic languages
- left-to-right, boustrophedon
Oct 14, 2009 · Beginning in the eighth century B.C., Ancient Rome grew from a small town on central Italy’s Tiber River into an empire that at its peak encompassed most of continental Europe, Britain, much of...
Dec 9, 2014 · All of these differences can be clearly seen in a comparison of the old typeface with Morison and Lardent’s new creation, which The Times published in a pamphlet around the time of the change. A comparison of Times New Roman with the typeface it replaced. The Times tested its type thoroughly.
