The latin alphabet

Developed from the Etruscan alphabet in c. made in 7 ВС. The earliest inscriptions were made in boustrophedon style¹, but after c. 4 ВС the Latin writing reads from left to right. Only 20 letters at first: ABCDEFHIKLMNOPQRS TUX. The Latin alphabet became one of 23 symbols by с. I ВС when G,.Y and Z² were added.

The signs for ‘U’ and ‘V’, for ‘I’ and ‘J’ were written interchangeably for vowels and consonants. They were conventionalized as ‘U’ and ‘I’ for vowels and ‘V’ and ‘J’ for
consonants in the Middle Ages⁴.

From c.VII AD the Latin alphabet was used by lots of West European 1-ges (West Germanic VII-XII, North Germanic XII - XIII)

The modern national alphabets are, strictly speaking, adaptations of the Latin to these 1-ges.There were added different diacritical marks (́, ̀ ˙ ˙, ~)⁵, ligatures (ǽ, œ, ŋ, β), rj, Я), transformed letters of the Latin alphabet (đ, 3). All of them reflect the specific features of different national sound systems appropriately

¹The boustrophedon style (meaning in Greek) ‘as the ox draws the plow’ – “письмо по борознах” or “поворот плуга” in which lines run alternately from right to left and left to right.

²The letter ‘G’ appeared in 230 ВС. It was made by adding a bar to the lower end of ‘C’. ‘Z’ and ‘Y’ appeared in с. I ВС after the conquest of Greece to transliterate Greek borrowings.

³Most of the Latin letter names, such as ‘be’, ‘ce’, ‘de’ for the Greek ‘alpha’, ‘beta’, ‘gamma’ and so on, were taken over from the Etruscans.

⁴W was introduced by the Norman scribes to differentiate the bilabial semivowel ‘W’ from ‘V’. ‘J’ appears at the at the Epoch of the Renaissance. The regular usage of ‘J’ and ‘W’ refers to the epoch of the Renaissance as well.

⁵See Table 11. App. for the names of diacritical marks.