Talk:Latin alphabet/Archive 1

{GA}

Use of abbreviations

I can guess what OF, F, means, but LL ... ? Please expand the various abbreviations at least once, and better every time -- we don't have to save paper. The only excuse IMHO is if it becomes a bore to read (but reformulation is probably better then). --Robbe

P.S.: Yes, I used IMHO up there. And now P.S., I'm obviously a repeat offender ... My argument is that (a) talk pages have less stringent "rules", and that (b) these abbreviations are more widely understood in this social context than F for French.

Uhhh... hello, Robbe? LL is not an abbreviation. --Ashi

Open Webster's Dictionary and you find those abbreviations mean Old French, French and Late Latin. Relevant to etymology, but not the development of the alphabet. Cbdorsett 19:41, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Second paragraph

I corrected a bit the second paragraph, still needs rephrasing (I found the information in a Russian Latin textbook). --Uriyan

Long S

There's a mention of ſ in German, nut nothing yet about its origins. The long ſ was used in English too, & often mistaken by modern readers as an "f".

Rename to "Latin script"?

This article should probably be rescoped to be the "Latin Script", not the "Latin Alphabet". Script is the technical / academic term for the writing system as a whole, including word formation, punctuation, and line layout. The term alphabet strictly covers only the letters in the script. Also, some scripts such as Chinese-derived scripts are not based on alphabets. This same comment applies to Greek Alphabet and other "Alphabet" articles. I don't feel ready to take the time to implement this change now, though. --Jdlh

This article isn't about word formation, punctuation, and line layout. It is about the Latin Alphabet, and that's why it's called "Latin alphabet". Also, "Latin alphabet" is the more commonly used name than "Latin script" by a factor of more than 3 to 1 [1]. "Script" is a technical term used to generalize all the different writing systems, but an alphabet is a kind of script, so why not be precise? If you think there are enough distinctions between "Latin script" and "Latin alphabet", why don't you create a Latin script article that contains information about the Latin script? Nohat 03:53, 2004 Apr 23 (UTC)

• I think it is OK to have an article just on the alphabet (it is too long already as such). There is already an article on the Latin language. So the details of the script that lie between the two could go into an article Latin orthography or Latin spelling.Jorge Stolfi 01:35, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"Latin alphabet" vs. "Collation"

Note: Wrt. collating sequences there seems to be a duplication of effort between Latin alphabet and Collation. Perhaps it would be best to move everything about also callation of latin alphabets to "Collation"? -- Egil 20:57 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

AE and OE ligatures

How come there is no mention of Æ or Œ in English in the article? Rmhermen 02:03, Nov 25, 2003 (UTC)

Or in Latin, for that matter. They were definitely used in Medieval Latin, and in some pronunciation systems they stood for distinct vowel sounds.Jorge Stolfi 01:35, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

In English Æ and Œ are mere ligatures, not separate letters. Ligatures are of the field of typography, not of alphabets. Certainly both are letters in their own right in some scandinavian languages, but not in English. Therefore they're mentioned in the Ligatures section, as it's the appropriate one. --logixoul 11:57, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Very old Latin alphabet

The original latin alphabet did not have G, Y or Z either. Somebody should correct that. Rumpelstiltskin 20:54, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Copyvio?

It would be nice if the copyright violation thing was elaborated. Surely the whole page isn't broken? I've taken a cursory look at the external link and it didn't look like it was the source for the whole page here. --Shallot 21:10, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I've kicked out the offending history paragraphs, the rest seems unrelated to http://victorian.fortunecity.com/vangogh/555/Spell/spel-sys-mix.html. --Shallot 21:17, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

You're right, the history stuff is all that was from that page. The trick is that the copyvio is very old - the oldest revision of the article (before the move from Roman alphabet) is much more obviously stolen, although there is some original content; I suspect the original copyvio predates what's now in the database. So the history stuff wasn't just recently added onto an otherwise fine article, it's that the rest of the article grew up around it. I guess just kicking out the offending paragraphs is the best thing to in a case like this, but not all of the articles I listed on Wikipedia:Copyright problems have been edited this much. DopefishJustin (・∀・) 03:08, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The bit about Manios, which I used as an example of non-applicability of Grassmann's law, was removed, though it's not on the page the copyvio was copied from, which was obviously copied from somewhere else as shown by the stars. Can Manios be reworded and put back in? -phma 00:42, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

If you can make it fit in the current article, I don't see why not. --Shallot

Maybe it would be better to put it in Latin language. Anyone know more about Old Latin? -phma 01:30, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Exclusive letters

What is meant by this? Is it just a sampling of other letters beyond the English 26? It's kind of odd as a subsection under the description "As used by the English language, it contains the following characters" — Gwalla | Talk 04:32, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, its odd. But perhaps we first should get a consistent idea, what to put in which alphabet article. See Talk:Alphabet. -- Pjacobi 07:42, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I dislike this section as it uses examples of accents added to the 26 core letters rather than just bona fide distinct characters like the ligatures e.g. German Ezsett (which features) or the Ampersand (&) (Which is missing). Additionally I am not sure if a circumflex is ever used with a capital letter (I may be wrong about that but certainly remember something about capitals losing accents in French lessons at school!) Accents are no more than punctuation marks of a sort Dainamo 27 Oct 2004.

I'm not sure whether it's appropriate or not. Certainly, it's not exhaustive, so I'd suggest it should go, or be replaced with a link to the Categories. — OwenBlacker 23:47, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

In Portuguese even when printed in caps, the diacriticals are retained. Portuguese uses circumflexes over vowels. Nelson Ricardo 00:44, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

By any chance should the letters on the Uncommon Latin letters page be added to the exclusive letters section? Just a thought. --Evice 05:50, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

Wh is not a letter. It is a digraph. Evertype 11:08, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)

It seemed to be considered a single letter in Maori language. I guess the situation would be similar to old Dutch IJ, and old Spanish LL, then... =S

Maybe the info should be removed from the "Exclusive letters" section, and instead be added to the Collating section, although I am no expert on Maori Collation...

"Original" latin alphabet

I am somewhat confused by the following table, that claims to depicture an original Latin alphabet:

A	B	C	D	E	F	I	H	I	K	L
M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	V	X

Looking in my textbook from highschool, I would rather expect:

8th century B.C. — adapted from the Etruscan alphabet:
A	B	C (G)		D	E	F	Z	H	I
K	L	M	N	O	Γ (P)		Q	P (R)
S	T	V	X
1st century B.C. — after the conquest of Greece:
A	B	C		D	E	F	G	H	I
K	L	M	N	O	P		Q	R
S	T	V	X	Y	Z

...but I'm sure there exist several different scholarly opinions of what a true "original" latin alphabet looked like. --Johan Magnus 22:51, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I reckon there's no reason not to be bold and replace the content with the version you've jsut put here (though wikifying the the table syntax would be nice ;o) — OwenBlacker 23:49, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Well, my problem is that I'm not particularly knowledgable. Being bold is a good thing, but Wikipedia ought to strive for a higher degree of correctness than barely understood simplified schemes from secondary education. --Johan Magnus 11:36, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Navbox

If anyone cares i made a new and improved latin alphabet navbox that could be used on the individual letter pages. It's adapted directly from the Cyrillic box, and i think makes things a little more open and unambiguous. Feel free to make changes, or start implementing it, if i dont get around to it first. Its at Template: Latin alphabet navbox. Xyzzyva 19:19, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)

Who runs the alphabet

I like this link. Not least because I, apparently, run the letter þ. Evertype 12:31, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)

Maybe so. If someone knows an actual published reference for the idea that thorn came from the letter D, I'd bet you would be the first to provide it. :) Cbdorsett 20:06, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good edit, Mirv

Nice job of cleaning out detritus. Sure, what went on in Egypt in 1800 BC is interesting to everybody, but it has nothing to do with the later adoption of the alphabet from the Etruscans. That info is already explained well somewhere else (I forget where, but it wouldn't be hard to find). Cbdorsett 17:45, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Don't Delete If You Don't Know.... Find Out First and Verify!

Before deleting again, read the reference. It's posted for a reason. As for hypothesis: Origins of chess, Great Pyramid of Giza reference on bottom, Moscow and Rhind Mathematical Papyri.

The suggestion that Latin was an artificial language, devised to match a puzzle poem, is so ridiculous as to not even merit a mention, no matter what crackpot sources you provide to back it up. That Latin was a naturally evolving spoken language, with many genetic relatives (close relatives like Oscan and Umbrian and other italic languages, and much older relatives like greek, sanskrit and gothic) is extremely well attested. Or are you going to suggest that proto-indoeuropean was an artificial language, devised before the invention of writing to allow one of its descendents to match some puzzle ten thousand years later? User:Mirv did well to delete that. -Lethe | Talk 23:05, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Seems to me that if some revision called Latin "artificial" (a revision that for some reason I cannot find), the editor was thinking that at some point in time, Latin was not used daily as an oral language, but only in scholarly works. "Artificial", when used to refer to languages, refers to what we now call conlangs, that is, languages that were deliberately constructed. Regardless, all that information belongs somewhere else, not in a barebones description of the alphabet itself. Cbdorsett 19:38, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This version contains this quote (due to Roylee):

"There is also evidence that the Latin language itself was not a haphazard product of spoken usage but actually purposefully contrived: The most plausible explanation for the sator square's existence is that the Latin language was originally built around it rather than vice versa. (See Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas.)"

You can imagine someone arguing that literary Latin was different from the spoken language. That's a well-known fact. But this quote claims that "the Latin language [..] was [..] contrived" to explain some square. Patent nonsense. Lethe | Talk 20:20, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

"for" vs. "from"

Explanation for why I reverted this edit: Alphabet, at the time, said "the alphabets of Europe, including the Roman alphabet and its descendants and the Cyrillic alphabet, developed for the eastern Slavic languages, and the runic alphabets are all themselves ultimately descended from the Greek alphabet." (emphasis is mine.) It was not entirely clear that "developed for the eastern Slavic languages" applied only to the Cyrillic alphabet, which explains the following gross misunderstanding that was inserted into this article:

the alphabets of Europe, including the Latin alphabet and its descendants, as well as the Cyrillic alphabet, all developed from the eastern Slavic languages.

As far as I know nobody thinks the Latin alphabet developed from an eastern Slavic language, but if there are theories to that effect a reference should be easy to find. —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 19:56, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

One Contradictory Reference:

Interesting article ... 18 pages long! But you must sign up as a member to read it. Sorry.

page 13: 2005 Encyclopædia Britannica

Two early Slavic alphabets, the Cyrillic and the Glagolitic, were invented [circa AD 850] by ... Greeks ... who became apostles to the southern Slavs, whom they converted to Christianity. [So, technically, the Cyrillic is of Slavic origin, but invented by Greeks who were living there.]

page 15: [2]

An opinion that used to be commonly held, and still is held by many, is that the Latin alphabet was derived directly from the Greek in a form used by Greek colonists in Italy. The theory rested on an assertion that the Latin alphabet corresponds to the Chalcidian variety of the western group of Greek scripts employed at Cumae in Campania, southern Italy. This theory is unlikely; indeed, as already mentioned, the Etruscan alphabet was the link between the Greek and the Latin. For instance, the most interesting feature in the inscription of the Praeneste Fibula is the device of combining the letters f and h to represent the Latin sound of f. This was one of the Etruscan ways of representing the same sound. Also, most of the Latin letter names, such as a, be, ce, de for the Greek alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and so on, were taken over from the Etruscans.

Indeed, for the first six centuries of its existence, Roman writing was relatively unimpressive. Only with the advent of the 1st century BC were there signs of magnificence to come:

The adaptation of the Etruscan alphabet to the Latin language probably took place some time in the 7th century BC. From this century there is a gold brooch [bearing an] inscription, written in an early form of Latin, run[ning] from right to left.

Dating from the end of the 7th or the beginning of the 6th century BC [are] inscription[s] ... also written from right to left. Some Sabine inscriptions belong to the 5th or the 4th century BC. There are also a few inscriptions belonging to the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.

Did ya'll know that our Roman ancestors originally read from right to left? Why? Maybe because they saw the sun as rising to the right and setting to the left? Maybe because ancient Egyptians perceived the "southern" (i.e., the "African") hemisphere as the "top of the world?" Remember: Lower Egypt is to the north of Upper Egypt! Maybe it was the ancient Egyptians who originally taught the ancient Romans how to read and write??? Speculation.

page 17: [3]

At a later stage, after 250 BC, 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 BC, [the Romans borrowed] a large number of Greek words.... Y and Z were adopted ... but only [so the Romans could] transliterate [the otherwise incomprehensible] Greek words; hence, they do not appear in normal Latin inscriptions.

As for the runes: page 16

The origin of the runes offers many difficult problems and has been hotly argued by scholars and others. Some scholars propounded the 6th century BC Greek alphabet [or late BC Greek cursive] as the prototype of the runes, [and others] proposed the Latin alphabet as the source.... The most probable theory, supported recently by many scholars, is that the runic script derived from a North Etruscan, Alpine alphabet. In that case, it is very probable that it originated about the 2nd century BC or a little later.... The gradual displacement of the runes coincided with the increasing influence of the Roman Catholic Church.

Happy Reading!! -- Roylee

Order

I have a question I've been wondering about. When was the standard order of the Latin alphabet established? Was it ever different? What was the basis for this order, is there any rhyme or reason to it? For what purpose was the order created? Thanks. Deco 22:51, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

It was derived from Etruscan. The Etruscan order itself came from an earlier, logographic script - that means that graphems didn't represent sounds, but ideas. Like drawing a snowflake to represent a snowflake. See History of the alphabet. BTW for the current roughly acoustic usage there is really no excuse for such an illogical and inconsistent order IMHO... And if it wasn't people's unnecessary conservatism, it would have been reformed quite a time ago. --logixoul 12:13, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Move to Latin character set and revise this article

This article needs to be about the letters used to write ancient and modern Latin. The information here is all the Latin character set. These are not the same thing at all and is confusing the ongoing debate about what characters should be used in Wikipedia articles. --Tysto 17:29, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Cyrillic in Wikipedia

Please see the new page at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Cyrillic), aimed at

1. Documenting the use of Cyrillic and its transliteration in Wikipedia
2. Discussing potential revision of current practices

—Michael Z. 2005-12-9 20:46 Z