How can Latin be dead and alive at the same time? We don’t speak it every day (unless you’re a Latin teacher or student), and yet just by reading this sentence right now, you’re using Latin. That’s because the Latin alphabet is alive and well throughout modern world languages—with a few minor tweaks.
Discover how the Latin alphabet came to be the most popular writing system in the world, centuries after the language itself fell out of common usage. Learn which languages use the Latin alphabet today, whether the Latin and Roman alphabet are the same thing, and how you can start learning a language with a new alphabet today.
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Origin of the Latin alphabet
When you write in English (or Spanish, or Italian, or many other languages), you’re writing in the Latin alphabet. Today’s modern 26-letter Latin alphabet isn’t too different from Old Latin, which first appeared in historical inscriptions around 700 B.C.E.
The Old Latin alphabet was derived from the Etruscan alphabet, which came from the Greek alphabet, and consisted of 20-21 letters and no spaces (known as scriptio continua). After 75 B.C.E., Classical Latin emerged, which had 23 letters and became the literary orthography (spelling standard) for Roman intellectuals and writers.
Early in the 1st century C.E., Roman Emperor Claudius tried to add three additional letters to the Latin alphabet (Ↄ, Ⅎ, Ⱶ), but they fell out of use during the Classical period. Later forms of Latin included Medieval Latin during the Middle Ages, Modern Latin during the Renaissance, and Contemporary Latin, which is taught and studied today and includes all 26 letters shared by the English alphabet.
What letters are in the Latin alphabet?
If you’ve ever seen an ancient artifact with a Latin inscription, or a literary message written in Old Latin, you may have noticed that something didn’t look quite right. Some letters that you are used to seeing were missing, for example, or other letters were standing in for others. And the letters all ran together, since Old Latin used no spaces!
The Old Latin alphabet only had 20-21 letters (depending on the source and date in history) and consisted of only capital letters and cursive script. Lowercase Latin letters emerged during the Middle Ages and were mainly used for copying books and manuscripts.
See the differences between the Old Latin alphabet and the Modern Latin alphabet below:
| Old Latin Alphabet | Modern Latin Alphabet | Example Word |
| A | A | absum |
| B | B | bellus |
| C | C | canto |
| D | D | disputo |
| E | E | ergo |
| F | F | fides |
| G | gloria | |
| H | H | humanus |
| I | I | ianua |
| J | juvenis | |
| K | K | kalendae |
| L | L | ludus |
| M | M | mille |
| N | N | natio |
| O | O | oratio |
| P | P | porta |
| Q | Q | quo |
| R | R | regius |
| S | S | saluto |
| T | T | terra |
| U | universum | |
| V | V | verbum |
| W | warra | |
| X | atrox | |
| Y | dactylo | |
| Z | zagonis |
Missing and rare letters in the Latin alphabet
The letters G, J, U, W, and Y are missing from the Classical Latin alphabet, as they weren’t in use until later in history. The letters Y and Z were derived from the Greek letters upsilon (Y) and zeta (Z), and were dropped from the Latin alphabet as Latin didn’t use these sounds much, only to be added back in during the 1st century C.E. to accommodate Greek loanwords during the Classical Latin era. That’s why you won’t see many Latin words with “Y” or “Z” that didn’t come from Greek or another language.
The letter G was also inspired by a Greek letter, gamma (Γ), and was added into Z’s former place (the seventh alphabet position, where zeta falls in Greek) when Z was removed. Its purpose was to separate the softer “guh” sound from the harder “kuh” sound of C, which is why capital G and C look so similar.
The letters U and W came from the Latin V, which was pronounced the way we say W now (“wuh”). Both letters appeared in the Latin and English alphabets after the Norman invasion of 1066 to represent their corresponding sounds in Germanic words. The letter J was added to the alphabet in the 17th century to replace the letter I as an initial consonant sound.
And while some letters made their way from Greek to Latin, they were rarely used. The letter K, for example, had the same sound as the Latin C and Q, so it wasn’t a common spelling choice in Classical Latin. It existed mainly in Greek loanwords (like kalendae) and later became more frequent in other languages that use the Latin alphabet.
Latin alphabet pronunciation differences
Most consonants and vowels in Latin have the same pronunciations today, such as B sounding like buh, M sounding like muh, and vowels having both long and short sounds. However, there are a few pronunciation differences in Old and Classical Latin:
- V made a W sound (and was also used for U in writing).
- C always had a hard sound (like cut, not cite).
- CH sounded like K (more like “ckh”).
- G always had a hard sound (like good, not gem).
- PH sounded like “puh,” not “fuh” (that pronunciation came from Greek).
- An I in front of a word or vowel sounded like Y (as in young), or later, J.
- R was always trilled or rolled, similar to Spanish or Italian.
- Double consonants were pronounced as separate sounds (as in NN or PP).
One similarity between the Classical and Modern Latin alphabets is that Q is always paired with U (although it was spelled V in the early alphabet days). Also, several diphthongs are the same, including “EI”, “UI”, and “AU,” along with “OE” (sounds like “oi”) and “AE” (sounds like “ai”).
What languages use the Latin alphabet?
Even though Latin is considered a dead language by many, the Latin alphabet is the most widely used alphabet in the world. Its vocabulary, grammar, spelling, and pronunciation are also present in many languages throughout the Western Hemisphere, including the Americas and Europe, as well as many African and Oceanic languages. Latin-based Romance languages use the Latin alphabet, as do most Germanic languages around the world.
Latin’s historical spread throughout the Roman Empire, plus the limited availability of printing characters during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, led to a standardization of the Latin alphabet, and accordingly, the languages that use it. Discover which languages use the Latin alphabet today, and how they have altered their writing systems to reflect their language’s pronunciation and grammar patterns.
English
While the modern English alphabet uses the Latin alphabet with few alterations, that wasn’t always the case. Old English was written in the Anglo-Saxon runic alphabet called Futhorc until the Latin alphabet, but made its way into English with the spread of Christianity in the 7th century C.E.
Old English initially included additional letters to reflect the “th” sound—thorn (þ) and eth (ð)—as well as ash (æ) for the long “a” sound, but dropped them during the spread of printed materials. If you’ve ever seen the word ye, meaning “the,” in Old English writing, you’re probably seeing a remnant of the letter þ, as printers often substituted the hard-to-find þ for the similar-looking Y. Modern Icelandic still uses the þ letter today.
French
The French alphabet uses the same 26 letters as English and Latin. But anyone who’s studied or spoken both languages knows that the similarities often end there, as French pronunciation is quite different from both these languages.
French began as a Gaulish dialect of the Celtic language group, adopting Vulgar Latin as a vernacular and the Latin alphabet when the Romans took power throughout Europe. It was also heavily influenced by Germanic languages in the surrounding regions, which affected its spelling conventions and word pronunciation.
Like Latin, French vocabulary rarely uses the letters K and W, except in words it has borrowed from other languages. It uses diacritics (accent marks) to its letters, such as ç, é, â, or ü, to add sounds present in French but not in Latin.
German
Like English, German uses the Latin alphabet even though it’s not a Romance language. The German alphabet has the same 26 letters as English, Latin, and French, although it includes special characters—umlauted vowels (ä, ö, ü) and the Eszett (ß)—to accurately depict German sounds in the Latin alphabet. Some German writing guides may depict these characters as an extra four letters at the end of the alphabet.
German began using the Latin alphabet around the 8th century C.E., similarly to when other European countries adopted the writing system along with Christianity. Before that time, it used a similar runic alphabet to English (Futhark).
Italian
The modern Italian alphabet is considered to be the most similar to the Old Latin alphabet, as it only includes 21 letters and shares many of the same pronunciation styles as Latin. Before the standardization and implementation of the Latin alphabet, Italian used the Etruscan alphabet in its writing, the ancestor orthography of the Latin language.
Like Latin, Italian words generally don’t include J, W, X, or Y unless the word comes from another language. It also excludes K, and unlike Latin, the Italian alphabet does use the letter Z. Italian also uses accents (such as á and ó) to reflect its pronunciation, but these accented letters aren’t considered separate letters.
Spanish
If you’ve ever spoken or studied Spanish, you know that its alphabet is pretty similar to Latin—with a few exceptions. The Spanish alphabet has 27 letters, adding the eñe (ñ) letter for a sound not depicted in the Latin alphabet. It also included the letters ch and ll, but they were removed in the late 20th century. Some Spanish writing guides would also include digraphs rr and ll, also distinctive sounds in Spanish, alongside the alphabet. Spanish also doesn’t use K, W, or X outside loanwords from other languages.
Before adopting the Latin alphabet as its writing system, the Spanish language mainly used the Iberian alphabet to depict its vocabulary. Once the Roman Empire made its way into Spain, Spanish began to use the more popular Latin alphabet.
Swedish
Swedish also uses the Latin alphabet, though it adds several letters to reflect the Germanic language’s variety of sounds. The Swedish alphabet has 29 letters, adding å, ä, and ö after the letter Z. Additionally, the Latin J sounds like Y in Swedish, as in the words ja (yes) and jul (Christmas). Other distinct Swedish sounds like sj and stj are common in Swedish vocabulary, but don’t appear in the alphabet itself.
The history of the Swedish language is similar to English and German, but differs in its adoption of Latin due to Sweden’s more distant geography on the European continent. Like English and German, Swedish used a runic alphabet (Futhark) prior to using the Latin alphabet, which didn’t become popular in Swedish-speaking communities until around the 11th century C.E. Other Nordic languages, such as Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic, also use the Latin alphabet with their own adaptations and added letters.
Other languages that use the Latin alphabet
The list of languages that use the Latin alphabet includes around 100-200 in total, depending on how much the language adapts the Latin lettering and spelling system.
Other commonly spoken languages that use the Latin alphabet include:
- Afrikaans
- Bosnian
- Croatian
- Danish
- Dutch
- Finnish
- Frisian
- Hawaiian
- Hungarian
- Malay
- Māori
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Swahili
- Turkish
- Vietnamese
- Zulu
What languages don’t use the Latin alphabet?
Even though the Latin alphabet is the most common type of writing system in the world, it certainly isn’t the only one. Some of the most widely spoken languages in the world use other alphabets and writing systems besides Latin, including:
- Armenian (Armenian alphabet)
- Greek (Greek alphabet)
- Japanese (Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana syllabaries)
- Korean (Hangul alphabet)
- Mandarin Chinese (Hanzi characters)
- Russian (Cyrillic alphabet)
- Yiddish (Hebrew abjad)
Writing systems like syllabaries, logographies, and abjads depict ideas and concepts in ways other than single letters put together to create meaning. That’s why learning another language that uses the Latin alphabet may be easier than learning a language with a different writing system (although it’s definitely possible to learn a new alphabet!).
Latin alphabet vs. Roman alphabet
What’s the difference between the Latin alphabet and the Roman alphabet? It’s mainly a historical distinction, although the terms “Latin alphabet” and “Roman alphabet” are usually used interchangeably. If you’re referring to a Roman alphabet, you may be talking about the historical spread of the Latin writing system throughout the Roman Empire. The term “Latin alphabet” usually refers to the Latin language as a whole, including its modern iterations and adoptions into other languages.
However, Roman alphabet letters are the same, as are their pronunciations and spelling rules. If someone refers to English using the Roman alphabet, they’d technically be correct (although some linguists would still prefer “Latin alphabet”).
Combine classical study with modern learning
The popularity of the Latin alphabet connects today’s written word with centuries of literary and political history. It connects English with a number of other languages around the world, making it easier than ever to pick up a new language with learning systems like Rosetta Stone.
For more information on choosing your new language (or even if you’re interested in learning Latin!), discover more about how Rosetta Stone works, and whether it’s the next step in your language learning journey.
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