Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 537

536
THE ALPHABET
sound k when followed by u. At a later stage a change attributed to Appius Claudius Censor in 312 B.C. was adopted to denote the voiced sound g. This consisted in the addition of a bar to the lower end of C, thus converting it into G
The absence in carly Latin of a specific symbol for the combination (ks), which existed in the Greek alphabets, including the Chalcidian variety, but not in the Etruscan, also indicates the derivation of the Latin alphabet from the Etruscan.
Finally, the greater part of the Latin names of the letters, which have descended into English as into the majority of modern alphabets, were taken over from the Etruscans, for the Romans did not invent many themselves. The Semitic letter-names (see p. 218-220), which had been taken over by the Greek (see p. 451), were quite different. The derivation of the letter-names from the Etruscan alphabet is best shown by the names ce, ka and qu (which are explained by the aforementioned use of the three letters), and by the facts that there were in Etruscan sonant or vocalized liquids (I, ) and nasals (m, mi), and that the modern names of these letters (1, m, 71, ) are vocalized as closed syllables ("ell," "em," "en," and so forth), whereas the names of other consonants are open syllables ("be," "de," and so forth).
The creation of the Latin alphabet may be dated in the seventh century B.C.
Development of the Latin Alphabet The original Etruscan alphabet consisted (see p. 495) of twenty-six letters; the Romans adopted only twenty-one of them. They rejected the three Greek aspirate letters theta, phi and khi, as there were no sounds in Latin to correspond to them, but they retained them to represent numbers. O. C became too, and was later identified with the initial of centum: 0, CIO, M. M became 1,000, and identified with the initial of mille, and its half (D) became 500; v-1-1-L became 50.
Of the three Etruscans-sounds, the Romans retained the Greek sigma. The presence in the Latin alphabet of the letters d and o, for which the Etruscans had no use, is explained by the fact already mentioned, that the Latin alphabet was created before the Etruscans had time to reject these letters. The use of the letters C, K, Q and F has already been explained. The symbol, which represented, as in Etruscan, the aspirate, later received the shape H. I was the sign both of the vowel and consonant i. The X was later added to represent the sound ks, but it was placed at the end of the Latin alphabet.
The Latin alphabet was therefore as follows: A, B, C (with the sound k), D, E, F, I (the Greek zeta), H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, P (which was the original shape of R), S, T, V, X. Roughly speaking, it was the Semitic