Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet is a writing system descended from the Etruscan and Greek scripts, first used for Latin and now adapted for languages worldwide.
Greek alphabet: A writing system developed by the ancient Greeks, adapting Phoenician letters to represent vowels as well as consonants. Greek letter forms entered the chain of transmission that eventually produced the Latin alphabet.
Alphabet: A writing system whose basic signs represent phonemes, the distinctive units of speech sounds. The Latin alphabet is one historically influential member of this writing-system family.
Romanization: The representation of a language or script using the Latin alphabet. Romanization makes the Latin alphabet a tool for writing languages with other scripts or traditions.
Roman Empire: The state centered on Rome that controlled territories around the Mediterranean and beyond for centuries. Roman administration and settlement spread Latin writing across much of Europe.
Latin language: An Indo-European language originating in Latium that became the language of ancient Rome and the source of the Romance languages. The language and its alphabet are related but distinct: Latin can be written in other scripts, and Latin letters write many languages.
Etruscan alphabet: An ancient writing system used by the Etruscans, adapted from a western Greek alphabet. The Romans adapted their early alphabet from Etruscan writing.
Grapheme: A smallest contrastive unit in a writing system, such as a letter or a letter sequence. Each Latin letter is a grapheme, though one sound may also be written with multiple letters.
Latin script in Vietnamese: The use of a Latin-based orthography, including tone and vowel diacritics, to write Vietnamese. Vietnamese shows how extensive additions adapt Latin letters to a language's sound system.
Christianization of Europe: The long historical process through which Christianity became established among European peoples and states. Latin Christian institutions helped preserve and transmit Latin writing after Roman political rule declined.
Cyrillic alphabet: A writing system used for languages including Russian, Bulgarian, and Serbian, developed from Greek-based models. Its letter inventory and history distinguish it from the Latin alphabet, despite shared Greek ancestry.