3 ms·

In the case of K, U, and W, those were borrowed from Greek, weren't they? Not sure where J came from. One question is why we borrowed K when we already had C.

• tdeck 1y ago
  On the subject of C, folks may enjoy this video on the letter's history: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=chpT0TzietQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=chpT0TzietQ
• ryao 1y ago
  The Latin alphabet was based on the Etruscan alphabet, which was based on the Greek alphabet, which was based on the Phoenician alphabet. In early Latin, C, G and K were all pronounced the same way. They later dropped G, only to bring it back when they realized that they used C to refer to two different consonants, and wanted to disambiguate them. They assigned the less common constant to G. J was introduced because I had a similar problem, except I could be either a consonant or a vowel, rather than any of two consonants. The same applied to the introduction of U for V. Well, almost the same. In the case of I, they added J to be the consonant, while in the case of V, they added U to be the vowel. Finally, people changed the pronunciation of V over time to be something new, and W was introduced to be the original sound in English. W does not exist in Latin since V fulfills its role, unless you are using a modern pronunciation that changes how V is pronounced and then you still do not need W. There were other sound changes (see Italian), but this is sufficient to explain all of the letters. Well, there is also Z, which they removed from early Latin and later reintroduced to represent a Greek sound.
• adrian_b 1y ago
  All the Latin letters, except for G, which is a modified Greek letter invented by a Roman, come from the Greek alphabet, only at different times. The original Latin alphabet had 21 letters: ABCDE FZHIK LMNOP QRSTV X The letter V (Greek u-psilon) was used to write the sound U, both as vowel and as consonant (i.e. like English W). The letter F (Greek di-gamma) was used in Greek for consonant U (English W), but in Latin it was used to write the sound F, also a labial consonant, which did not exist in Greek. In Latin, in the beginning 3 different letters were used to write the sound K, C before E or I, K before A and Q before O or U. So K belonged to the Latin alphabet since its very beginning. Later, the rules for writing K have been simplified, so it was always written as C, except before a V (i.e. U sound) that was consonant, not vowel, i.e. like English W. Writing K has been retained only in a few traditional expressions, e.g. in "KALENDAE", which was used when writing dates. Initially, the letter C (Greek gamma) was used both for the sound K and for the sound G. Later, the letter G has been created, by modifying the letter C. Since then, G was used for the sound G, except in a few traditional expressions, e.g. the name "Gaius" has continued to be written as "Caius", together with a few other traditional names. The new letter G has substituted in the Latin alphabet the letter Z (Greek zeta), which was not used in Latin. Therefore the 21-letter Latin alphabet has become: ABCDE FGHIK LMNOP QRSTV X Several centuries later, during the Roman Empire, 2 additional Greek letters have been added at the end of the alphabet, so the 23-letter Latin alphabet was: ABCDE FGHIK LMNOP QRSTV XYZ The letter Z was reintroduced, but not in its original place, because it was contained in some borrowed Greek words. The same with Y. While both V and Y come from Greek u-psilon, by the time when Y has been added to the Latin alphabet it was pronounced as a vowel different from both Latin V and I, i.e. as a front rounded closed vowel, like the Scandinavian Y, German Ü (U with Umlaut) or French U. The 23-letter Latin alphabet has become a 26-letter alphabet more than a millennium later, when the letters J, U and W have been added (J and U were required because in the Romance languages the old I consonant and U consonant had become fricative sounds, completely distinct from the I and U vowels, while W has been initially added for English, which is one of the few Indo-European languages that has retained the original pronunciation of consonant U).
  • qball 1y ago
    >by the time when Y has been added to the Latin alphabet Note also that the letter 'Y' is explicitly named 'Greek I' [literal translation] in Latin-descended languages; and then other languages borrowed that name (from the French). It's not called that in English, of course, but English isn't a Latin-descended language. Interestingly, the same is not true for 'Z', which is a more direct 'zed' (or 'zet', not like 'd' and 't' are that different) in most (all?) European languages, including the Germanic ones.
    • ryao 1y ago
      The pronunciation of Y in Latin is the pronunciation of I with rounded lips. That is probably the reason for the name.
• dragonwriter 1y ago
  > In the case of K, U, and W, those were borrowed from Greek, weren't they? "W" was added originally by northern Germanic languages, including English, replacing the practice of writing the same sound with a doubled "u" or "v". Which explains both its appearance and its name in English and many other languages.
• badc0ffee 1y ago
  You can substitute S or K for certain pronunciations of the letter C (sykle), but that is not true in the case of CH.
  • dagw 1y ago
    You could replace CH with another two letter combination. Swedish for example uses TJ for a sound that is quite close to the English CH.
  • gwd 1y ago
    Chinese Pinyin use q for one of their two ch-like sounds -- we could do the same. Q is even more redundant than C, because not only is it identical to K, it's always followed by a U.
  • madcaptenor 1y ago
    You could replace C occurring by itself (or where CK represents the /k/ sound) with either S or K and then replace CH with C.
    • badc0ffee 1y ago
      Ceers!