Basic modern Latin alphabet
Encyclopedia
The International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) basic Latin alphabet consists of the following 26 letters:
By the 1960s it became apparent to the computer
and telecommunication
s industries in the First World
that a non-proprietary method of encoding characters was needed. The International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) encapsulated the Latin script in their (ISO/IEC 646
) standard. To achieve widespread acceptance, this encapsulation was based on popular usage. As the United States held a pre-eminent position in both industries during the 1960s, the standard was based on the already published American Standard Code for Information Interchange, better known as ASCII
, which included in the character set
the 26 × 2 letters of the English alphabet
. Later standards issued by the ISO, for example ISO/IEC 10646 (Unicode Latin), have continued to define the 26 × 2 letters of the English alphabet as the basic Latin script with extensions to handle other letters in other languages.
Alphabets that are equivalent in the sense that they consist of the same 26 letters – possibly also used in combination with diacritic
s, provided that letters thereby modified are not considered distinct letters of the alphabet:
English and Dutch are unique among major modern European languages in requiring no diacritics for native words (although a diaeresis is used by some publishers in words such as "coöperation").
International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial...
(ISO) basic Latin alphabet consists of the following 26 letters:
| Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A A A is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :... |
B B B is the second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is used to represent a variety of bilabial sounds , most commonly a voiced bilabial plosive.-History:... |
C C Ĉ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets... |
D D D is the fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic letter Dâlet may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek, and Latin, the letter represented ; in the... |
E E E is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:... |
F F F is the sixth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The origin of ⟨f⟩ is the Semitic letter vâv that represented a sound like or . Graphically, it originally probably depicted either a hook or a club... |
G G G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,... |
H H H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts.... |
I I I is the ninth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound... |
J J Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic... |
K K K is the eleventh letter of the English and basic modern Latin alphabet.-History and usage:In English, the letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive; this sound is also transcribed by in the International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA.... |
L L Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Łatynka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai alphabet... |
M M M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter M is derived from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu . Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water... |
N N N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet... |
O O O is the fifteenth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin , which represented a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a... |
P P P is the sixteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Usage:In English and most other European languages, P is a voiceless bilabial plosive. Both initial and final Ps can be combined with many other discrete consonants in English words... |
Q Q Q is the seventeenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic sound value of Qôp was , a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in English or most Indo-European ones... |
R R R is the eighteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It was used for by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was rêš . It developed into Greek Ρ and Latin R... |
S S S is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent... |
T T T is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets... |
U U U is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details.... |
V V V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Letter:The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details.... |
W W W is the 23rd letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.In other Germanic languages, including German, its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V... |
X X X is the twenty-fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Uses:In mathematics, x is commonly used as the name for an independent variable or unknown value. The usage of x to represent an independent or unknown variable can be traced back to the Arabic word šay شيء = “thing,” used in Arabic... |
Y Y Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet and represents either a vowel or a consonant in English.-Name:In Latin, Y was named Y Graeca "Greek Y". This was pronounced as I Graeca "Greek I", since Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing , which was not a native sound... |
Z Z Z is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In most dialects of English, the letter's name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta but in American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal... |
| Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z |
By the 1960s it became apparent to the computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
and telecommunication
Telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...
s industries in the First World
First World
The concept of the First World first originated during the Cold War, where it was used to describe countries that were aligned with the United States. These countries were democratic and capitalistic. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term "First World" took on a...
that a non-proprietary method of encoding characters was needed. The International Organization for Standardization
International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial...
(ISO) encapsulated the Latin script in their (ISO/IEC 646
ISO/IEC 646
ISO/IEC 646:1991, Information technology — ISO 7-bit coded character set for information interchange, is an ISO standard that since its first edition in 1972 has specified a 7-bit character code from which several national standards are derived...
) standard. To achieve widespread acceptance, this encapsulation was based on popular usage. As the United States held a pre-eminent position in both industries during the 1960s, the standard was based on the already published American Standard Code for Information Interchange, better known as ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
, which included in the character set
Character encoding
A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...
the 26 × 2 letters of the English alphabet
English alphabet
The modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters and 2 ligatures – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet:...
. Later standards issued by the ISO, for example ISO/IEC 10646 (Unicode Latin), have continued to define the 26 × 2 letters of the English alphabet as the basic Latin script with extensions to handle other letters in other languages.
Alphabets that are equivalent in the sense that they consist of the same 26 letters – possibly also used in combination with diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s, provided that letters thereby modified are not considered distinct letters of the alphabet:
- Afrikaans alphabet: uses diacritics.
- Catalan alphabet: uses diacritics (àÀis a letter of the Catalan, French, Galician, Italian, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic and Vietnamese languages, consisting of the Latin letter A and a grave accent. À is also used in Pinyin transliteration. In most languages, it represents the vowel a. This letter is also a letter in Taos.When...
, éÉis a letter of the Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kashubian, Luxembourgish, Slovak, and Catalan, Danish, English, French, Galician, Irish, Italian, Occitan, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Vietnamese language as a variant of the letter “e”...
, èÈor can be*The letter E with a Grave accent.*In Shakespeare's works, è would be used in the -ed suffix to indicate alternate pronunciation, for example with winged/wingèd, the è would be added to produce a pronunciation of instead of ....
, íÍis a letter in the Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Czech, Slovak, and Tatar languages. This letter also appears in Catalan, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Galician, Leonese, Navajo, and Vietnamese language as a variant of letter “i”....
, ïÏ', lowercase ', is a symbol used in various languages written with the Latin alphabet and in Ukrainian language which is written with the Cyrillic based Ukrainian alphabet; it can be read as the letter I with diaeresis or I-umlaut....
, óÓis a letter in the Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kashubian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Sorbian languages. This letter also appears in the Catalan, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Vietnamese languages as a variant of letter “o”. It is also used in English for other purposes...
, òÒis a letter in the Kashubian language. This letter also appears in Catalan, Italian, Occitan, Scottish Gaelic, Taos, and Vietnamese language as a variant of letter “o”.-Character mappings:-External links:***...
, úÚÚ or ú is a Latin letter used in the Czech, Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, and Slovak writing systems. This letter also appears in Dutch, Irish, Occitan, Pinyin, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Vietnamese as a variant of the letter "U"....
, üÜÜ, or ü, is a character which can be either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with an umlaut or a diaeresis...
, çÇis a Latin script letter, used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Ligurian, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish and Zazaki alphabets. This letter also appears in Catalan, French, Friulian, Occitan and Portuguese as a variant of the letter “c”...
) - Dutch alphabetDutch alphabetThe modern Dutch alphabet consists of the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet and is used for the Dutch language. Five letters are vowels and 21 letters are consonants.- History :...
: the digraphDigraph (orthography)A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
⟨ij⟩ is sometimes considered to be a separate letter. When that is the case, it usually replaces or is intermixed with ⟨y⟩. - English alphabetEnglish alphabetThe modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters and 2 ligatures – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet:...
- French alphabetFrench alphabetThe French alphabet is based on the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, uppercase and lowercase, with five diacritics and two orthographic ligatures.-Letter names:- Diacritics :...
: uses àÀis a letter of the Catalan, French, Galician, Italian, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic and Vietnamese languages, consisting of the Latin letter A and a grave accent. À is also used in Pinyin transliteration. In most languages, it represents the vowel a. This letter is also a letter in Taos.When...
, âÂis a letter of the Friulian, Romanian, Vietnamese, French, Galician, Portuguese, Frisian, Welsh, Turkish, and Walloon alphabets.- Croatian and Serbian :...
, æÆÆ is a grapheme formed from the letters a and e. Originally a ligature representing a Latin diphthong, it has been promoted to the full status of a letter in the alphabets of some languages, including Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Icelandic...
, çÇis a Latin script letter, used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Ligurian, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish and Zazaki alphabets. This letter also appears in Catalan, French, Friulian, Occitan and Portuguese as a variant of the letter “c”...
, éÉis a letter of the Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kashubian, Luxembourgish, Slovak, and Catalan, Danish, English, French, Galician, Irish, Italian, Occitan, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Vietnamese language as a variant of the letter “e”...
, èÈor can be*The letter E with a Grave accent.*In Shakespeare's works, è would be used in the -ed suffix to indicate alternate pronunciation, for example with winged/wingèd, the è would be added to produce a pronunciation of instead of ....
, êÊis a letter in the Friulan, Kurdish and Vietnamese languages. The letter also appears in Afrikaans, French, Portuguese, Welsh, and Albanian dialects as a variant of the letter "e", as well as being used in certain Chinese and Ukrainian transliteration systems.-Afrikaans:Ê is not considered a...
, ëËis a letter in the Albanian, Ripuarian, Uyghur Latin Script, Ladin, and Kashubian languages. This letter also appears in Afrikaans, Dutch, French, Abruzzese dialect , and Luxembourgish language as a variant of letter "e"...
, îÎis a letter in the Friulian, Kurdish, and Romanian alphabets. This letter also appears in French, Welsh and Walon language as a variant of letter “i”.- Afrikaans :...
, ïÏ', lowercase ', is a symbol used in various languages written with the Latin alphabet and in Ukrainian language which is written with the Cyrillic based Ukrainian alphabet; it can be read as the letter I with diaeresis or I-umlaut....
, ôOO is the fifteenth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin , which represented a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a...
, œŒŒ œŒ is a Latin alphabet grapheme, a ligature of o and e. In medieval and early modern Latin, it was used to represent the Greek diphthong οι, a usage which continues in English and French...
, ùUU is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details....
, ûÛis a letter of the French, Friulian, Kurdish, and Turkish alphabets. This letter was used in the ISO 9:1995 system of Cyrillic transliteration as the letter Ю and also in Wade-Giles for apical dental unrounded vowel as in tzû, tz'û, ssû, corresponds to present zi, ci, si in Pinyin respectively...
, üÜÜ, or ü, is a character which can be either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with an umlaut or a diaeresis...
, ÿYY is the twenty-fifth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet and represents either a vowel or a consonant in English.-Name:In Latin, Y was named Y Graeca "Greek Y". This was pronounced as I Graeca "Greek I", since Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing , which was not a native sound... - German alphabetGerman alphabetThe modern German alphabet is an extended Latin alphabet consisting of 30 letters – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet plus four extra letters.In German, the individual letters have neuter gender: das A, das B etc....
: uses äÄ"Ä" and "ä" are both characters that represent either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter A with an umlaut mark or diaeresis.- Independent letter :...
, öÖ"Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut...
, üÜÜ, or ü, is a character which can be either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with an umlaut or a diaeresis...
and ßßIn the German alphabet, ß is a letter that originated as a ligature of ss or sz. Like double "s", it is pronounced as an , but in standard spelling, it is only used after long vowels and diphthongs, while ss is used after short vowels... - Ido alphabet
- Indonesian alphabet
- Interglossa alphabetInterglossa alphabetThe Interglossa alphabet is a Latin-derived alphabet that uses the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet....
- Interlingua alphabet
- Malay alphabetMalay alphabetThe modern Malay alphabet consists of the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet without any diacritics. It is the more common of the two alphabets used today to write the Malay language, the other being Jawi...
: besides Latin (Rumi) alphabet, Malay also uses Jawi script, a modified Arabic script, to some extent. - Occidental alphabet
- Portuguese alphabetPortuguese alphabetThe Portuguese alphabet, , consists of the following 23 or 26 Latin letters:In addition, the following characters with diacritics are used: Áá, Ââ, Ãã, Àà, Çç, Éé, Êê, Íí, Óó, Ôô, Õõ, Úú. These are not, however, treated as independent letters in collation, nor do they have entries of their own in...
: uses diacritics. k, w, and y are considered part of the alphabet since the 1990 Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement, which came into effect on January 1, 2009 in Brazil.
English and Dutch are unique among major modern European languages in requiring no diacritics for native words (although a diaeresis is used by some publishers in words such as "coöperation").