Latin letters: history and meaning

Scientific and cultural-spiritual activity has long been an important sphere of life of human societies. However, it could not exist without the basic means of communication - language. One of the greatest in the history of mankind was Latin. It created the famous literary and scientific memoirs of the ancient world. Latin letters and language were predominant in the medium European intelligentsia, learned men and in the spiritual sphere many years after the fall of ancient civilization. We can still feel their influence in the age-related sciences today. Roman words and phrases with an enviable constancy appear in medicine, history, philosophy, mathematics. In our everyday life, we even in Russia observe hundreds of inscriptions in foreign languages every day. As a rule, this is English, which, it is no exaggeration to say, today dominates the cultural and information space of the planet. However, this was not always the case. The English language took up the international position only at the end of the colonial era. For many centuries, Latin was used as a means of communication between different peoples with each other. Moreover, all modern West European languages (and in part central European, and also the peoples of both Americas) contain, without exception, in their written form Latin letters. After all, all the alphabets of the Romance and German modern peoples are the direct heirs of the ancient writing. And the languages themselves are a synthesis of those characteristic of the late Roman period and the local barbarian dialects with less (as in Italian or Spanish) or greater (as in English or German) shares of the latter.

The origin of the alphabet

But how did the Latin letters themselves appear? What kind of ancestors did they actually have? If you dig even deeper into the antiquity of the centuries, it turns out that this alphabet, in fact, comes from the ancient Greek. The latter, in turn, was the direct heir of the Phoenician. However, the direct evolution of how the letters of Latin letters were formed on the basis of ancient Greek letters can not be traced yet. There is also a hypothesis that the process of their formation was significantly influenced by Etruscan writing. And the assumption is very popular among antiquarian historians, because the Etruscan cities really dominated the cultural and spiritual life of the Italian peninsula in the pre-Roman period (and the first Roman kings were Etruscans by birth). In addition, it is interesting to note that the Etruscan alphabet itself, despite the fact that archaeologists have restored its appearance, is still not deciphered. As for the Latin letter itself, the first inscriptions found are dated to the 7th century BC. This alphabet originally included 21 letters, later used 23 in the classical period of development of the Roman Culture. Then the Roman legions claimed their own civilization model on three continents.

Latin letters and numbers

And in fact it should be remembered that, in addition to the famous alphabet, the Italians gave the world a system of calculus. It was also used for a long period, however, unlike the letters, it took a formidable opponent. They became the Arab model of calculus. It was the latter that proved its great convenience and efficiency first in the east, and then in the west. The use of Roman numerals today often looks more like a tribute to traditions than a truly rational necessity.