Greeks of Cumre and Sicily. The writing in the oldest Latin inscriptions is never from right to left, as is mostly the case in Etrurian. On the other hand the Kaph and the Kopli (K and Ql of the Phoenician, which disappear in Etrurian, are retained in Latin. The Greek A. of Cumin had not yet received the addition of tfi and co ; but it still retained the representative of the Plicenician Vau, the Digamma, and also Kamm, and thus con sisted of 24 letters. The Latin tongue, being destitute of aspirate sounds, dropped the three letters 0, 9, x. so that the original • Latin A. consisted of 21 letters, the forms of which,-as seen on the oldest inscriptions, were as in the following table. See Corssen's Ausspraehe,Vocaliemus and Betonung der Lateini.lehen Sprache (Leip. 1858).
Z was early dropped, and the new letter G (see above)substituted for it; and thus the Latin A. continued to the last to consist of 21 letters, until it was applied to the modern tongues of western Europe. The distinction made between nand r, and between i and j, in printing Latin books, is a modern innovation; and no Latin word contains either y or z. The live additional letters that make up the 26 of the English A., arose from the
addition of z, and the development of i into j, and of u into w, r, and y.
The Anglo-Saxon A. had two useful letters, which have disappeared from modern English—namely, one for ,the sound of th in thin, and one (or rather two) for that of th in Mine. These were derived, in all probability, from the Mceso-Gothic A., which (as well as the Russian and other Slavonic alphabets) was founded on the Greek rather than the Latin. The loss of these letters is owinfr. to the influence of the Norman-French, the alphabet of which is exclusively Latin. The forms of the Anglo-Saxon letters are as under "The characters between brackets were written by the Anglo-Saxons, but, being for the most part mere corruptions of the Roman forms, are now seldom printed."—Vernon's Anglo-Saxon Grammar.
The peculiarities of the several letters will be noticed in their proper places. 'For their classification, and the defects and redundancies of the English A., see LETTERS AND ARTICULATE SOUND8. Other points connected with this subject will be found under