Latin-alphabet

Latin
Type	Alphabet
Languages	Latin Romance Germanic Celtic Baltic some Slavic languages some Turkic languages some Uralic languages some Caucasic languages some Niger-Congo Languages, some Nilo-Saharan Languages, some Afro-Asiatic Languages, Austronesian and Austroasiatic languages
Time period	c. 700 BC – present
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Greek alphabet Old Italic script Latin
Child systems	Numerous Latin alphabets; also more divergent derivations such as Osage
Sister systems	Cyrillic Coptic Armenian Georgian Runic (Futhark)
Direction	Left-to-right
ISO 15924	Latn, 215
Unicode alias	Latin
Unicode range	see Latin characters in Unicode

The Latin alphabet or the Roman alphabet is a writing system originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. By way of its use throughout Europe in English, French, and Germanic variants, Romanized writing has grown to become the preferred alphabet globally (see Latin script), being used officially in China (separate from its ideographic writing), and being semi-adopted by Slavic (Russia) and Baltic states. The Latin alphabet evolved from the visually similar Cumaean Greek version of the Greek alphabet, which was itself descended from the Phoenician abjad, which in turn was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics. The Etruscans who ruled early Rome adopted the Cumaean Greek alphabet which was modified over time to become the Etruscan alphabet, which was in turn adopted and further modified by the Romans to produce the Latin alphabet.

During the Middle Ages the Latin alphabet was used (sometimes with modifications) for writing Romance languages, direct descendants of Latin, as well as Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, and some Slavic languages. With the age of colonialism and Christian evangelism, the Latin script spread beyond Europe, coming into use for writing indigenous American, Australian, Austronesian, Austroasiatic, and African languages. More recently, linguists have also tended to prefer the Latin script or the International Phonetic Alphabet (itself largely based on Latin script) when transcribing or creating written standards for non-European languages, such as the African reference alphabet.