1.1. Alphabet
Like Romance languages, Neolatin uses the Latin alphabet. It consists of the traditional Roman alphabet <A, B, C, D, E,...>
expanded with the new letters <J, U, W>
and the Greek letters <Y, Z>
, both uppercase and lowercase.
LETTER | NAME(S) |
---|---|
A, a | a [a] |
B, b | be [be] |
C, c | ce [ʧe] |
D, d | de [de] |
E, e | e [e] |
F, f | fe1 [fe] | èffe2 ['ɛffe] |
G, g | ge [ʤe] |
H, h | hacca ['akka] |
I, i | i [i] |
J, j | je3 [ʤe] | i lònga [i 'lɔŋga] | jota ['ʤota] |
K, k | ca [ka] | cappa ['kappa] |
L, l | le [le] | èlle ['ɛlle] |
M, m | me [me] | èmme ['ɛmme] |
N, n | ne [ne] | ènne ['ɛnne] |
O, o | o [o] |
P, p | pe [pe] |
Q, q | cu [ku] |
R, r | re [ɾe] | èrre ['ɛre] |
S, s | se [ɾe] | èsse ['ɛsse] |
T, t | te [te] |
U, u | u [u] |
V, v | ve [ve] |
W, w | ve dople [ve 'dople] | dople v [dople 've] |
X, x | ics [iks] |
Y, y | ye [je] | i grèca [i 'gɾɛka] | ípsilon ['ipsilon] |
Z, z | zèta ['zɛta] ['ʣɛta] |
The letters <k>, <w>, <y>
and <z>
are mainly used in technical words of international use and in non-Romanized loanwords.
Footnotes
-
The names
fe, le, me, ne, re, se, ye
follow the model set by the namesbe, ce, de, ge, pe, te
, which are forms that are already present with the long e,ē
,in Latin (ve
did not exist yet as a distinct letter fromu
). Those regularized forms (exceptye
, which is a Spanish creation) are found as variants in French (according to the Littré dictionary) and Romanian. ↩ -
Latin had the names
ĕf, ĕl, ĕm, ĕn, ĕr, ĕs
, from which came the Romance formsèf/èffe,èl/èlle
, etc. The etymological variant is found in Catalan (rarely used now), French and Romanian; the extended variant in Portuguese, Spanish (the form that Catalan now also uses) and Italian. ↩ -
The name je (systematic with be, ce, de, etc.) can be used in its written form without any problem. Orally, it could be confused with ge; therefore, the descriptive name i lònga is a safer option. ↩