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Friends, Romans, countrymen and alphabets

Aug 15 2008 by Denis Kilcommons

A READER writes: “It's taken me 81 years to realise that our 26 letters are based on the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, i.e. Alpha, beta. Am I alone in this or is it something I should have known from almost birth?”

Well, actually, according to my research our alphabet is derived from the Latin version brought to England by Christian missionaries in the seventh century.

Those Romans, eh?

What did they ever do for us? Apart from giving us straight roads, central heating, indoor plumbing and the basis of our alphabet.

Mind you, the Latin alphabet is believed to have been developed from the Greek in the seventh century BC.

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