From A to Z

The History of the Modern-Day Alphabet

In the modern-day alphabet, there are twenty-four letters between A and Z.

But a review of the history of the alphabet we know now reveals that this gap used to be narrow in the past.

In the early Etruscan alphabet of the inhabitants of the now Tuscany, Italy, there were only five letters between A and Z.

When the Romans adopted the Etruscan alphabet around the seventh century BCE, only twenty-one out of the twenty-six letters were retained. Th, ph, and ch were removed since they did not have a corresponding sound in Latin, and of the three s sounds of the Etruscan alphabet, only one was retained and was represented by the symbol "S."

Around 250 BCE, Roman censor Appius Claudius Caecus removed Z from the alphabet. To him, the letter was disgusting to use because it "resembles the teeth of a corpse" when pronounced. The letter also became unnecessary after the Latin "s" sound it represented was transferred to "r." And so, it was replaced by the letter G in the earlier version of the Latin alphabet.

For more than a hundred years, the world went on without the letter Z. Kingdoms waged war against each other; empires expanded and shrunk.

In 241 BCE, the Romans won the First Punic War against Carthage and annexed the islands of Corsica and Sicily. They also won the First Illyrian War in 229 BCE against the Ardiaei Kingdom. In 225 BCE, the alliance of Celtic tribes was defeated by the Romans at the Battle of Telamon. The Romans again defeated Carthage in the Second Punic War in 202 BCE and reduced the Carthaginian territory to North Africa.

In East Asia, the State of Qin continued its expansion across China and conquered the State of Han in 230 BCE, the State of Wei in 225 BCE, the State of Chu in 223 BCE, the States of Yan and Zhao in 222 BCE, and lastly the State of Qi in 221 BCE. This led to the unification of China and the formation of the Qin Dynasty under Emperor Qin Shi Huang in the same year. In 214 BCE, Emperor Qin ordered the construction of the Great Wall of China to protect themselves from the nomad invaders of the north. But after ruling for fifteen years, in 206 BCE, the Qin Dynasty fell, which led China into a civil war against kingdoms contesting for power and control of China. After four years, in 202 BCE, the Han Dynasty was established under the rule of Emperor Gaozu and Empress Lu of Han.

In 148 BCE, the Romans conquered Macedon after winning the Fourth Macedonian War. Two years after, they finally destroyed the city of Carthage and defeated the Carthaginian Empire during the Third Punic War. In the same year, they captured the rest of the Greek peninsula after winning the Battle of Corinth against the Achaean and other Peloponnesian states.

It was around that time when the Romans reintroduced Z in the alphabet, along with Y, primarily for translating Greek-borrowed words into Latin. With its limited use and purpose, Y and Z were placed at the end of the alphabet.

During the Middle Ages, the Latin alphabet further evolved. Letters which were used interchangeably for their vowels and consonants were differentiated; I was set apart into I and J, and V was distinguished into U, V, and W. Hence, from twenty-three letters, the Latin alphabet then became twenty-six.

As the Latin script was adopted by conquerors and was transferred by the conquerors to the conquered, as nations waged wars in their bid for global dominance, as treaties were written to settle these disputes, as trade agreements were signed to liberalize the exchange of goods and create an international economy, as the world continues to achieve its dream of harmony, A and Z eventually got used to the distance between them and did not hope that they could be together one day. They used to be close, but that was nothing more than history.