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May. 19th, 2009

Reality

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this is an entry.

The letter C was the western form of the Greek gamma, but it was used for the sounds /g/ and /k/ alike, possibly under the influence of Etruscan, which lacked any voiced plosives. Later, probably during the 3rd century BC, the letter Z — unneeded to write Latin proper — was replaced with the new letter G, a C modified with a small horizontal stroke, which took its place in the alphabet. From then on, G represented the voiced plosive /g/, while C was generally reserved for the voiceless plosive /k/. The letter K was used only rarely, in a small number of loanwords such as Kalendae, often interchangeably with C.

After the Roman conquest of Greece in the first century BC, Latin adopted the Greek letters Y and Z (or rather readopted, in the latter case) to write Greek loanwords, placing them at the end of the alphabet. An attempt by the emperor Claudius to introduce three additional letters did not last. Thus it was that during the classical Latin period the Latin alphabet contained 23 letters:

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