[*] 1. The Latin Alphabet is the same as the English (which is in fact borrowed from it) except that it does not contain J, U, and W.
[*] Note 1.--The Latin alphabet was borrowed in very early times from a Greek alphabet (though not from that most familiar to us) and did not at first contain the letters G andY. It consisted of capital letters only, and the small letters with which we are familiar did not come into general use until the close of the eighth century of our era.
[*] Note 2.--The Latin names of the consonants were as follows:—B, be (pronounced bay); C, ce (pronounced kay); D, de (day); F, ef; G, ge (gay); H, ha; K, ka; L, el; M, em; N, en; P, pe (pay); Q, qu (koo); R, er; S, es; T, te (tay); X, ix; Z, zeta (the Greek name, pronounced dzayta). The sound of each vowel was used as its name.
[*] a. The character C originally meant G, a value always retained in the abbreviations C. (for Gāius ) and Cn. (for Gnaeus ).[*] Note.--In early Latin C came also to be used for K, and K disappeared except before a in a few words, as Kal. ( Kalendae ), Karthāgō . Thus there was no distinction in writing between the sounds of g and k. Later this defect was remedied by forming (from C ) the new character G. This took the alphabetic place formerly occupied by Z, which had gone out of use. In Cicero's time (see N. D. 2.93), Y (originally a form of V ) and Z were introduced from the ordinary Greek alphabet to represent sounds in words derived from the Greek, and they were put at the end of the Latin alphabet.
[*] b. I and V were used both as vowels and as consonants (see § 5).[*] Note.-- V originally denoted the vowel sound u (oo), and F stood for the sound of our consonant w. When F acquired the value of our f, V came to be used for the sound of w as well as for the vowel u.
In this book i is used for both vowel and consonant i, u for vowel u, and v for consonant u: iūs , vir , iuvenis .