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The alphabet Rome borrowed and kept.
Also known as: Etruscan alphabet, Italic alphabets
The script used across pre-Roman Italy for Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian and their neighbours.
Writes the languages of pre-Roman Italy in a family of closely related alphabets.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
The Latin alphabet is one member of this family rather than its successor, so the letters of this sentence are a surviving branch of a group whose other branches died with the languages they wrote.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
Angular letters descended from a Greek alphabet, written right to left in earlier inscriptions and left to right in later ones.