English alphabet
Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Modern English is written with a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters, with each having both uppercase and lowercase forms. The word alphabet is a compound of alpha and beta, the names of the first two letters in the Greek alphabet. Old English was first written down using the Latin alphabet during the 7th century. During the centuries that followed, various letters entered or fell out of use. By the 16th century, the present set of 26 letters had largely stabilised:
| English alphabet | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Script type | |
Time period | c. 16th century – present |
| Languages | English |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | |
Child systems | |
| ISO 15924 | |
| ISO 15924 | Latn (215), Latin |
| Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Latin |
| U+0000–U+007E Basic Latin | |
| This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. | |
There are 5 vowel letters and 19 consonant letters—as well as Y and W, which may function as either type.
Written English has a large number of digraphs, such as ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ea⟩, ⟨oo⟩, ⟨sh⟩, and ⟨th⟩. Diacritics are generally not used to write native English words, which is unusual among orthographies used to write the languages of Europe.