History of the Greek alphabet only required one. The history here is complicated, but basically "sāmekh" dropped out in certain dialects, and was reused to represent in others, while usage for the sound varied between "ṣādē" and "šin". The letter now known as sigma took its name from "sāmekh" but its form from "šin", while the letter San, which occurred in a few dialects only, took its name from "šin" but its place in the alphabet from "ṣādē". A further Greek letter of uncertain origin, sampi, is found occasionally, and may represent an affricate, such as . For the special case of zeta, see Zeta
Latin alphabet alphabets may discard letters, like the Rotokas alphabet, or add new letters, like the Danish and Norwegian alphabets. Letter shapes have evolved over the centuries, including the development in Medieval Latin of lower-case, forms which did not exist in the Classical period alphabet. English is the only major modern European language requiring no diacritics for native words (although a diaeresis may be used in words such as "coöperation"). It is generally believed that the Romans adopted the Cumae alphabet, a variant of the Greek alphabet, in the 7th century BC from Cumae, a Greek colony in Southern Italy. (Gaius Julius