History of the alphabet the early western Greek dialects, where the letter eta remained an , gave rise to the Old Italic alphabet which in turn developed into the Old Roman alphabet. In the eastern Greek dialects, which did not have an /h/, eta stood for a vowel, and remains a vowel in modern Greek and all other alphabets derived from the eastern variants: Glagolitic, Cyrillic, Armenian, Gothic (which used both Greek and Roman letters), and perhaps Georgian. Although this description presents the evolution of scripts in a linear fashion, this is a simplification. For example, the Manchu alphabet, descended from the abjads of
Letter (alphabet) ⵕ, ⵙ, ⵚ, ⵜ, ⵟ, ⵡ, ⵢ, ⵣ, ⵥ. International Phonetic Alphabet - used to represent exact pronunciation. example, ʔ named Glottal Stop For other writing systems and their letters, see List of writing systems. Some writing systems have two major forms for each letter: an "uppercase" form (also called "capital" or "majuscule") and a "lowercase" form (also called "minuscule"). Only three Roman letters, "a", "g" and "t" , have more than one standard lowercase form. Upper- and lowercase letters represent the same sound, but serve different functions in writing. Capital letters are most often used at the beginning of