The use of a Latin script for Berber has its roots in European (French and Italian) colonial expeditions to North Africa. Dictionaries and glossaries written with Latin letters, ordered alphabetically and following European orthography (mainly French) began to appear in print in the 19th century, they were intended to the colonial administration, traders and military officers. With the arrival of linguists specialized in Semitic languages there emerged a system based on Semitic romanization conventions: diacritics were used, and dictionary entries were now ordered by root. This system has since become the most common way of Berber transcription in scientific documents and literature.