Development of the Roman Alphabet
In 1500 B.C. the Canaanites, a Semitic speaking people, began to use certain signs to represent words or syllables.
The Phoenicians had adopted and simplified the form and added several new ones. The Phoenicians’ symbols are the ‘cuneiform’.
The early Greeks found those symbols and adapted them to be their own alphabet. Also, they reassigned some of the Semitic consonant symbols to vowel sounds.
The Etruscans who lived in Italy adopted a variant of the Greek alphabet.