The Latins (the Romans were Latins) adopted and adapted the Cumanean alphabet to develop the Latin alphabet. This was a version of the western Greek alphabet which was used in the Greek city of Cumae, near Naples. The Greeks founded colonies (settlements) in southern Italy in the late 9th century BC and in the 8th century BC. Because they were a more advanced civilisation, these Greeks had a profound impact of all the Italic peoples they came into contact with. This included the adoption and adaptation of the western Greek alphabet by all Italic peoples for the development of their own written languages.

The Latin and other Italic peoples adopted the Greek alphabet when the Greeks established colonies (settlements) in southern Italy in the 8th century BC. The arrival of the Greeks had a civilising impact on all the Italic peoples they came in contact with. These peoples realised the usefulness of the Greek alphabet for the development of their written languages. Some different characters were created as adaptation to the phonetics (sounds) of their languages which differed from that of the Greeks.

Archaic Latin, like all Old Italic alphabets in Italy (Etruscan, Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Picene, Messapic and Venetic) is thought to have adopted the Cumae alphabet. Cumae was the northernmost Greek settlement in Italy. This alphabet in its turn was a variation of the Western Greek alphabet, one of the three archaic Greek alphabets (the other two were the Cretese and the Ionic). The Western one originated from the island of Euoboea, Boeotia and much of the Peloponnese. These were areas many of the Greek settlers in Italy came from.

It is thought that archaic Latin adopted 21 of the 29 Etruscan letters. The Latin alphabet evolved into what has been called classical Latin alphabet. This adopted two more Greek letters.

Old Permic alphabet was created in 1372.

The first Arabic alphabet character is "Alif." It is the first letter in the standard Arabic alphabetical order and has a phonetic value of a glottal stop sound.

The Ancient Greek alphabet is over 2,500 years old