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by lynnenorth on February 14th, 2006
Convention, basically, along with the general tendency to match common sounds to a single symbol (sounds like "sh" or "ch" represent exceptions to this -- in English, at least!). The standard Roman alphabet that English uses is drawn from the "Roman" Roman alphabet, with the addition of "J", "U", "W", and "Z" to represent common sounds. In early and medieval England, the vast majority of texts were actually written in Latin (the whole concept of written texts having originally come to the island via the Romans, after all, and Latin being the language of scholarship), and when texts started to be written in the local language it was natural to adapt the alphabet already in use to do so.
Other languages in other countries added other letters to represent sounds common in those languages, or dropped letters because certain sounds were not common, and so other alphabets have different numbers of letters.
There is a tremendous amount of information available on the web -- just Google "history Roman alphabet".
by Lady Lavender on October 22nd, 2009
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Comments
Accents and diacriticals are used to alter sounds, e.g., s-cedilla for 'sh', e-acute for 'ay'.
by RedJohn on March 10th, 2006