The Roman Alphabet

UC = upper case, LC = lower case, RE = Roman equivalent

	UC	LC	Name	Pronunciation
1	A	a	a	ay
2	B	b	b	bee
3	C	c	c	see
4	D	d	d	dee
5	E	e	e	ee
6	F	f	f	eff
7	G	g	g	jee
8	H	h	h	aych
9	I	i	i	eye
10	J	j	j	jay
11	K	k	k	kay
12	L	l	l	ell
13	M	m	m	em
14	N	n	n	en
15	O	o	o	o
16	P	p	p	pee
17	Q	q	q	kyoo
18	R	r	r	arr
19	S	s	s	ess
20	T	t	t	tee
21	U	u	u	yoo
22	V	v	v	vee
23	W	w	w	double yoo
24	X	x	x	eks
25	Y	y	y	wy
26	Z	z	z	zed / zee

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

The Roman alphabet is the alphabet we use most of the time, for writing English, for use in maths and science to represent variables, along with the Greek alphabet.

There are quite a few more alphabets in the world, and the ones you’re most like to come into contact with are the Greek, Russian, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Persian and Thai alphabets, and the alphabets of the many Indian languages.

Apparently, Arabic and Hebrew as not really alphabets because they don’t contain any symbols representing vowels – they are actually a kind of writing system called an abjad. To clarify, all alphabets are writing systems but not all writing systems are alphabets, and some are in fact abjads.

There are also many characters (letters and symbols) which are not normally part of an alphabet but are used in certain countries or languages to give a wider range of meanings to an existing alphabet. For example, the German language uses a symbol called an umlaut (technically known as a diaeresis) along with vowels to change their pronunciation slightly. See, ‘apfel’ is pronounced ap-ful but ‘äpfel’ is pronounced ep-ful.

Perhaps most surprisingly, there are letters that used to be part of the alphabet used in English that do not exist any more. The letters Þ (capital letter thorn), þ (small letter thorn), Ð (capital letter eth) and ð (small letter eth) disappeared sometime in the middle ages.

There are many accents and symbols you can add to change the meaning or sound of a letter. Wikipedia has a very comprehensive page about accents and so-called diacritical marks (pretty much means accents too). I am adding to my own list as I learn them - here are just a few:

Symbol	Example	Name	Pronunciation	Function
´	é	acute accent	ak-yoot	é in French is pronounced ay e.g. trouvé is pronounced troo-vay
˚	å	bolle	bol
˘	ĕ	breve	brev
ˇ	ǔ, š	caron / háček	karon / hart-shek
¸	ç	cedilla	suh-dilluh	ç in French means a letter c before a hard vowel (a, u or o) is pronounced like an s and not like a k, for example ‘convaincu’ is pronounced kon-van-koo but ‘garçon’ is pronounced gar-sonn
^	ô, ĉ	circumflex	sur-kum-fleks
˝	ő, ű	double acute accent	ak-yoot	only used in Hungarian
`		grave accent	grarv
¯	ā	macron	mak-ron
∕	ø	streg	streg
~	ñ	tilde	til-duh	ñ in Spanish is pronounced as if it were ny e.g. mañana is pronounced manyana
¨	ö	umlaut / diaeresis	oom-lowt / di-ya-ree-sis