# Classicists: adoption of K, Y and Z **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 30, 2008, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classicists-adoption-of-k-y-and-z/465827 "2008-09-30T09:57:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classicists-adoption-of-k-y-and-z/465827/1 "2008-09-30T09:57:34Z")
The original Latin alphabet contained only 20 letters. Most people are familiar with the fact that J, U and W were fairly late additions, coming during the Middle Ages or later. Some time earlier, perhaps during the Empire or possibly the Republic, the letters K, Y and Z were borrowed from Greek. Is it possible to pinpoint with any kind of accuracy exactly when these were borrowed? I realize that narrowing this down to any closer than about a century or so will probably be impossible, but can we at least get it that close? The sign that they’ve been adopted is probably when someone writes the alphabet and includes them. Or perhaps a pangram. I once saw a Latin pangram (text that contains all the letters) used as a penmanship exercise for students and it only had 20 different letters. I don’t know what period this pangram dated to, though. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classicists-adoption-of-k-y-and-z/465827/2 "2008-09-30T11:14:32Z")
I remember reading somewhere (no cite comes to mind, sorry) that _K_ was a letter in the earliest written forms of Latin, in the alphabet derived from Etruscan, but was later phased out in favor of _C_. Originally, the unvoiced velar stop was written with one of three letters, depending on the following vowel: _C_ with _E_ and _I_, _K_ with _A_, _Q_ with _O_ and _U_. This may have been to signify somewhat different places of articulation with each of the vowels: slightly to the front for _E_ and _I_, in the middle for _A_, and slightly to the back for _O_ and _U_. Then in Classical Latin, _C_ replaced all instances of this phoneme, except for _Q_ before _U_ before another vowel (as in _quorum_), and a few survivors of _K_ like _kalendae_. The form of the letter _C_ is descended from _gamma_, originally pronounced /g/ – but the Etruscan language did not distinguish the voiced and sounds of /g/ and /k/, so the Romans learned it as an unvoiced _k_ sound. Later, the letter _G_ was invented for the voiced velar stop by adding an extrz stroke to _C_. As for _Y_ and _[Z](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z)_, they were imported from Greek in the 1st century BCE, since Rome had been conquering Greece, the Greek language was studied by educated Romans, and plenty of Greek vocabulary was being borrowed. > [@](#): > > In early Latin, the sound of /z/ developed into /r/ and the symbol became useless. It was therefore removed from the alphabet around 300 BC by the Censor, Appius Claudius Caecus, and a new letter, G was put in its place soon thereafter. > > In the 1st century BC, it was, like Y, introduced again at the end of the Latin alphabet, in order to represent more precisely the value of the Greek zeta — previously transliterated as S at the beginning and ss in the middle of words, eg. sona = ζωνη, “belt”; trapessita = τραπεζιτης, “banker”. The letter appeared only in Greek words, and Z is the only letter besides Y that the Romans took directly from the Greek, rather than Etruscan. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classicists-adoption-of-k-y-and-z/465827/3 "2008-09-30T12:50:13Z")
Again, with no cite this morning, Latin adopted the K and Q, but only used them for spelling Greek words. Someone smarter than I will be along in a moment. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classicists-adoption-of-k-y-and-z/465827/4 "2008-09-30T13:41:12Z")
> [@Paul in Saudi](#): > > Again, with no cite this morning, Latin adopted the K and Q, but only used them for spelling Greek words. > > Someone smarter than I will be along in a moment. There’s no Q in Classical Greek. Archaic Greek had a Q called qoppa, but it was obsolete centuries before the period when Romans were learning Greek. _C_ replaced kappa for all Greek loanwords in Latin. The rare instances of _K_ in Latin were in native Latin words. ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classicists-adoption-of-k-y-and-z/465827/5 "2008-09-30T16:13:17Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > _C_ replaced kappa for all Greek loanwords in Latin. The rare instances of _K_ in Latin were in native Latin words. _Karus_, the common inscriptional variant for _carus_ - “dear”, is the textbook example of native Latin k (i.e. not from a Greek loanword).