00:00 The Latin alphabet, which originated in ancient Rome, is the most widespread system of writing in the world.

01:40 The Latin alphabet is used by every country in the western hemisphere, sub-Saharan Africa, and all of western and northern Europe, and it was based on the Etruscan alphabet, which in turn was based on the Khmerian-Greek alphabet, which was based on the Phoenician alphabet, which was based on Egyptian hieroglyphics.

02:45 The letter J was added to the Latin language via papal decree, and in the original Latin, Julius Caesar's name would have been spelled I-V-L-I-V-S, using the I instead of J and the V instead of U.

03:54 Thorn, which used to represent the "TH" sound, was eventually replaced by the letter Y, and the ampersand was considered the 27th letter of the alphabet in the past.

05:14 The long S was eventually abandoned in the 19th century because it served no real purpose and was redundant with the normal S, and many countries have gone out of their way to switch to the Latin alphabet.

06:20 After the Soviet Union fell apart, several countries, including Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, have announced plans to transition from Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet, while other countries like Serbia and Bulgaria have Latin characters commonly used alongside their official writing systems.

07:28 China has officially adopted the use of a Latin alphabet called Hanyu Pinyin, which is used for transliterating Chinese words and has been experimented with as a system for teaching children how to read.