districts. All these Romance languages bear the same relation to the Latin
as the different groups of the Indo-European family of languages bear to
the parent speech.

* * * * *

PART I.

* * * * *

SOUNDS, ACCENT, QUANTITY.

* * * * *

THE ALPHABET.

1. The Latin Alphabet is the same as the English, except that the Latin has
no w.

1. K occurs only in _Kalendae_ and a few other words; y and z were
introduced from the Greek about 50 B.C., and occur only in foreign
words--chiefly Greek.

2. With the Romans, who regularly employed only capitals, I served both as
vowel and consonant; so also V. For us, however, it is more convenient to
distinguish the vowel and consonant sounds, and to write i and u for the
former, j and v for the latter. Yet some scholars prefer to employ i and u
in the function of consonants as well as vowels.

CLASSIFICATION OF SOUNDS.