### Latin alphabet, Middle Latin language
The Latin alphabet The Roman alphabet, which became widespread owing to the growth of the political power of Rome, the Latin language together with the transmission of Christianity. Its letters originate from the South-Italian Greek writing through the transmission of Etruscan writing. There are two main types respectively: book and utilitarian writing; the majuscula (capital letteres) and the minuscula (low case letters). The Middle Ages took over the round uncial writing from antiquity. In the 6-8th centuries independent types of writing developed on the territories of certain linguistic cultures. For example, in the British Isles the so-called insular writing, in Gaul, the Merovingian writings, in South-Italy the Benevetan writing. The Carolingian reform of writing unified these types of writing in the form of the Carolingian minuscula letters, which became the base of all the later forms of writing, such as the Renaissance antiqua letters and also today's modern printed letters. The Carolingian minuscula was popular through the 8-12th centuries, meanwhile at the end of the Carolingian age, in the 10-11th centuries, the age of the so-called writing reaction made its way, when the usage of utilitarian writings (cursive and charter writings) was pushed back. This was followed by different types of Gothic minuscula between the 12-15th centuries. Parallel with these, the humanist minuscula, imitating the Carolingian writing, also appeared from the end of the 14th century. In its system medieval Latin writing was different from that of today's writing: It hardly ever represented all the letters of the phonetic form of words, on the contrary it used a lot of abbreviations. Omitted letters inside words and omitted endings were marked by abbreviations, which did not refer to the precise phonetic form, but rather showed certain types of phonetic groups (for example, syllables with the sound 'r', or nasal syllables). The history of writing is the topic of the science of paleography, which also deals with the history of writing materials and writing tools. SzK The Middle Latin language A developed version of the classical or Old Latin, which is considered a more or less living language between the 5-15th centuries. Its base is the so-called late Latin language taught in schools in the 2-5 centuries AD. The factors that influenced it were the vulgar Latin (=spoken) and the ecclesiastical Latin. The ecclesiastical Latin itself contains a lot of layers: its base is the Bible translation from Greek (Vetus Latina and St Jerome's Vulgata translations), the liturgic Latin (a solemn, high-flown cultic language), and the use of language of the church fathers (late Latin enriched with regularly-formed expressions of Greek origin, signifying new concepts). As in the romanised territory of the one-time Roman Empire in the Merovingian age the Latin language took up several new elements - after the pattern of developing neo-Latin languages - the scholars of the Carolingian age saved it from becoming another neo-Latin language by clearing it from expressions of the vernacular. They declared as a rule that only those expressions could be used in the Latin language which were used by the classical authors of the Golden Age (for example, Cicero and Vergil). This kind of Latinism (using the classical vocabulary only) was transferred to Hungary by the authors of the age of St Stephen. Another factor that helped the development of Middle Latin was scholastic philosophy from the 12th century on, as the Middle Latin of the Carolingian age was unable to express the system of its ideas, so it declared as a rule that not only the classical expressions but also the regularly-formed new expressions could be used to express thoughts. So Middle Latin was different from its predecessor in two aspects: on the one hand, in neo-Latin, German, Celtic, Slav, Hungarian ...etc languages and the professional language of philosophy new words were built into the language. On the other hand, the grammatical structure was loosened by the influence of the spoken language. The Renaissance put an end to the Middle Latin language, as it required the usage of the language of classical authors and church fathers, making Latin a dead language forever. SzK