The letter "Å" was introduced in Norwegian in 1917, replacing "Aa". Similarly, "Å" was introduced in Danish in 1948, but its place as the last letter of the alphabet, as in Norwegian, was instituted in 1955. The combination aa still occurs in names and old documents. It is treated like å in alphabetical sorting, not like two letters a.
In computing, several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet:
DS 2089 (Danish) and NS 4551-1 (Norwegian), later established as international standard ISO 646
The difference between the Dano-Norwegian alphabet and the Swedish alphabet, is that Swedish uses the variant Ä instead of Æ, and the variant Ö instead of Ø — as in German, and that the letter W is always a separate letter in Norwegian and Danish.
It is generally held that the Latins adopted the western variant of the Greek alphabet in the 7th century BC from Cumae, a Greek colony in southern Italy.
The Latin alphabet spread from Italy, along with the Latin language, to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire.
In the late eighteenth century, the Romanians adopted the Latin alphabet; although Romanian is a Romance language, the Romanians were predominantly Orthodox Christians, and until the nineteenth century the Church used the Cyrillic alphabet.
Feeds |
Contact