Claudian letters
Missing image
Claudian-letters.jpg
Claudian-letters.jpg
Claudian letters
Claudian letters were developed by, and named after, the Roman Emperor Claudius (r. 41-54 AD). He introduced three new letters:
- A backwards, upside-down 'F' to represent consonantal U, possibly inspired by Greek Digamma
- A broken 'H' to represent the sound of Greek Upsilon (or possibly to represent a vowel sound between U and I in Latin words such as optimus, although this is not borne out by inscriptions)
- A backwards 'C' to replace BS and PS, much like 'X' stood in for CS and GS, and inspired by Greek Psi
These letters were used to a small extent on public inscriptions dating from his reign but their use was abandoned after his death. Claudius may have been inspired to introduce these changes by a comment his mother Antonia made to him in his youth, to the effect of that he would be as unlikely to become emperor as he would be able to change the alphabet. In time, the letter Y was added to the Latin alphabet, filling the role of Claudius' broken 'H'. His first innovation, however, would not catch on for about 600 years, when W was derived from a ligature of two Vs.