Spread
For earlier history, see Latin alphabet.The Latin alphabet spread, along with the Latin language, from the Italian Peninsula to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The eastern half of the Empire, including Greece, Turkey, the Levant, and Egypt, continued to use Greek as a lingua franca, but Latin was widely spoken in the western half, and as the western Romance languages evolved out of Latin, they continued to use and adapt the Latin alphabet.
Read more about this topic: Latin Letters
Famous quotes containing the word spread:
“When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I couldn’t have the end without them.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“I’m no angel, but I’ve spread my wings a bit.”
—Wesley Ruggles, U.S. screenwriter. Tira (Mae West)
“There’s Margaret and Marjorie and Dorothy and Nan,
A Daphne and a Mary who live in privacy;
One’s had her fill of lovers, another’s had but one,
Another boasts, “I pick and choose and have but two or three.”
If head and limb have beauty and the instep’s high and light
They can spread out what sail they please for all I have to say....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)