How many letters are in the English alphabet?
The English alphabet has 26 letters: 5 vowels, A, E, I, O and U, and 21 consonants. The letter Y can act as either a vowel or a consonant.
The English alphabet comes from the Latin alphabet used by the ancient Romans, which itself developed from Greek and earlier Phoenician writing. Old English used extra letters, such as thorn (þ) and wynn (ƿ), which later disappeared. The letters J, U and W were among the last to become separate letters, in the 1500s and 1600s.
Although there are 26 letters, English has about 44 distinct sounds, called phonemes, in most accents. That is why the same letter can make different sounds, as with the a in cat, cake and car, and why English spelling can be tricky to learn.
Fun with the alphabet
A sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet is called a pangram. The best-known example is The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, often used to test typewriters and fonts. The order of the alphabet, A to Z, has stayed largely the same for about 2,000 years.
Did You Know?
The ampersand symbol, &, was once taught as the 27th letter of the English alphabet, recited at the end as and per se and, which became the word ampersand.