Eurolinguistics
Writing was introduced by the Greeks and from there also brought to the Romans (6th century BC). There are five alphabets in regular use in the areas generally considered Europe. The Latin alphabet was developed into several scripts. In the early years of Europe, the Carolingian minuscules were the most important variety of the Latin script. From this two branches developed, the Gothic/Fracture/German tradition, which Germans used well into the 20th century, and the Italian/Italic/Antiqua/Latin tradition, still used. For some nations the integration into Europe meant giving up older scripts, e.g. the Germanic gave up the runes (Futhark) (3rd to 17th centuries), the Irish the Ogham script (4th to 7th centuries). The Cyrillic script is the second most widespread alphabet in Europe, and was developed in the 9th century under the influence of the Greek, Latin and Glagolitic alphabets. Both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are used for multiple languages in multiple states, both inside and outside Europe. As well as these two, there are three alphabets used primarily for a single language, although they are occasionally applied to minority languages in the states from which they originate. The oldest of these alphabets is the Greek alphabet, which could be considered the progenitor of all the surviving alphabets of Europe, with the earliest recorded inscriptions appearing in the 9th century BC. The other two are both found in the Caucasus, both originating in the 5th century. The Georgian alphabet is used primarily to write Georgian, though it is also used to write the other Kartvelian languages, Svan, Mingrelian and Laz, all of which are found largely within the borders of Georgia. The Armenian alphabet is used to write the Armenian language, which has two dialects, and has been used to write Turkish in the past.
Vietnamese alphabet
As early as 1520, Portuguese and Italian Jesuit missionaries in Vietnam began using Latin script to transcribe the Vietnamese language as an assistance for learning the language. These efforts led eventually to the development of the present Vietnamese alphabet, started by Portuguese missionary Francisco de Pina. His work was continued by the Avignon missionary Alexandre de Rhodes, who worked in the country between 1624 and 1644. Building on previous dictionaries by Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa, Rhodes wrote the "Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum", a Vietnamese–Portuguese–Latin dictionary, which was later printed in Rome in 1651, using their spelling system.
Later on, under French rule in the late 19th century, some missionaries saw the Confucian literati as the main obstacle to Catholic conversion in Vietnam, hence the elimination of the Chinese language was also regarded as a means for isolating Vietnam from its heritage, and instrumental in neutralizing its traditional elite. Historian Pamela A. Pears asserted that the French, by instituting the Roman alphabet in Vietnam, cut the Vietnamese off from their traditional literature, rendering them unable to read it. However, it was the French authority that had to reluctantly accept the use of chữ Quốc ngữ to write Vietnamese.