English terms with diacritical marks
The Old English Latin alphabet began to replace the Runic alphabet in the 9th century, due to the influence of Celtic Christian missionaries to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The orthography of Old English – which was entirely handwritten in its own time – was not well standardized, though it did not use all the Latin letters, and included several letters not present in the modern alphabet. When reprinted (on a printing press or computer) in modern times, an overdot is occasionally used with two Latin letters to differentiate sounds for the reader:
Phoenicia
The Phoenician alphabet consists of 22 letters, all consonants. Starting around 1050 BC, this script was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language. It is believed to be one of the ancestors of modern alphabets. By their maritime trade, the Phoenicians spread the use of the alphabet to Anatolia, North Africa, and Europe, where it was adopted by the Greeks who developed it into an alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants.