alphabet - Alphabet - Greek, Etruscan, Roman: As already mentioned, the original Etruscan alphabet consisted of 26 letters, of which the Romans adopted only 21. They did not retain the three Greek aspirate letters (theta, phi, and chi) in the alphabet because there were no corresponding Latin sounds but did employ them to represent the numbers 100, 1,000, and 50. Of the three Etruscan s sounds, the Romans kept what had been the Greek sigma. The symbol that represented the aspirate later received the shape H as it did in Etruscan. I was the sign both of the vowel i and the consonant j. X was added