the Etruscan alphabet. One of these became the Latin alphabet, which spread across Europe as the Romans expanded their republic. After the fall of the Western Roman state and later the Eastern Roman state, the alphabet survived in intellectual and religious works. It came to be used for the descendant languages of Latin (the Romance languages) and most of the other languages of western and central Europe. Being the most widely used script in the world. The Etruscan alphabet remained nearly unchanged for several hundred years. Only evolving once the Etruscan language changed itself. The letters used for non-existent phonemes were dropped. Afterwards, however, the alphabet went through many different changes. The final classical form of Etruscan contained 20 letters. Four of them are vowels (a, e, i, and u). Six fewer letters than the earlier forms. The script in its classical form was used until the 1st century CE. The Etruscan language itself was not used in imperial Rome, but the script was used for religious texts. Some adaptations of the Latin alphabet have ligatures, a combination of two letters make one, such as æ in Danish and Icelandic and Ȣ in Algonquian; borrowings from other alphabets, such as the thorn þ in Old English and Icelandic, which came from the Futhark runes; and modified existing letters, such as the eth ð of Old English and Icelandic, which is a modified d. Other alphabets only use a subset of the Latin alphabet, such as Hawaiian and Italian, which uses the letters j, k, x, y, and w only in foreign words. Another notable script is Elder Futhark, believed to have evolved out of one of the Old Italic alphabets. Elder Futhark gave rise to other alphabets known collectively as the Runic alphabets. The Runic alphabets were used for Germanic languages from 100 CE to the late Middle Ages, being engraved on stone and jewelry, although inscriptions found on bone and wood occasionally appear. These alphabets have since been replaced with the Latin alphabet. The exception was for decorative use, where the runes remained in use until the 20th century. The Old Hungarian script was the writing system of the Hungarians. It was in use during the entire history of Hungary, albeit not as an official writing system. From the 19th century, it once again became more and more popular. The Glagolitic alphabet was the initial script of the liturgical