. The form with the rounded back, which has passed from Latin into the languages of western Europe, was borrowed from the Greeks of S.W. Italy, but is widely spread also amongst the peoples of the Peloponnese and of northern Greece. It arises from a form like
when the sides which meet to the right are written or engraved at one stroke. From a very early period one side of the triangle was often prolonged, thus producing a form
which is characteristic of Aramaic from 800 B.C. In Greek this was avoided because of the likelihood of its confusion with
, the oldest form of the symbol for r, but in the alphabets of Italy—which were borrowed from Etruscan—this confusion actually takes place. Etruscan had no sound corresponding to the symbol D (in inscriptions written from right to left,
), and hence used it as a by-form for