Why do various languages that use basically the same alphabet have sometimes wholly different pronuciations for said alphabet?

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For instance, in Spanish, the letter “v” is pronouced like the letter “b” in English. Why not just use the letter b? Who decided that for this sound, we’re going to use this letter, even though other users of this alphabet use a different one? I’m not trying to be English-centric here. We could just as easily use the Italian “ci” for the English “ch.” And don’t get me started on how “eaux” somehow equates to a long “o.” I get that English has a different language branch than the Romance languages, but we all use (basically) the same alphabet.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

For every language at some point somebody just decided that these letters correspond to these sounds. There is no right or wrong way to do it and different languages just sometimes chose different letters for different sounds. 

Different languages also have different sounds which also might make a difference. Maybe one language has two sounds that are close to the English b sound, but no v sound so they might write one of the b sounds with v instead. 

Languages also change their pronunciation over time and sometimes the spelling is not changed accordingly. This can be seen in many English words. For example the k in knight was not always silent.

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