The Modern Alphabet

The modern alphabet, otherwise known as the Latin alphabet, consists of fifty-two upper and lowercase letters,

 Uppercase

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Lowercase

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

ten numerals, a variety of other symbols such as &, %, and @, punctuation marks, and accent marks for different languages. The uppercase letters were developed first and then came the lowercase which formed out of the uppercase from cursive versions. Not all alphabets are the same. A lot of European alphabets are Latin based but some have more letters than others. For example Spanish has four more letters than English, while Italian has five less. 

Accents and stresses:

Theses are some examples of how languages uses accent marks and stress with the latin characters that provide a visual guidance to the pronunciation of letters and words by indicating how the letter sound should be modified, where the stress should fall in a word, pitch or intonation of a word or syllable, emphasis in a sentence, vowel length, and distinguishing homophones.

Some of the languages written with the Latin alphabet

Abenaki, Afaa,Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Akan, Albanian, Aleut, Alsatian, Apache,Aranese, Arapaho,

 Aromanian, Arrernte, Asturian, Aymara, Azeri, Bambara, Basque,Belarusian, Bemba, Bikol, Bislama,

 Breton, Burushaski, Catalan, Cayuga, Cebuano,Chamorro, Chechen, Cheyenne, Cimbrian, Chichewa,

 Chickasaw, Choctaw, Comanche,Cornish, Corsican, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Delaware, Dholuo,

 Dinka, Drehu, Duala,Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Ewe, Ewondo, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, 

Finnish,Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Ga, Gagauz, Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German,Gooniyandi, 

Greenlandic, Guarani, Gugadja/Kukatja, Gwich’in, Haida, Haitian Creole,Hän, Hausa, Hawaiian, Herero, Hiligaynon, Hixkaryana, Hopi, Hotcąk, Hungarian,Icelandic, 

Ido, Igbo, Ilocano, Kapampangan, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish,Kaingang, Kala Lagaw Ya, Italian, Jèrriais, Kabyle, Kapampangan, Karakalpak, Karelian,Kashubian, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati,

 Kirundi, Klallam, Klamath, Kurdish, Kwakiutl, Lingala,Latin, Latvian, Lingua Franca Nova, Lithuanian, Livonian, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon,Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Māori, Marshallese,Meriam Mir, Mi'kmaq, Mirandese, Mohawk, Montagnais, Murrinh-Patha, Nahuatl, Nama,Naskapi, Navajo, Naxi, Ngiyambaa, Noongar, Norwegian, Novial, Occidental, 

Occitan,O'odham, Old Norse, Ossetian, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Pirahã, Pitjantjatjara, Polish,Portuguese, Potawatomi,

 Quechua, Rarotongan, Rotokas, Romanian, Romansh, Romany,Rotuman, Saami/Sami, Saanich, 

Samoan, Sango, Sardinian, Scots, Scottish Gaelic,Serbian, Shavante, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Sioux, Slovak, Slovene, Slovio, Somali,Sorbian,

 Southern Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tatar,Taiwanese, Tlingit, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Turkish, Turkmen, Tuvaluan, Tuvan, Twi, Uyghur,Venetian, Vietnamese, Volapük, 

Võro, Walloon, Warlpiri, Waray-Waray, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Yolngu, Yoruba, Zhuang, Zulu

Did the uppercase letters develop from the lowercase, or  did the lowercase develop from the uppercase?

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/latin.htm#modern

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet