Of all the Roman contributions to modern civilization perhaps the one that most completely permeates all our modern life is their alphabet and speech. Figure 26 shows how our modern alphabet goes back to the old Roman, which they obtained from the Greek colonies in southern Italy, and which the Greeks obtained from the still earlier Phoenicians. This alphabet has become the common property of almost all the civilized world. [32] In speech, the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian tongues go back directly to the Latin, and these are the tongues of Mexico and South America as well. The English language, which is spoken throughout a large part of the civilized world, and by one third of its inhabitants, has also received so many additions from Romanic sources that we to-day scarcely utter a sentence without using some word once used by the citizens of ancient Rome. Among the smaller but nevertheless important contributions which we owe to Rome, and which were passed on to mediaeval and modern Europe, should be mentioned certain practical knowledge in agriculture and the mechanic arts; many inventions and acquired skills in the arts and trades; an organized sea and land trade and commerce; cleared and improved lands, good houses, roads and bridges; great architectural and engineering remains, scattered all through the provinces; the beginnings of the transformation of the slave into the serf, from which the great body of freemen of modern Europe later were evolved; and certain educational conceptions and practices which later profoundly influenced educational methods and procedure. How large these contributions were we shall appreciate better as we proceed with our history. Of the negative contributions, the most dangerous has been the idea of the rule of one imperial government, which has inspired the autocratic governments of modern Europe to try to imitate the world-wide rule of Imperial Rome.