Greek or Hellenic (Modern Greek: ελληνικά [eliniˈka], elliniká, "Greek", ελληνική γλώσσα [eliniˈci ˈɣlosa], ellinikí glóssa, "Greek language") is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to the southern Balkans, the Aegean Islands, western Asia Minor, parts of northern and Eastern Anatolia and the South Caucasus, southern Italy, Albania and Cyprus. It has the longest documented history of any single clearly-defined Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history; other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems.