Evolution of the Alphabet | Earliest Forms to Modern Latin Script
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
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Chart/Narration: Matt Baker usefulcharts.com/
Animation: Syawish Rehman / @almuqaddimahyt
Audio Editing: Jack Rackam / @jackrackam
Intro music: "Lord of the Land" by Kevin MacLeod and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license 4.0. Available from incompetech.com
I find it interesting how a letter that looked like an "I" became "Z" and the one looking like a "Z" became "I"
Me too
@MoolsDogTwo yes.... correct.
KAAAAAAAAAAAA
Maybe so: Imagine the capital "I" in Times New Roman font - with upper and lower "shelves". Now try to write it in this natural order: the upper shelf (left-to-right), then the body (from up to down), and the lower shelf (from left to right). With fast writing this may look like Z.
Just an idea.
Arabic appears to have preserved the original form of these two letters.
z = ى . The sound is like i in modern English
i = ز . The sound is like a Z in modern English.
@@baxiry. Interesting!
The letter Thorn was still in regular use in England at the time of the invention of the printing press but, because it was not used in the German alphabet, standard typesets did not include it. Instead, English printers used a capital Y as a surrogate because it had a similar appearance. So 'The' (which would have had a Thorn instead of TH) was rendered 'Ye' but pronounced the same way. "Ye Olde Boke Shoppe" would have been pronounced as "The Old Book Shop", not with a Y sound at all.
That is incredibly interesting
Presumably this is also how the word "thou" came to be "you"?
@@ashbridgeindustries380 'Thou' is the singular while 'you' is the plural, they developed concurrently. 'Thou' fell out of use because it became informal, like in French.
@@geekyboringfilms233 Thanks for the info!
So we've been singing "God rest ye merry gentlemen" wrong all these years?
Every alphabet: Goes through quite a few changes
O: Literally O
Xx and Oo stayed the same because they were really easy to make. Same with Vv, though that Uu/Vv/Ww split did happen
Many alphabets probably have a letter or two that don't change much. In Georgian for example, the alphabet went through major changes (or maybe better say replacement) twice but the letter S stayed pretty much the same: modern ს, old Ⴑ
PS. Other letters are completely different though, like A: Ⴀ became ა, B: Ⴁ - ბ, G: Ⴂ - გ, D: Ⴃ - დ
: O
I think O was originally an "eye". Like A was an "ox head", M was "water" and N a "snake".
O actually makes sense because because that's the shape your mouth makes when it says it.
W "double U" is actually pronounced "double vé" in French, meaning "double V", which makes more sense since it's shaped like a VV and not a UU.
V used to be U. Latin changed the sound. They're really the same letter. The original W was rounded. So, in French, v is really u with the new sound. Thus, double-u and double-v are synonymous.
Same in Sweden, here we call W dubbel-ve
The "W" sound is like a stronger "U" sound, so that is why we call it "double U."
Thanks. I couldn't but help think of this as I watched. I've thought for a while it might be better called 'double-v' in English. Idk
Tbf when writing the lowercase w a lot of us write it looking like a double u
Imagine how big of a genius you would have to be to get the idea to attribute symbols to verbal sounds that you can then write down to form words
Imagine the guy chizelling 1000's of identical pictures of eyes day after day coming home at night and thinking there's gotta be an easier way than this turned round and saw his wife painting eye liner in a mirror.
and thus world war 1
Apparently angels taught us how to write
Book of enoch go look
What
@@Novasky2007 for chizel my nizzle
I think it's incredible that after more than 3000 years, some letters still somehow resemble the original symbol, like the upside-down bulls head in A, the ladder in H, the snake in N and the eye in O
Western Civilization is complex but cohesive. There are threads of art, history, language, religion, literature, philosophy and law which bind the entire West together across a span of 6,500 years. The West is not a fragmentary collection of unrelated detritus, which is what post-modernism tries to teach.
þ
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þ
@@lookoutforchris I find it interesting to define western civilisation. It always seemed like such a clear concept to me but it's not so obvious when you think about defining features of western civilisation.
@@lookoutforchris It's "Western civilization" but only if you include its Mediterranean roots: Phoenician, Greek, Latin and Judeo-Christian.
If it works, don't fix it.
Thorn is a very interesting letter which I wish we kept around in modern English instead of using a "Th" digraph to make the same sound. Since most early English printers didn't have a thorn letter, they would often substitute a "Y" for thorn, which still survives today in an attempt to make something seem old and nostalgic, such as "Ye olde...". Most people will pronounce the "Y" like a modern Y, but since it is meant to represent the letter thorn it should be pronounced the same as the modern English "th" digraph.
*digraph (sorry!)
Ya, a diphthong are two vowels pronounced directly after another
Dipthongs are two *vowels* not consonants
@@HarryGuit And, to be even more precise, a diphthong is not two vowels. It is one vowel sound that requires a glide between two mouth shapes. Look at us go!
As loņ as people start usiņ it again...
10:44
Cool how C still makes a double function (which can mean k- as in cat and s- as in city) but back then it was K- and G-.
What is REALLY interesting is that in Hiragana (Japanese Sylabic Writing System) the G is also derived from the K (with only a mark to distinct).
Pretty cool how 2 distinct cultures/societies merged on seing a similarity between k- and G-. Both are in the back of the throat (g- is even more far back) and... Well, it is so interesting how sometimes we make 2 symbols for the same sound or represent 2 different sounds with the same symbol.
Edit: OMGGGG. THE G IS JUST A C WITH A LINE IN IT!! OMGGGG SAME THING HAPPENED!!!
Edit 2: Omg. Zed is just like the month February. Let's just change whatever is in last. But, in February's case. It used to be last and nos it is not, while Z is the last letter preciselly because it is not so used. This makes so much sense.
Of course it is not the whole alphabet that uses this order by popularity, but it really shows in the last few. Pretty cool!
It would be really interesting to trace this alongside the runic and cyrillic scripts and see how they all contributed to each other.
sa oef It’s as old as the modern Latin alphabet, so why not?
Its against „agenda” because Slavic runic is older than Phoenician as we all know “that can’t be”. Although author using some runic letters in Phoenician and Greek alphabet. Or maybe post-Latin speaking people still don’t understand Slavic people.
@sa oef well it was created around the 10th century,it's only about 300 years younger than the Latin alphabet
Tatara at Studio
Interesting, what about Sumerian, and Mongolian?
@@VisibleSink No, it's not. There isn't even solid evidence any script had been used over there before the introduction of Cyrillic.
I wouldn´t mind getting þ back, as THe sound is so common in English.
What about the immigrants?
In hiberno-english or at least some it isn't even pronounced
@@flapperf4237 almost every language has costum letters, and the immigrants don't have problems with them either
@@Rakonax Immigrants mostly do low paying jobs because they have no choice. Bringing more nonsense will be discriminating. Unless you want that!
@@flapperf4237 nonsense? a new letter that would make engish a lot more phonetic and so easier to pronounce and write? thats not discrimination.
Bro, did you know the Roman alphabet wasn't complete?
Really? What was it missing?
U, bro.
Bro...
...and a J...
NO U
🤓
@@joopmoop4089 Totally ! 🕶
Espera _21 indeed there is no u
Absolutely fascinating. I have always wondered about the alphabet's origin and then stumbled upon your presentation. It's caffeine for history nerds. Thank you for putting this together and I will be visiting your store.
On a technical note, what software did you use to create the animations? Very clear, concise, and easy to follow along with you.
you should put a little QR code on the chart that leads to this vid
@MichaelKingsfordGray I don't follow your train of thought there, champ
@MichaelKingsfordGray wtf lmao
@MichaelKingsfordGray...what?
can you make a family tree of the Indo-European language family? and if that goes well, maybe other language families
Up
yesssssss please
Cannot second this enough
Yes, please.
So much yes on this! Even just starting with Romance or Germanic would be lovely!
In Italy, when I was little, 25 years ago, at school I learned at first a shorter alphabet: the letters j k x y w were missing because we didn't need them for italian words... than I learned the complete one that I use everyday but, in my mind, even if my name has a k in it, they remain as foreign letters to me 😂😂
italian here too, i love that we litterally call those letters "lettere straniere" (foreign letters) 😂
You are definitely right. J: non existant in semitic. K, Greek from the semitic Kaf is used instead or in paralell with c in many others scripts, Y is Greek as it is called is used in many scripts instead or in parallel with I. It is born from the semitic Yud. X is non existant in semitic, instead is ks. Z is existant in semitic.
@@charlesayache6801 yes, we have ch that sounds like k
In Brazil I learned everything at onde but was told that W, X and Y were only used in names and foreigner words. And I think that's accurate
they left those letters out because they are germanic and Italians think germans are barbarians
This actually explains a lot of stuff. the names of different writings like alphabet, abjad, and abugida, all originate from the first few letters (abgd). In Serbo-croatian, for example, the word "abeceda" (meaning alphabet) literally means abcd. Also explains why the cyrillic aplhabet is ordered similarly, but not quite, like the latin one.
Good question. Greeks invaded the territory of today's territory of Greece except Macedonia, only around 700 BC. Vinca script / Cyrillic today was copied by Greeks and changed some letters as they could not pronounce them. Latin developed from Greek and Etruscans writing was deciphered by using Vinca script / todays Cyrillic script.This means, that the so called barbarians from the north were actually far from that. They invented melioration, calendar ,alphabet and writing. It was an egalitarian society and they never had slaves and have had no arms even though they developed metalurgy,copper,tin, agricultural tools etc.
No war for over 6000 years .And then the big migration from the east apeared,still did not know any metal, but they had arms made from stone. Most of the original man virtually disapared.Aparently it was a plaque which only kills men and does not affect women or the invaders .Number of books was written on this events by leading paleologists from Germany and Italy, Russia and USA. All the claims can be supported with science .
In Spanish we have "abecedario" (meaning also alphabet), but we also have the cognate "alfabeto"
@@viktorbaraga4514 did you just write that the Cyrillic is a Vinca alphabet? Please tell me I just misread because I am not yet at the end of my first coffee for the day 😂
Yup! Abjad comed from the original first 3 letters but it’s the sounds they make in arabic Ah Bah Jim Dal
No one:
The Romans :VTF MAN I CAN ONLY SCREAM
The Chinese：尔弱智乎？
IVST TRY TO BE QVIET
@@Baamthe25th Qvit rn
@@dd-nz8ry wtf man
Romas
Having been involved in a Greek letter group in college, I never realized that Omega & Omicron were simply Big (mega) O and Little (micro) O. This was a good reminder.
If the little O variant of COVID is so dangerous, I don't ever want to see it's big brother...
Oh damn, you're right!
get ready for the Next covid: the possessed brainwashed are Refusing to vax - and the virus seems to evolve in few lunations. am Ready for #4 vax Now. go ron de caligula go go rasputin go !!
@@MegaMementoMori nice troll you go ahead and evolve it in your lungs sorry i am not nice to demons
@@jorgegonzalez-larramendi5491 No, Jorge. You are the demons.
the letter "Y" (called "why" in English) is still called "ípsilon" in Portuguese
And it's "I griega" ("Greek I") in Spanish
In Vietnamese, Y is named “I co rec” meaning Greek Y and “I giai” meaning long I, because I (which some would call it “I ngan”, which means short I) and Y sound very similar, so they use that name to avoid confusion.
Y is called ypsilon in Czech too, I think in most of phonetical languages it's ypsilon
In france it's called: i grec (Greek i)
@@Raikuthedragon That's quite interesting
Still one of the best videos about any topic out there. Gets all the information you want across clearly in a heartbeat.
boomers: they don't teach kids how to write in cursive anymore it makes things easier to read and is more formal
the Roman's: look at those vulgar plebs writing in cursive
They are trying to erase history
Spencerian or GTFO.
@@recoveringsoul755
Who controls the present controls the narrative, who controls the past controls the future -1984
Wait, you guys don't write in cursive?
@@recoveringsoul755 That's why we should write history in ink, not pencil. :-)
7:23 Oh cool, an explanation for dyslexia.
Somewhat, but a non-dyslexic brain can still learn to read this fluently rather easily.
Dyslexia is a combination of things. Mainly the symbol part of the brain does not work. I think due to induced birth drugs creating a lite version of autism where the pruning process is not complete like an autistic.
In Scandinavia, ”w” is actually called ”double v”. In Swedish, it’s not considered a separate letter when it comes to dictionaries and other times when words are placed in alphabetical order. It’s considered a variant of ”v”.
It is the same for Finnish as well. "Tuplavee" means double v.
Double-U, U + U + W
In french as well "double v" or "vé" if you want to write the letter phonetically
Same with Spanish, where the letter is named "doble ve" (double-V).
In German, it's the other way around. :D Also, no Double-Something here. We call the W "Wêh", but it isn't pronounced like in English; it's pronounced like the english V. The letter itself V is not often used in German (only in loanwords) and therefore has no distinct pronounciation. It's either pronounced as "f" or as "w"; the german Name of V is therefore "Fau". (Note that the german E is not pronounced like in English; in German, it's more similar (though not identical) to the english A.)
It would be interesting to also consider the development of all of the letter like cyrillic and various Asian systems, and their occasional influence on each other.
Then there is hangeul developed by Sejong, the fourth king of the Korean Choson dynasty in 1443 . It's purpose was to improve literacy, which had been hampered for many by the complexity of Hanji (Chinese characters).
Cyrillic is much more inspired by the greek alphabet than the latin one. You can see it when the letter "P" is pronounced like the english/latin "R"
Probably wasn’t developed by a king but was just attributed to him
@@HappyBeezerStudios yea especially п! π
the way Greek transformed into Cyrillic is fascinating
Cyrillic has a more straightforward path. It was the second Slavic alphabet (after Glagolithic), created in the Bulgarian Empire during Christianisation, with inspiration from Greek.
Despite this, it has naturally seen changes over time, which would be cool to see in a video.
The biggest being when Cyrillic was transferred onto typewriter for the first time, in Russia, and the designs of various letters would slightly change, while others would be replaced with similar existing Latin letters; that would become the standard Cyrillic font for a while.
Cyrillic also has three forms: print, cursive/technical, handwritten. It'll be interesting how each form developed from the original.
-------------
*If anyone is interested, here's quick history how Cyrillic was formed:*
Saints Cyril and Methodius had been sent on a mission to Greater Moravia in order to Christianise the Slavs there and standardise the language to translate Christian texts.
They had developed the Glagolitic alphabet to match the language.
The Saints had reached decent progress, even gaining many Followers. After St Cyril’s death however, the Missionaries St Methodius and their Followers/Disciples we expelled from Greater Moravia (Cyrillic would later be named that in memory of St Cyril).
Meanwhile in the First Bulgarian Empire, a land that has relied on the cooperation between two completely different people groups: Bulgars and Slavs, each with different languages (although Slavic was predominant since 681), cultures and religions to keep the country united. After devastation from famine and wars, the difference between the peoples was beginning to leave a mark on the country. There had to be a uniting factor, and the language had to be standardised.
The Knyaz (Slavic leader title) at the time, Boris seeked Christianisation.
Conveniently, by coincidence, St Methodius and the followers had been expelled from Moravia at this time. Boris welcomed them with open arms, and even opened to major schools in the Bulgarian empire for them.
Boris will seek standardisation (Old Church Slavonic) so texts could be translated, and eventually a simpler alphabet more suitable for the needs of Bulgarian/ South Slavic Dialect.
Knyaz Boris commissioned from students of the Saints and Disciples, Clement, Naom and the Седмочисленици for the creation of Cyrillic.
Following the Christianisation and Language Standardisation, Bulgaria would follow through into a Golden age under Boris’ son, Tsar Simeon
------------
Cyrillic would then spread across the other Slavic countries and tribes. Via following reasons:
• Cyrillic is simpler than former Glagolithic, and hence being more appealing, especially when educating previously illiterate lower classes.
• As Cyrillic was inspired by Greek, many countries that have close relations to the Byzantine Empire may be more appealed to pick Cyrillic.
• Lands under, influenced or invaded by the Bulgarian Empire would adopt Cyrillic
• If a country adopts the Orthodox church (especially likely if it was help from Bulgarian mercenaries), or is influenced by Bulgarian Orthodox mercenaries may adopt the Cyrillic alphabet. Russia is the famous example.
Edit:
Spelling
That’s so fascinating, I love charts like these. It makes sense now why some of the letters are backwards, I didn’t know Romans and Greeks would interchange between which direction they would write
romans being awkward
The phenomenon of switching writing directions within text even had a name: boustrophedon, meaning "as the ox plows"
they probably got tired from writing with their right hand, then switch to their left hand to continue writing, then switch back again when the left hand's tired... so on so forth, haha
@@lastyhopper2792 What makes you think they would switch hands?
@@funkyfranx because they can write with both hands?
Could you make a Useful Chart about the Knights of the Round Table and the Arthurian Legends in the future please?
Good suggestion.
@@UsefulCharts Thank you very much. 😊
Zera Omg best suggestion!!!
I second that.
What about the Knights Who Say “Nee”?
"Blackletter or Gothic"
Me as german: Hey, thats Fraktur!
Fraktur is just a more beautiful version. The Blackletter was a very economical script to write books cheaply.
In Poland we know the blackletters as gothic letters
@@atatu4551 well in calligraphy in Poland we would have: tekstura (texture) = skrypt gotycki, gotyk (gothic script) = blackletter; fraktura (frakture) - fancier, smoother, more fluorishings; bastarda (bastarde) - even more smooth and soft; szwabacha (Schwabacher - was seen as type of bastarde, evolved to printing german letters, also szwabacha polska exists - polish early print version), rotunda (earlier, closer to carolignan bas still gothic)... :D
@@atatu4551 we are calling it švabach in Czechia, only nazis are using it today
@@canadian2uk How is this the case? Useful Charts said it also, but I don't understand, The Blackletter is much thicker so it looks as if it uses more ink to print, and it also looks more complicated to write.
Real eye opener to ancient alphabets! Very informative! Thanks!
When you consider that essentially every language in the first century is either dead or completely unrecognizable from it's modern form - it's impressive that we still use an alphabet that existed back then.
And ultimately, it's fascinating to know that ALL alphabets, abjads & abugidas (ALL start with A and then B) stem from Egyptian hieroglyphics, which inspired the Phoenician alphabet (the 1st alphabet), which then became Aramaic > modern Hebrew/ Arabic/ Roman & Greek scripts, and also the Indic scripts, from Devanagari that is used to write Sanskrit & modern Hindi, to modern Thai.
In the East, it's Chinese that dominated. The Japanese syllabary is still inspired by Chinese shapes. Only Korean Hangul/ Hangeul is a purely ORIGINAL invention (although inspired by Chinese or East Asian philosophy & linguistics).
Mind-boggling indeed.
Oh I'm not 1 of those crazy Korean netizens claiming that everything under the sun's from Korea, but for their script, they do take the prize for originality.
Not all languages died... Arabic is still alive and was not at any time a dead language.
What about the Greek?
@@karlosdaniel6537 "completely unrecognizable from it's modern form", I guess
@@emilia1911 Bullshit. It's the same language with a slightly different vocabulary. You can easily learn ancient greek if you already know greek.
My mind was just blown: now I know why, in French, we call the letter y "greek i".
Same in italian, it's called "i greca"
As in Spanish. We call it "i griega"
@@tonygomezma No in spanish they now call it "ye" because RAE hates greek apparently.
@@spiritusIRATUS Yes, you are right. I had forgotten it ,but for me "y" will always be "i griega"
same in romanian: "i grec"
Dangit! I would've bought this chart immediately, but it's missing one letter: ð (eth). Though I am happy to see thorn in there.
For those who might not know, ð (eth) is used for the voiced "th" sound, like in words such as "then" and "though." Whereas þ (thorn) is used for the unvoiced "th" like in "thin" or "throw."
Both þ and ð are still used in Icelandic and Faroese, serving the same functions that they used to serve in English.
Quick question. How do you know when to use eth and when to use thorn. Thanks.
@@davidjorden2433 As Nolan mentioned, depending on the sound being voices or unvoiced, that is, if your vocal cords vibrate, then you use eth, if not, you use thorn... in any case, in old times, when they were still in use, people use them less consistently... remember that there was no official spelling of words, and people were not always aware of the phonetic difference.
Also, if you see some signs that say "Ye Olde Shoppe", the 'Y' is standing in for "eth", so it should be pronounced "the", not "ye".
@@davidjorden2433 It's the difference between the words bath and bathe.
Thorn is not used in Faroese. Only ð is used, but it is silent or a slight /w/.
Alpha in phoenician means bull “ALF”.
And you still can see the bull horns in the latter A if you turn it upside down
In the Biblical Hebrew it called Elef - a bull.
@@simko8665 Not quite, Aluf= Ox (a castrated bull). Elef=1000.
@@yossibivas "שגר אלפיך ועשתרות צאניך"
In Aramaic its Aleph. Assyrians call the alphabet "aleph-bet". Also, modern Hebrew adopted Aramaic alphabet. Arabic also borrows a lot of words from Aramaic, and uses modifications of other Aramaic words to create other Arabic words.
in arabic is alif the first language is aramen language which is now arabic language
You could have mentioned that the W was already used in Roman times as they encountered the Germans who used that sound.
To follow on your remark, W is actually called "double - v" in French, and pretty much anyone learning English makes the joke at least once as to why call it "double - u" when it's not even written as a double u.
For some ungodly reason Portuguese also reads w as "double u". I wish I knew why
ofc I know /u, v/ are extremely similar and Vulgar Latin was explicit about that. But why would French and Portuguese decided on a different "double X"?
Edit: /w/ is also extremely similar
Here in Brazil we just took the English spelling and pronounced in a Portuguese way, Wich sounds strange because we could have translated "double u" to "u duplo", but instead we got "dábliu", Wich is not even a word kkkk
Even in italian , it's "doppia v" (double v)
@Manchac It's also the only letter name in English which is not monosyllable which is mildly infuriating.
But the first alphabet is a cow head🤪🤪
13:32 It's fun to note that W is "double U" in english but "double V" in french. In english, the name is approximately based on the sound, but in french we based the name on the look of the letter.
Both sounds about the same, "oo" for english as in "hooligan" or "ou" in french as in "Hibou" .
In french, W is mainly used to write foreign word and I don't remember any real french words that do use w.
Nice video! very informative.
Ouest!
Oh.
Well the video said that in the past, U and V were the same so U is V, and “double u” is just “double v”
In Finnish we call it "kaksois V" (pronounced roughly kæksuis veeh, for you English-ers), which I find pretty funny since we don't use W. We say V, and most kids can't even say nor pronounce V, and when they do it's like a long V!
in italian too! it's called "doppia vu", litterally double v as well :) i assume it is the same in spanish then since our languages are similar
I like how the O it’s just that person that just looks the same through the whole entire life and P is the person that gets plastic surgery their whole entire life and for some reason their best friends
O is the oldest letter that has changed the least. Even in very ancient times.
"Enchanting Table Language"
Get your fact straight before dropping jokes and memes
Oh look, an alphabet and symbols i'm not familiar too, it must be the minecraft enchantment table language
2:02 This actually makes complete sense, because in Hebrew the word for fish is "daag" (דג). Interesting that it has barely changed since!
It’s kinda interesting how the old letter for “H” looks like the “日” (ni) in Japanese
How strange people drew a ladder as H huh
Actually , i think referring 日 to chinese is more accurate
@@royaljoe4901 hmm, yeah that’s a good point
@@Jujuoak And 'H' in the Cyrillic script (Russian) represents the 'N' sound!
Funny, because depending on the use of the kanji, it also makes the “H” sound like when you write day in Japanese it makes the “H” sound.
Fun fact : the letter Y was called "Y graeca" in latin by the Romans (Y being pronunced like latin V or modern U, like explained in the video) and in French we call it "I Grec' = literraly "Greek I".
The Portuguese, Romanians and Spanish (+ Catalan and Galician) also use something similar to this. (Not sure if the Portuguese use it over Ipsilon though)
Also the Dutch and Polish also use respectively "I-Grec" and "Igrek" but i'm pretty sure it was borrowed from French (correct me if i'm wrong) :).
Y actually has many Dutch names, like i-grec, ij, and ypsilon.
in Portuguese we only use ípsilon
In some languages Y is a vowel, but in English it's a consonant. Which is more common?
In american spanish we call it "i griega" wich is also literally "greek i", but it functions as a "sh" sound and a "i" sound at the same time, tough it is not considered a vowel as the letter i is.
@@mortalkombatworld9707 It's actually something like a "sh" sound only in Argentina and Uruguay. Everywhere else it sounds like an English y or, of course, like an i (pronounced "ee") but the latter is the case in every Spanish-speaking country.
Wow, timing: this is literally what I have spent a couple months of the pandemic learning!! I did a (very) rough chart of my own, also focusing specifically on the evolution of the Latin alphabet, but I also included the hieroglyphs that the Proto-Sinaitic characters were most likely based off of. This is because I have also been learning Egyptian hieroglyphs, and when I learned that many of them were the origin of the characters I use every day I was over the moon with excitement :)
I find it interesting how letters that look similar are one letter that is "spun off" from another letter. I never realized that C and G, as well as I and J, were originally the same letter. I am Jewish and studied Hebrew, and I always wondered why the letter "gimmel" is third in the Hebrew alphabet when the English letter G is 7th.
And I don't speak Hebrew but it seems to me like those two sounds are similar. They definitely are in English. G and C you make the same shape with your mouth
@@jekylwhispy4181 Because /k/ is the voiceless version of /g/, so the Roman’s may have had some sounds that were originally /g/ but became voiceless /k/
@@asocosIt’s because Ce and Gamma come from the same thing. It’s not a sound change, it’s that a particular teacher in Rome (forget his name at the moment, forgive me) realized that it wasn’t possible to tell when to say C and when to say G (as they were phonemes, not a allophones). So…he just added a line when it was G.
@@tfan2222 bruh, he is talking about the sounds, not the letters
I should be doing my homework that’s due in a few hours but instead I’m learning about the evolution of the alphabet.
relatable
i am doing this as my homework xd
You _should_ finish your assignment (adults get assignments at work, too), but at least you're learning something.
secret meatball
F
The part where u flipped the letters while talking normally tripped me out
What's weird was, because of context, I would be able to easily read this.
Take a word that you are familiar with (this is even more fun with a sentence) and scramble its letters but keep the first and last letter in their places and don't add or remove the letters in the middle of the word.
Waht ylo'ul get is sthimenog lkie tihs but the wreid prat is yol'ul sltil be albe to raed it lkie nrmoal.
It might slow you down a little though. Someone fluent in English tends to focus on the first and last letters as the basis of the word and then everything else in between is mostly just 'there'.
I wonder how our common languages will evolve in the next 1000 years or so...
Languages won't evolve much, only with newcoming technology terms, because standardized writings and phonetic rules don't let them change.
Writing probably not much since the typing has standardized it (unless some new invention appears that required no type)
maybe slang will take over some vocab in x100 years
Emojis are obviously the new characters / logograms
2021 “hello, how are you doing today”
3021 “helo ho r u doing todey”
@@Istenostor There's still generational sounds that are in the midst of evolving. For example, younger people have dropped the voiceless labialized velar approximate in words like "whether" and "what", but older people still use them. Take small changes like this over a prolonged time and you have almost a different language. So even though evolution has slowed, it still exists nonetheless!
Are you going to look at the Evolution of Cyrillic? That's an interesting looksie
Proto-Sinaitic -> Phoenician -> Greek -> Church Slavonic -> various evolutions -> modern-day Cyrillic (I think)
Damn that was more interesting than I thought. I love language history.
It might be very useful to have something similar for the mathematical symbols, especially for numbers.
And what is wrong with present number?
Oh, you mean lmaking a chart and a video about the development of the symboles for numbers? That would be very interesting. The 10 base system as we know it was brought to Europe from Arabic culture, but the Arabic symbols seen today look very different from the classic symbols most of us use (٣ for 3, ٨ for 8, but some have similarities between them like ٩ for 9), but those are the symboles seen today, imagine all the different stages they must have been through, like the letters' symbols (I actually don't know how much Arabs use those Arabic symboles in math class and in everyday numbers usage, but I do know they love putting them on their notes and coins, which makes the most unique items in my humble coins collection, but this is off topic..). But things get even more complicated because Greek and Hebrew also had their own 10 base counting system, which is still a bit different from the Arab one, and they used their Alphabet letters as symbols for numbers! (Im pretty sure Jews actually never stop using that system ever since, it's the system in which chapters and verses in the hebrew bible are numbered, plus, because the letters are the numbers, you can calculate the "value' of words, and compering values of different words to find connections and hidden meanings has always been part of practicing Judaism ) And I haven't even started with Roman numerals! About those I know the least, so it would be extremely cool to see a video about it.
Hi! You're my favorite youtuber. Keep up the great content!
Evolution of the Latin alphabet not other alphabets
In fact the Etruscan alphabet is even closer to Greek, because it's exactly the Chalkidic alphabet of Greece, which was used in Kyme, ancient Naples, a colony in Italy that used the alphabet of its metropolis Chalkis, where the Etruscans took their letters from.🤗❤️🇬🇷
:( now I can’t let letters goes not to ffffff
B
this channel is pure gold
Richtig Gut
The Old Italic alphabet looks so cool and modern, it needs to make a comeback 😎
But the M,N and P gotta go cuz it kinda sucks ngl
I NEED a return of norse runes. they look so cool
@@deutschekanadische Jag hatar dem
Great tattoo ideas.
@@RMT0615 yes
Amazing! The letter A is an upside-down head of a cow and the letter K is a sideways head of a calf. K is specially interesting, because of it being called kaf in Modern Hebrew (and Arabic), which is awfully similar to the world calf.
You may notice that the modern Latin lowercase letters look more similar to the Carolingian script (minuscule) than to the Blackletter. That's basically because the renaissance humanists mistook copies of classical works written in this script for the ancient originals and thought that this style looks more elegant than the oh-so-barbaric "gothic" letters. :D
LoL, I can't believe it. I always liked Gothic more than anything.
Could you back it with and source? The story I’ve heard is that blackletter is just more difficult to read in small font sizes. The podcast “99 Percent Invisible” has a great episode about this.
@@michaljanwarecki763 Excuse me, this might sound weird but I just noticed that my reply to your question about the sources (which I posted the same day) apparently got hidden because I can't see it when viewing this video while not logged on my account (maybe it has something to do with the links I have put there?). Did you get it?
@@michaljanwarecki763 In case you dindn't get my reply here's it again (without links this time):
Oh yes, the practical aspect of better readability also played a major role. As for sources:
Józef Szymański, Nauki pomocnicze historii, Warszawa 2004, p. 343.
The Wikipedia article on Humanist minuscule, with this quote in particular: "When they handled manuscript books copied by eleventh- and twelfth-century scribes, Quattrocento literati [meaning the learned Italians of the 15th century] thought they were looking at texts that came right out of the bookshops of ancient Rome". from Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press) 2006, p. 134.
I also found an interesting article on Humanistic Script on a blog about medieval manuscripts called 'Sexy Codicology'.
I'll be sure to check out the podcast you recommended too.
@@Artur_M. This feature is called shadow ban. No one sees banned comments except you. Some keywords or any link will cause it. You can avoid it for links by putting them in between of two $, + or = symbols. But only if that link wasn't filtered by keyword
You should have mentioned the "Y" was used in Latin for Greek loanwords. You didn't intend to talk about pronunciation, but this is because the letter, which was originally pronounced like English "oo", became pronounced like the French "u" or German "ü". The Latin borrowed words from the Greeks during that time, and the Y was used to represent that sound, which eventually became pronounced like the letter "i" ("ee") in both languages, while "V" was still used in Latin to represent the "oo" sound and the "w" sound.
Another thing also : There was actually a rule for when to use "V" and when to use "U". At the beginning of words, "V" was the dominant form, and "U" was used elsewhere. Since, at the beginning of words, the "w" sounds changed to become a "v" sound in Romance languages (descendant languages from Latin), the rule eventually changed and "V" came to represent the "v" sound and "U" the "oo/u" sound. If I remember correctly, something similar happened for "I/J".
It's a bit hard to talk about the history of the alphabet without talking about pronunciation, as it's sometimes very important for understanding why certain changes in the alphabet happened.
This is very interesting! It's explained pretty well in the "Y" video by jan Misali.
@@clockworkkirlia7475 you mean "w"?
@@Mercure250 Yes I mean "w" but to be fair I could have been making a hilarious joke for all anyone knows. :P Definitely wasn't confused by the subject matter or anything.
@@clockworkkirlia7475 Ah, so that's why
True. Latin word for Syria was ... Syria (with a Y).
13:03: The fact that the "V" was sometimes a vowel and sometimes made the "vvvv" sound makes a lot of sense. The letter "vav" (ו) in hebrew makes a "vvvv", "oh", or "ooo" sound depending on what word it is used in. Also I wonder if that is why vowel starts with the letter "v."
The word "vowel" itself has nothing to do with its semantic meaning and the fact it starts with a "v", if that is what you had in mind.
Its pronounced V because that how it was pronounced by Ashkenazi jews due to the slight germanization of Hebrew in Europe. (In German W makes a V sound) It was pronounced the original W sound by Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews. Now the V sound is used because that's the sound they decided to use when they were resurrecting Hebrew. Though some people do still use the W sound today.
The real alphabet lore
You forgot Eth! In Middle English, it was used more or less interchangeably with the letter Thorn.
no eth is for voiced while thorn is for unvoiced like how v is voiced and f is unvoiced
@@w00dhat I thought so too, but there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of corroboration. They seem to have been used somewhat indiscriminately depending on the author’s preference. If you have something that would show differently, please share. It always seemed odd to me to have two symbols cover the “th” sound. I’ll defer, I am no expert.
@@Thresher It may be more down to the author's pronunciation, or even the scribe's regional dialect. There are two "th" sounds, the one in old fashioned "thy" and the one in the word "thigh." The odd thing is that in modern English we don't have a letter for either and use the same digraph for both (which is what confuses people)!
Also in Icelandic
So many interesting little details that jump at me as i view it as a Hebrew speaker...
- The most ancient version of the alphabet is at times sooo similar to the modern Hebrew letters.
- So many original meanings of letters also stayed almost the same.
- The letter that looks like an eye, is pronounced 'a-i-n', and that also how you say 'eye' in Hebrew!
That is largely true to 'bet' (b), 'mem' (m), 'nun' (n), 'dalet' (d), 'reish' (r)... It's all connected to words in modern Hebrew that sound almost the same as the name of the letter, and have the meaning of the original Egyptian letter... AMAZING.
Not to mention that the shape of the letters is olso very similar...
I'm always blown away by such stuff. Thousands of years of human development in your face. 0:
it's quite incredible how almost every language in the world today uses an alphabet based on this one.
That’s because while Greek and Latin alphabets were developing, back in the Near East the Aramaic alphabet began, and Hebrew is a branch off of that.
Greek: Alpha! 😎
Hebrew: Alef! 😎
Latin: ... 😖
Ancient Egyptian: Go on, my child... 👵
Latin: Ahhhhhhh 😳
Ancient Egyptian: I am so disappointed in you, my child. 🤦
Also, in the Greek alphabet, every letter had a numerical value, it was both a letter and a number, so when the letters stigma, digamma, qoppa, sampi, were dropped from the alphabet, they were continued to be used as numbers. The stigma is still being used the same way in modern Greek when there is numbering using letters.
εχουν μπερδευτει γενικα.. περνουν ως δεδομενα καποια πραγματα που δεν ισχυουν καν...
I don't recall digamma used as a number. Maybe it was dropped too early? I don't know.
The other three yes, they are 6, 90 and 900.
i liked the video and found it informative, but the question I have is in Old English they had several other letters that were not covered like the long S, persand, which was the last letter and besides the two you mentioned there are six more. Each slowlly evolved away. So in essence weren't there 36 letter in Old English.
he completely forgot the yogh :(
Long S, yogh, ampersand, and eng all were not in old English, yogh was in Middle English, and long s and ampersand were in Early Modern English
No, their were only 24 old english letters, their was were only 2 letters hat he did not cover in old English, which were æ and ð.
Really interesting, I would watch an even more detailed and longer version of this! part 2 maybe?
I love this stuff. I've loved languages since I was little.
Thank you for introducing these five major 'systems'.
Old Italic --> Roman Square: Some dude just decided to take every single letter and flip them backward
Yep! And you know why? The Old Italic forms presented here are the ones used to write Etruscan and Oscan, which were generally written from right to left. Umbrian and Latin were generally written from left to right and used mirrored but otherwise similar letters. Samnite and the rest? I forget and cannot be bothered looking it up, but I'm sure they did something.
I don't know if that makes it more interesting or more boring, or maybe both, but that's what's going on there.
Fun fact about 10:17
In Turkish language, the letter C still sounds as a J or a G (as pronounced in the word “general” or “just”)
But the letter G sounds as it is pronounced in words like “glass” or “great”.
So its "abj"?
@@edwincomia5068 Pretty much, yes.
I find it interesting the oldest known example of the Proto-Sinaitic script was found in 1999 in Middle Egypt in the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions. This suggests that Proto-Sinaitic originated there and the term should probably be revised Proto-Middle Egyptian or something to that effect.
This makes me want to do youtube; Something fresh, I like it; Thats cool, love it; best content on youtube right now
Great video! I tried to tell this story once and I made a mess: congratulation for telling it so clearly! One point is slightly incorrect in my opinion: why the Romans split the letter C. It is usually believed that the Romans first learnt the alphabet from the Etruscans, so they first came into contact with a version of the Greek alphabet that had been adapted for the Etruscan language. Now Etruscan is typically reconstructed as having no voiced stops but several K-like sounds in different places of articulation. According to my sources the Etruscans had no use for a G-sound and had repurposed C for one of their K-sounds instead. So the Romans learnt that C had a K-sound and they had to recreate a new letter for the G-sound. You can look into it .
Alphabet lore
There's an issue in the evolution of the S that you have in your chart. You have the s coming from greek sigma but suddenly you change it into a long s ſ and then back to the modern s, even though ſ and s were used concurrently for a long time and is responsible for the ß in German which is a ligature of ſs. So in your Carolingian step you should have an extra s letter in between ſ and t!
Wow. First time I'm actually interested in learning about the history of english. How do youtubers make learning so interesting??
Just found this video - wow. Why things like this aren't taught in school just blows my mind. Incredible summary.
12:42 now I know why we call this letter the 'greek Y' in dutch
It's "Greek i" in Spanish and French, probably other languages as well.
@@Siansonea the prenountiation of 'greek Y' is 'I' in dutch too
@@Siansonea Next to 'Greek Y' Dutch also say 'I-Grec', which is alike.
@@luukh833 true
Спасибо! Как же мне нравится видеть связь времен через слова и знаки. 10/10.
уроки русская школа русского языка
Виталий Сундаков....
dang, last time i was this early, the Ceasar was still being stabbed
So you finally confess. Guards, seize him!
and Caesar was still written IVLIVS CÆSAR
AND THEY ALL WROTE IN ALL-CAPS!!!
@@NorseGraphic
PROHIBE CLAMANTIS HIC NON NECESSE EST
3:30 so this is where the enchanting table language came form
@Commander3838 r/woosh
@Commander3838 issa joke
As a Hebrew speaker, we enchant Items everyday and sell them for higher prices, that's how we are still not extinct
I have been longing for a chart or visual aid showing biblical history corresponding with "secular" history. For instance, "moses led the people put of egypt at this point in history but here's what was going on in the rest of the world." I'd absolutely love for you to do a video on this. It's something I've been thinking about for a long time.
I'm glad someone else looks at the world that way. The two are not irreconcilable.
1:08 I know letters (alphabets) syllabaries (Symbols) and Logo-syllabaries (Emojis) but what is Abbas’s and Abugidas, one of them is probaky numbers but how bout the other one
4:20 Your proto-Sinaitic actually mixes signs from different stages. Several later Hebrew-Phoenician signs had more than one forerunner in proto-Sinaitic. As certain sounds had merged (or were never more than dialectic or allophonic differences to begin with) the number of letters were reduced. The single reduced letter typically appears to be a deliberately ambiguous sign made to look somewhat like all its forerunners. So H came from two Sinaitic signs, one the Egyptian mansion (H-y-t) sign for emphatic H which gave its name to the final single sign (chet in Hebrew) but also from the twisted wick sign for the guttural ch sound which survives as a separate letter in Ge'ez. The single Hebrew-Phoenician chet looks somewhat like both. Similarly with zayin coming from both early dhayin for the dh sound (voiced th) which was two strokes and from what was probably the papyriform pillar sign for the z sound, and looking like a compromise between both. This was also the case with ayin coming from both the eye and the ox tether signs. Tsade came from three signs and shin from as much as four. What you have shown as the origin of Q is actually one of the tsade letters not the Q which appears as a distinct sign in Sinai, although confused by Albright and others back in the day. At Sinai the samekh was actually the fish, the djed pillar version of samekh came later and is not found in Proto-Sinaitic.
13:35 actually in french we call w "double v" which makes more sens imo (never understood why in english it's double u)
Because "uu" was used to make the w sound before making it a letter
@@doctorwitherdorakuro6028 Well if you take into account that u and v were the same letters, yes. Still, v and w are consonants while u is a vowel.
@@QuinquetPourpre v and w are kind of different. While saying v your lower teeth touch your lower lip but w is for relaxed and can sometimes sound like an u
@@QuinquetPourpre Welsh has entered the room.
@@doctorwitherdorakuro6028 Uh, yeah they're not the same letter. Beside this is 9nly true in English which is absolutely not the only language with thoses letters, so I don't get why you argue about that
Þe crazy þing is, some people literally þink I'm using a weird 'p'
The crazier thing is, there are TWO TH sounds in English.
The th-sound in "the" is not the same as in "thing", ð vs þ
6:59 IVLIVS
IVLIVS CAESAR
1- What software you use to graphically explain this smoothly?
2- How long it took you to create this video (graphical only)?
The ABJAD system is actually Phoenician. The name Phoenician refers to the people who used a composition of short sounds instead of lengthy names over (simplified pictures) or symbols to invent the writing system.
The short sound they chose for each symbol is the beginning of the name of that symbol’s resemblance & the symbols were simplified to more & more to letters.
The names of those ancient symbols are still the names of the Arabic letters today.
I will demonstrate as follows:
The word ALEF in Phoenician meant the Bull’s head in cattle business. So, they chose the beginning sound of the name Alef to represent the symbolic shape A.
ALEF is still the name of the letter A in Arabic. All the Arabic letters have their original names from the ancestors. Hebrew adapted the Phoenician Alphabet after they escaped the Egypt to Sinai. The Greeks also adapted the Alphabet through trading & Travel as they are so close to the Phoenician shores.
13:30 Well, in Czech we call w "dvojité vé", which means "double v".
same in french it is "double v" with french accent
Romanian: "dublu ve"
Portuguese: D-a-bliu
In Spanish is "v doble" which means the same.
The early letter F jumping from symbol to symbol: Parkour!
I purchased Evolution of the Alphabet and Writing Systems of the World about a year ago. I just finally purchased frames for them, and hope to mount them in my office soon.
Ever since I was a child I've been fascinated by writing systems and taught myself the Greek Alphabet and Hebrew Abjad. As an adult, I taught myself the Cyrillic Alphabet, then Hiragana/Katakana syllabaries. I'm currently teaching myself the Hangul Alphabet. Next the Arabic Abjad, then perhaps the Devanagari Abugida.
These two posters will continue to inspire me to other writing systems - thank you!
As a person who loves languages, scripts, conlangs, and neography, I love this very much! If you ever get around to it, you think you can do one of the family of germanic scripts, namely what would become the norse runes (Elder Futhark) and the script used for Nordic (Younger Futharc) and perhaps even the germanic tribes that left
In danish "W" us called "double v". It's not used in any danish words and is absent from the old traditional danish alphabet.
On the other hand we do have 3 additional vowels: Æ(æ) Ø(ø) Å(å).
On a english keyboard layout we would write these as contractions of two other vowels instead. Æ=AE, Ø=OE and Å=AA.
The use of Å instead of AA was only officially adopted in 1948.
Alphabets are constantly evolving.
German has the vowels Ä,Ö and Ü, which can be written as AE,OE and UE. I think our "OE" are pronounced the same though I'm not sure about the "AE".
I love seeing similarities in different languages, always makes me realize that we are not that much different.
well english has 5 vowels but each vowel can make at least 2 sounds so phonetically it is more like 10 vowels with a few other letters, like Y, being able to act as a vowel from time to time. At the end of the day if we attempted to make the language more phonetic sounding we would go from 5 vowels to about 20.
I wonder what a cursive æ looks like.
@@marcusaureliusf Not good, trying to write cursive æ in primary school was a nightmare(I'm Norwegian, not Danish, but we have the same letters)
6:40
After realizing after this transition all leters were "inverted" to the way we look at today.
I just made a quick wikipedia search and found out that Old Italic also used Right-to-left direction for reading sometimes.
So, maybe when they made the transition from right-to-left to our standard left-to-right, they also switched the letters. So the beginings and ends would stay the same, just in different directions.
Edit: OMG, I'm a genius (JK). But great explanation! They did both directions simultaneously!! That way the eye travel is minimized while reading! So engenious! I loved the snake-like movement of the reading. Great animation to show your point.
The latin pronounciation has changed over time though. Julius Caesar would have prounounced his own name as Iulius Kaesar ("Gah-ee-ous Ee-ul-ee-ous Kah-äh-sar"). Oh, and speaking of the Umlaut: It always amazes me that the pronounciation of the modern Standard German is more or less identical to the pronounciation of late Latin.
Julius Kaiser
I love that German pronunciation is so direct. Most of the words are written as they're spoken. Not like English, enough though hiccough tough
@@itsxunlight Or like in "Ghoti" (according to G. B. Shaw)... But yes, in German there are only a very few cases, where something isn't pronounced as it is spelled (like "st" which is pronounced as "scht"). And btw.: the word "Kaiser" (Emperor) derives from the latin/greek word Caesar/Kaisar; the same is true for the russian word "Tsar" (Cae-SAR, KaiSAR).
@@untruelie2640 ghoti aka fish, love that one :) Check out the chaos poem. It's a poem on English pronunciation, I can't recall by whom tho.
@@itsxunlight Thank you, I will check it out. :)
Do a princes of Liechtenstein or Monaco
Ah. So that's why in Spanish "c" often carries a "g" sound, and why in German "y" is called "upsilon".
It's not upsilon it's ipsilon, but you where close...
I'm a spanish speaker and I don't know what you means by that. C and G are clearly different. They have softer sounds than English, but that's about it.
@@MrFreakHeavy Como, comer are the ones I can think of. I'm only a beginner learner so I might be wrong.
@@michaelatorn8380 It's spelled Ypsilon and pronounced Üpsilon
@@Friek555 who pronounces it üpselon?
Üpselon would be way too nasal phoneticly.
0:17 "recently updated" has the alphabet changed again?
Wdym again
The song? Yes
The letters? Negative
But what about the three important letters: ÆØÅ how and when did they make it into the alphabet (of danish and norwegian)
also oe in french in words : soeur, coeur, oeuf, (don't know how to write glued OE using the keyboard)
@@vostfrguys If you're using Windows, press Alt+0140 for the uppercase and Alt+0156 for the lowercase.
@@vostfrguys this one Œ œ?
@@pabloc.b.9837 yes thx but i've seen its actually more commun than I thought there are like 500 words (most of them are words i dont' know or just some changes to some words)
And there actually even are 50 words with AE glued... I know almost none of them
@@vostfrguys this "glued" are named as orthographic ligatures; yet, they ressemble monograms.
What an amazing work, thank you ! 12:20 : they didn't call it "digamma" at first, I guess the greek letter became "digamma" a posteriori... maybe even after the sound "w" vanished ? (actually it remained as a "rough breathing")
Most interesting video I've seen in a very long time.
Also interesting how so,e letters were dropped as useless, but later other letters evolved to fulfill the role of the dropped "useless" letter.
I wonder why gothic scripts were considered "easier" to write, they look rather elaborate. Maybe because they required only downstrokes and therefore caused less splatter?
Passionnant de suivre pas à pas, Culture par Culture l’évolution des Signes menant à notre Alphabet. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Hi, thanks. Wonderful explanation
I wanted to comment at 12:12, regarding the letter F. In Hebrew the name of the letter is indeed VAV, but the actual pronunciation is without V at the end.
The actual pronunciation can be VEE, VE, VU, VO etc. depending on the content