Why is the Greek Alphabet So Special?
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- The Greek Alphabet is like ours (The Latin Alphabet) but not. Well let's took a look at its, and the our, history.
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#Greek #Ελληνικά #AncientGreece
The Greeks did have a writing system called Linear B in the Bronze Age but it was lost during the period of political turmoil known as the Greek dark age
It wasn't lost. It just has never been translated. But you are referring to Linear A not Linear B.
@@arcotroll8530 Linear A was older than linear B and it has not been translated yet (so we can't know if the people using it spoke greek). Linear B comes after A and it has been translated (a greek language)
@@Tyfweus Αυτό ακριβώς λέω. Κοίτα καλύτερα το σχόλιο μου.
@@arcotroll8530 Linear A is not considered a Greek language though
@@SCCGBE Not a Greek language per se, but a precursor to it, that has influenced the development of the later, "proper" Greek.
A Greek guy living in Netherlands, watching a video created by a Dutch guy about the Greek alphabet ...
ik ook. kai ego
the modern world is weird, true
Watched in English and commented by a native spanish speaker right now
An English descendant living in Georgia, USA watching a video by a Netherlander about the Greek alphabet being commented on by a Greek living in the Netherlands.
@@enoycoca7031 with a completely Italian name 🤣
That awkward moment when you try to order a churro and end up with a gyro instead.
You throw a bottle of ouzo in the waiter's head
Ha ha churro (τσούρος) in the greek kozanitic means penis
The map seriously needs to be more easily recognizable.
Confusion is good for you
It is a test of your determination and testicular fortitude essential to comprehending the meaning hidden in a graphic that causes perceptual distortion which results in a cognitive discombobulation. Weak people cannot bear to suffer this agony of the soul, they quit. But you, a fierce Savage, did triumph over its idiotically engineered evil. You are qualified to be the Spreme Commander of the Universe ...to be known as a Divine Being ...may your Eternal Radiance blind us with its Grace ...for we are mere Worms beneath your contempt.
Ok ?
even I dutch fanatic can't understand thyne script, couldeth thou be so nice to refrase it?
it is recognizable...
One fun anecdote I've heard is that late Carthaginian merchants sometimes used the Greek script on their amphorae in order to be able to sell their wine at a higher price.
Carthage, the China of the Bronze Age.
Arthas Menethil China, The Carthage of the modern age
Don Draper's ancestors!
Actually, Greeks were literate long before the creation of the very first true Alphabet (since Phoenician wasn't a real Alphabet). Don't forget other Greek writing systems like the Linear B syllabary script from 1700-1200 BCE by the Mycenaean Greeks, or the Cypriot syllabary script from 1100-400 BCE by the Greeks of Cyprus. Furthermore, there was an important presence/colony of Greeks on the Syrian coast, namely the city of Al-Mina, founded a little before 800 BCE. It was there supposedly that Greek traders came in contact with the Phoenicians and developed their own contemporary writing script, the first ever recorded Alphabet (since Phoenicians didn't really have an Alphabet but a Syllabary/Consonant/Abjad script). Here is a little more information about it, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Mina. Not many people know of this by the way.
Herodotus was the one that mentioned Greeks being illiterate not Hilbert
@@Ratich And many of them were illiterate, as quite accurately put by Herodotus, a result of the Greek Dark Ages that were caused by the Bronze Age Collapse. But again, not all were illiterate, as the example with the Cypriot Greeks shows, and we were also literate before we became illiterate (for a short period of time), as the Mycenaean example shows. I am just sharing things that Herodotus and the uploader of the video didn't, this is no reason to get upset about it. All these are just an additional input.
@@Agras14 I know of linear A and linear B I am just saying that Herodotus said that Greeks were illiterate not Hilbert
@@Ratich I know what you said, I simply added upon what Hilbert didn't say and what Herodotus did say.
I've also understood the Greek got the alphabet already by their trade with the Phoenicians (Maybe P(h)oin(ic) locally, because the Romans waged Pun(ic) wars with Carthago).
Ancient Greek isn't a dead language as modern Greeks can read it and understand it. It is still Greek.
The English language has changed more from the era of Shakespeare, than the Greek from the era of the Gospels.
Of course and we can read and understand the ancient greeks!!!
Actually its not easy to read and understand mainly, unless you have studied ancient greek grammar.
Don't you specifically learn Ancient Greek in schools though? Only know one Greek person, so I may be mistaken. But she said she learned it in her school.
@@milat9287 Yes we learn it at schools, and then is when we discover that it is the same language. But for sure, even if you haven't learned it in school, if you know modern Greek, you can read everything ancient greek and even if you can't understand all the words, you can usually understand the meaning.
Modern Greek is the same language with the Ancient Greek, but as all languages, it changes through out the years.
British language has changed more from the times of Shakespeare, than the Greek from the times the Gospels were written (fact).
@@PATRICKJLM To be fair there are different stages of ancient Greek.
Koine Greek would be easy to understand to a modern Greek speaker. I know just a bit of Greek and I can still recognise a lot of it. My grandparents speak Greek and they can more or less understand all of a Koine Greek text with some individual words requiring definition.
Attic Greek is a lot harder though, and Homeric Greek would be extremely hard even for a native modern Greek speaker.
0:40 for some reason it took me a long time to figure out what a map of this was.
It's because it's inverted. Water is usually painted in mono color, while land and continents have all kinds of patterns for mountains, rivers, cities, borders, etc.
I had the same problem
I still cant figure out
@@gerskenj5041 it's the Mediterranean.
@@ethanrepublic yeah , i just figured it out. Pretty tricky with those colors. Who paints sea as land ?
Ι λικε θε γρεεκ αλφαμπετ μορε θαν θε λατιν ονε
Η δωuτ. Ι λικε θε λατιν αλφαμπετ. Φαuιληαρ.
*judges you in American*
@ex Kappa There speaking English but they use greek
Lumiel σαμε ηερε μυ γυυ. Νοβοδγ κνοως ωηατ θε ηελλ Ιμ σαυινγ
Eburon not a bad way to learn the Greek alphabet...
Did anyone else stare at the map forever trying to understand it, before realizing it was the Mediterranean? 😐
Yes
But you did it
Proving that you are a Super Genius
Nope
No
Yes.
No I got it almost immediately
History. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language.
Not quite. Ancient Egyptian is still around in the form of Coptic. Chinese writing also dates to the same era, and perhaps earlier.
Isn't Basque the oldest living language? Or are you talking specifically about languages with a script?
Late to the party but can Linear A and its predecessors be considered Greek? I mean we haven't translated it (or let's say the phestos disk) it could have been a completely different sounding language
@@dimitriskolias Well, since we haven't translated it and the Minoans' ethnic background is still debated, how could Linear A be considered Greek - yet?
@@karlpoppins this might be bias showing on my part but I'm not contesting whether minoans where Greek or not imo they where one of the different races(?) (not sure if its the right word) along with dorians ect whose descendants became the ancient Greeks... What I'm saying about linear A is that since its translation is probably lost to history and as far as writing goes its not definitively related to Linear B it might have sounded very different to what we know as "proto-Greek" aka linear B ect
The best thing about being Greek is that you can read almost directly ancient texts, marbles, ...
No, no you cant... as a greek I can confirm that to you😅😂
@@stabd7906 You can man, some you won't understand but a lot of it you'll be able to.
@@stabd7906 Ρε. Δεν λεει πως θα τα καταλαβεις, λεει πως μπορεις να τα διαβασεις. Και αυτο ισχυει γιατι καθολου με λιγες ειναι οι αλλαγες στο αλφαβητο μας.
@@stabd7906 of course we can! If you understand it is a different matter
@@stabd7906 You can. Particularly on marbles, which are simple enough for Modern speakers to decipher. OTOH, lengthy books (like Plato and certainly Homer) are more difficult, but this too depends on the time period. The New Testament is easier for Modern speakers than Plato.
the apostrophe of 'o' is like the Arabic letter ع or the Hebrew ע, which comes from deep inside the throat
Kinky alphabet.
Greek writing also spun off the Cyrillic alphabet, used for the Russian, Bulgarian and Serbian languages.
@Arch Stanton the mighty one
you mean those alphabets were spinoffs of the greek one, but to be honest Byzantine (mediaeval) greek is somewhat different than ancient greek in fact modern greek is more like ancient greek than Byzantine greek if i’m not mistaken
@@LancetFencing ..nope.... Ancient-koine(medieval)-modern
@@LancetFencing I'm assuming you're talking about the alphabet, not the spoken language. The Modern spoken language is indeed directly descended from Medieval Greek, which is directly descended from Koine Greek: the Greek that emerged as a common dialect as a result of Alexander's conquests, and was spoken in Hellenistic and Roman times. Prior to Koine, there were different dialects, and pre-Koine Greek is harder for Modern Greek-speakers to understand (most of the vocabulary and word-stems are the same, but the inflections were very different in, say, Classical Attic [Athenian] Greek. The Koine period unified the language, and you start to see the language resemble Modern Greek a lot more). As for the alphabet: it's always been the same alphabet, but in historical inscriptions, yeah, you'll see font differences. Greek today has several fonts, just as Latin letters do. But, yes, resembles that *late* ancient period more than medieval, sure. And keep in mind "Ancient Greece" is itself a very long and vague period that non-historians or non-Greeks mistakingly tend to think was a uniform period. It's a long, 2,000-year period that encompasses Mycenean, Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods (I may be missing a few)...lumping together that 2,000-year period from about Ancient Mycenae to the fall of Rome is no different than lumping together the past 2,000 years from Julius Ceasar to smartphones. The way Greek letters were written at the very start looks very funky to Modern Greeks (and I'm not talking about Linear B). But in *later* ancient times, those letters are identical to today's.
@@LancetFencing As a greek, i concur what Joe B said. The spoken dialect of the byzantines is realy similar to modern greek, to an extent that modern greeks can speak it without realy studying it. A slightly more modern form of the byzantine greek was used as the formal language of Greece up until 40 years ago. A period when Greece had actually two dialects, The kathareyoysa (καθαρευουσα) meaning the clean one, te dialect of the elite classes, and the demotike (δημοτικη) the public one, the dialect of the poor. Demnotike was established after a while as a singular formal dialect of greece, but since illiteracy is inexistent at our days due to school being obligatory a lot of young Greeks can speak kathareyoysa. The big breakthrough was made after alexanders death, when the greek dialects merged into one the koine greek, which in my experience is the easiest ancient dialect for a modern greek to understand. It is the dialect the romans learned, and it is the dialect that finally evolved into byzantine greek when the empire split. The former dialects we can understand but it requires more effort. Though to be completely honest learning to speak ancient greek for a modern greek is a nightmare. Because they are indeed very familiar but that's the catch. When it is familiar to what you know, your brain always tries to think the way you know. Whereas when i am trying to speak in english or french, my brain thinks in a completely different way to begin with.
Another fun bit of trivia that went unmentioned in this video: "Alphabet" comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, "Alpha" and "Beta." But these names for the letters are essentially nonsense words that lack any real meaning in Greek apart from being names for the letters. But these names are phonetic borrowings from the Canaanite script, where the first two letters are "Aleph" and "Beyt," which respectively mean "Ox" and "House" in West Semitic languages.
In arabic it's : "alif, ba"
Phoenician Aleph was an upside down A which was representing an actual Ox.
You are so wrong! The names of the letters are not random. They compose a hymn to the god Apollo.😊
I am Greek woman btw
I love the greek OxHouse
Before you disrespect anything Greek , you should not took that you have now and use some Abjad to feel the difference. But it s not only the language you disrespect the philosophers and the life we have now with schools and technology!
I loved the video. But the contrast on some of the parts was terrible. It took me thirty seconds to figure out the map was Europe.
actually it's the whole mediterranean, but you are correct pretty hard to figure it out.
How on Earth did you not recognise the Mediterranean? Halfwit
@@Jupiter__001_ not everyone is a greek woman turned cow turned woman
@@melkorthegreat3404 I don't get the reference
You start this video with the question why is the Greek alphabet so different in the present, you should have included the fact that it was preserved by the Romans even after their conquest of the Greek world.
The Romans had an infinite amount of respect for Old stuff, they either actively preserved or allowed them to exist. And as a result for this respect of theirs toward the Greek language the patrician class taught it to their youth, and never actively sought to replace it with latin in the Greek heartland (in contrast to Gaul, Iberia, North Africa etc.). An argument can be made that many client nations to the Romans were not really big on script before their conquest, yet we also see provinces like North Africa abandoning the phoenecian script for latin.
As a result Greek was largely still in use by 550AD, in the Eastern Roman Empire, it was made into the Official language of the state by Justinian, and it stayed as the official language up into the late middle ages. Afterwards Greece was in Ottoman control, who as a state were very allowing of their various subjects maintaining their culture and language.
Long story short, it was a relatively long series of flukes that allowed the Greek language to survive into the modern day and still be used in a day-to-day basis.
Spot on dude. Glad you are not a Portocalos type.
Leo Chantziaras, Greek wasn’t made the official the language by Justinian who was a native Latin speaker. Infanct it was a gradual change and we don’t know what Emperor Offically changed the Language from Latin to Greek.
@@tylerellis9097 Wikipedia cites Heraclius as the one to drop Latin from official use.
Мариос Христодулу, Wikipedia is wrong their is not a single firsthand source or document that shows or say Hercalius changed the Language to Greek, He did however make use of the Greek Title Basileus as his first title but Flavius Augustus continued to be used alongside it while the Coins and edicts were still in Latin.
@@tylerellis9097 I didn't really use Wikipedia as a strong argument, but rather as a suggestion. I also recall that Justinian is mentioned in Greek history books (at least when I went to school) as the one to turn the legal and political writing into Greek, but I do not really trust this information.
At some point, though, the transition to Greek-only official business did happen, as eventually a lot of the Kings/Emperors were actually of Greek descent. Funnily enough, most of the residents were Greeks in descent yet they still called themselves Romans - which can be found as late as the 19th century.
Very good video overall
You show us some very intresting facts about the greek alphabet and it 's history
But you missed the fact that greek language was written since the 16th or 15th century BC with the linear B script which was a syllabary (every letter represented a syllable)
Wasn't the first writing system the mykenian syllable script?
The odyssey was written in the sixth century BC, that is two centuries after the creation of the Greek alphabet as you say. Αs we know so far no more perfect book has been written than this and the Iliad. I ask now as an ordinary person: how is it possible in two centuries of the existence of an alphabet to write the best books that have ever existed?
interesting that Linear B (Crete) was used to write proto-Greek too - did that just die out?
Linear A was from the Minoans and yes that died off after the descent of the Dorians
@@Ratich Minoans were Proto-Greeks
Yeah. After the descending of their Civilization because of the first disaster form the eruption of mount Thera, the Myceneans conquered Crete and enforced their language, thus the cretan one died out
very confusing maps :3
Nothing for the Cyrillic alphabet?
No, the cyrillic alphabet is smelly and nobody likes it.
It's too similar to the Latin alphabet. The Greek alphabet is pretty much by itself
Tom9358
Cyril /Kiril and Methodius -Apostles to the Slavs.
Cyril developed the Cyrillic alphabet from the Greek alphabet.
Ethaniel Clyne lol no
@@ethanielclyne5810 The Cyrilic alphabet is by no means similar to latin, it far more similar to Greek although most Greeks can't read shit in Cyrilic. Although some characters look similar to latin ones, they actually represent different letters than latin-speakers would imagine. Even us Greeks have a very hard time deciphering it unless someone explains the letters to us, let alone being able to pronounce it correctly.
Cyrillic orthography also branches from Greek. If you can read Greek then Cyrillic is ridiculously easy.
@marios gianopoulos So it is from greek! Even if they were in fact on heroin...
@marios gianopoulos i think you're under influence of heroin
The Cyrillic alphabet is an adapted form of the greek one too.
koineworkbook.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/venn.png
The Greeks and the Greeks of Cyprus had alphabet before they modify the Phoenician one. We didn't got the idea to create an alphabet from them, please make that clear. We had older alphabets than the Phoenician one in the Greek world, like Linear B, Linear A and the Cypriot syllabary. The theory you are trying to explain is that: we got the idea from them for the one sound, one letter alphabet and we added vows. There are other theories that doubt even that though.
Stelios D Hence they're theories ^^. You're right though, I wish he mentioned Linear A and Linear B
The linear A, at least, hasn't been used to write Greek, but a Semitic language very similar to Aramaic.
@@combatantezoteric2965 You cannot say that the minoan language was semitic. It may have been, but our knowlegde of the language is pretty much that it existed, and that it was likely related to pre greek cypriot, which is slightly better known, but also unclassified.
@@esbendit wow, did I commented this just two weeks ago?! Sorry. Yes, you're right, Minoan wasn't similar at all to any well known Semitic languages. In fact, the only deciphered and corresponding word to a semitic root in the linear A was ku-ro ( = total, sum ).
The only books I had about the Minoan language and civilization are old and based on Gordon Cyrus's hypothesis... So this is why google is always a better way of starting to learn about something.
@@esbendit semitic is minoan
The Phoenician writing was a pure abjad (no vowels at all), though late varieties were impure in which they used certain letters (which were all consonants) to indicate a long vowel (but no short ones), so "full" would be written something like FL but "fool" would be FWL, Phoenicians as far as I can tell never used diacritics to indicate short vowels, and the O looking letter is transcribed as ʿ which is used to indicate a guttural sound common in Semitic languages, while the first A-but-sideways looking letter is transcribed as ʾ which indicates a glottal stop: the catch of air between uh and oh in uh-oh.
Also, some languages have entire words with no vowels, they are rarer but they still exist.
Please do more on Antiquity! I like the northern European focus well enough, but this is my favorite period.
1:20 A language with no vowels? You mean Welsh? ;)
What? Welsh has tons of vowels… it even has two more vowel letters than English, because y and w are not just semi-vowels or sometimes-vowels, but always vowels…
puellanivis I was just making a joke, because many Welsh words have quite a few apparent consonants strung together (because the “w is a vowel” thing). No offence meant to the Welsh, especially since my grandfather and the great-uncle I’m named after were born there :)
The welsh Vowels are AEIOUY
My home town, DWYGYFYCHI
@@gorge2786 That's awesome. I have no idea how to pronounce that. Although, the Squamish people of Canada's southwestern coast might have you beat (yes, that is a 7, it apparently represents a glottal stop):
www.insidevancouver.ca/2011/06/27/wanna-speak-squamish-squamish-nation-publishes-dictionary/
Well, the Phoenician alphabet indeed is a source for our alphabet. But the Phoenician characters as a whole constituted a third of the ancient alphabet, which in some dialects was 30 letters and something less than the half in the modern day alphabet. The most used part of our writing system are the vowels. And these were discovered by Greeks themselves. Also, we had Linear A and Linear B, which were complete writing systems.
The coolest thing about being though is to read and understand ancient texts, especially for a Greek who's studied humanities: ἕν οἶδα, ὅτι οὐδέν οἶδα.
Irish is the oldest written vernacular in Europe and Greek script was
also not uncommon in medieval Irish manuscripts. At one stage Irish
scholars like John Scotus Eriugena (c.815 - c. 877) were among the few
Western Europeans who could still read and write in Greek.
Cyrillic alphabet has the same roots with Latin. But the Cyrillic script is based on Byzantine Greek thing(but for slavic pronunciation features) and was created by byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius in 9th century for spreading the Christianity among the Slavs
Hilbert Good work Hilbert! But why not ask a greek for assistance instead of apologizing ? I am here.
Greeks used before the pheonician alhabet their own .it was called in the start linear A ,which still today they cant get a meaning of the letters and linear B which they have deciphered.phaistos disc is an example of these 2 written languages and u can google it to see how it looked like
0:28
i didnt know what this image was for 10 seconds until i saw spain
Fun fact!
Basically every city-state had its own alphabet. The Greek alphabet was standarized to the one in use today at Alexander the Great's time.
9:52 I like that the Greek keyboard layout is on an Olympia typewriter which is a German brand.
You are killing the Greek pronunciations, but the content you are presenting is very interesting. Thank you!
Try pronouncing
The language of Iceland
It becomes a torment
Well, practically half our alphabet is ours. Because the 7 vowels were completely made from the Greeks themselves essentially, because the previous consonants that were adapted to the Greek vowels were completely different and alien to Greek phonology. We also added close to 7 consonants of our own for the plosive sounds. Take in mind that the Ancient Greek alphabet had 28 to 32 letters, depending the dialect. Out of all these 28-32 letters, 13 have direct Phoenician origins. The other letters of the Greek alphabet are vast moderations of some Phoenician consonants (that are unrecognisable for the latter) and extra consonants.
Go raibh maith agat, Hilbert. Great video as usual
The letters from the Greek alphabet are not placed randomly. When you read the letters like Alpha Vita, Gamma, Delta, the syllables create a prayer that basically praises the “enlightenment”. It’s in ancient greek of course and there is a lost letter from there (Stigma).
Do you know of any web-sites about that?
Important to note that the Oldest Greek ever found is in Mycenaean Linear B & dates to 1,500 BC (as of now).
Just a note, the Greeks had Hieroglyphics of their own which they did get copy from the Egyptians but it died after the Mycenaean period ended.
actually they copied it from the Cretans (Minoans, Linear A). Linear A is, in turn, based on older Cretan Hieroglyphs, which is very clearly derived from Egyptian ones. Nobody knows if the Cretan language of that time was actually Greek or something completely different.
@@leonidasspyrou2368 I would bet on it not being Greek because if it were Greek they would have been able to decipher at least some of it via comparative analysis like they did with Linear B.
"A horrible language with no vowels in it." haha.
My first time with a video of yours, it’s really thorough and well-explained!
I’d be interested to hear more about the broader strokes of paleology in terms of common features of successful languages and their emergence.
Ἕτοιμος. Πρόσταγμα. Λέγε. Όρθῶς Μάλιστα. Ναί. Καλώς. Βούλομαι. Πάμε! Πρόσεχε. Εἰς μάχην! Εἰσβολή! Ἔστω. Πανύ. Πόρρω!
I probably am just another Greek guy who thought you were "saying" something..but then understood it was simple words combined 😅😅😅 that's very beautiful..not just the fact that you know these words but the knowledge in general 😊😊😊😊😊😊
@@rationalwho It's from Age of Mythology. Americans only exposure to Ancient Greek!
@@MrAllmightyCornholioz hahahaha well even if it is a small exposure..it surely gas great results 😂😂😂😝😝
@@rationalwho Thank you.
Btw! Εἰσβολή ! :)
2:12 The 2 characters actually denote glottal stop and voiced pharyngeal fricative, not vowel. ‘ ’ are only their romanization.
Yes, which are like the Arabic letters 'ء' and 'ع' or Hebrew letters 'א' and 'ע', respectively.
That vowel language impression was awesome.
Herodotus: "A survival from antiquity".
Yet more proof time is relative.
The Greek writing looks very good to the eye, in my opinion.
Many complain about the map. I immediately recognised it as the mediterranean countries. Perhaps because I love geography?
You can love geography and still understand that most people automatically relate plain color to water and textures to land at different height levels. This map inverted what’s usual. A map is supposed to be easy to read
Where is the marquess of montrose video gone!!
Could you do a follow-up on how the Cyrillic alphabet came from the Greek one?
The 2 brothers from Thesallonika they found an alphabet based on greek letters but turn them many of them up side down also added some stigma to some letters for differrend spelling
Greek Alphabet was before the Phinician one!
I’m not a huge alphabet guy, but you’ve certainly got me interested in this subject. Excellent job Hilbert
It'd be awesome to learn more about the development of Indian and Persian languages in relation to European languages. If you have any sources, I'd appreciate the point in the right direction.
Hellenic language can make people think more rational because almost all words are etymological based,and language by it's self is teaching us science
latin alphabet is also a greek alphabet, it was used in different greek islands before the etruscan adopted it as their alphabet.
the greek had 20 different alphabets , the one we call greek is the koine alphabet .
the greek had already an alphabet which was linear b from ca 1500 bc and today its disputed that the greeks adopted the alphabet from the phonecians but quite the opposite, the phonecians adopted the greek letters , so they could interact with greek traders, but kept them primitive without konsonants .
Basically the HELLENIC 🇬🇷alphabet is the first to be created.
Where in the video did you hear that ?!
@@manapo8205 nowhere, because the video is incorrect in many facts
Like?
@Bitch ok fair point
@@manapo8205 besides there is the linear A and Linear B which were both spoken and written in chronical periods before the one of this video...Linear A is not even read yet but the linear B is... although there are not specific letters for sounds like a,e,o etc...the letters worked in a way that included these sounds...f.e. instead of a single letter that sounded like m,there were a bunch of them that sounded differently like mi,ma,me and so on
If you really read plato said we didn't take anything or borrow they change the alphabet you talking about Cadmus read who is hes father and mother he was greek any way morronn and if we took the alphabet from the phoenician and we put the vowels A, E ,I, O, U SO who discover the alphabet
Really interesting, thanks for the video! Any chance of videos on interesting etymology from latin/ other languages into modern English?
There are actually languages which pretty much don't have vowels. The Nuxalk word clhp’xwlhtlhplhhskwts’ (IPA: [xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬːskʷʰt͡sʼ]) means "He possessed a bunchberry plant", and contains 13 consecutive obstruents with no vowels. Obviously this is an extreme example, but it just shows how crazy human language can get.
How can you pronounce this
Nice and very informative video, but that colouring scheme of the map was atrocious 0:39
The "A" and "O" of Canaanite languages - the Aleph and Ayin, respectively - are soundless (somewhat): instead, they are more about throat and mouth position used to sound the vowels. The Aleph is more of an open mouth sound (as you would saying the standard A, E, I, O, U), while the Ayin comes from the back of the throat (which is more difficult for "non-natives" to replicate). So you could have an "ah" or an "ae" or some other vowel sound paired with the Aleph or Ayin.
1:59 ah yes. good to see that our T is a circle with an X inside
🇬🇷Greeks Α Ω🇬🇷
Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ζ Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ξ Ο Π Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ Ψ Ω
There's a strange problem with runes. If they were primarily to be carved into hard surfaces, how did curves in some letters get made? The Greek Rho was, AFAIK, originally not rounded but triangular. The rune or Greek letter like our B would have been two triangles [which forms I seem to remember seeing in Greece and Italy.
( that time you realize you need to use a greek word in order to describe something your trying to say originated somewhere else ) , i love that little pause he makes when he’s talking about the Greek Fates being a “version” of a Norse deity of fate.
Thank you for doing this! This helped me with my Oral presentation a lot plus I got to learn more about the Etruscans because I love their language and their culture.
what about the Phestos Disc found on the island of Crete dating back to 1700 BC? What language is that?
Linear A not translated yet
@Arch Stanton Yes, you are right my friend it's older than Linear A
Hey dude I’m from Doncaster fancy meeting having a convo about the Anglo Saxons really enjoy these vids man
People conveniently mention (use) Herodotus and forget 16 other references, which tell a different story.
The varianta that arose în Iberia are mixed syllabary and alphabet.
Many alphabets have arisen in the Balkans, since then.
Gk Sampi, TT (ts) Fau, and a few lost forms for other letters.
The Greek alphabet did not come from the Phoenicians, period. The Greeks had linear B that was used by the Achaeans and Mycenaens and prior to that you had linear A that was used by the Minoans in Crete and even Cyprus.
I have seen a video where someone pointed out all sorts of reasons why Roman and Norse characters must have come from so far unknown languages where we simply have not found examples yet.
Also, I imagine there were competing versions of these alphabets in the same places that recombined at times.
That was terrific stuff. Thank you.
"Phoenician" is a variation from Musnad.
This comment section is just full of Greek people lol
Including me
Our ancient Tagalog script, Baybayin, works the same way as Abjad. Consonants have marks to indicate the associated vowel. Then the Spaniards invented the cross mark "(+)" to indicate stand-alone consonants. Meanwhile there are vowel characters for vowel-only syllables
From my understanding tagalog is written with an abugida
Your description supports that odea
After letter systems, you might want to look at numbers. Noticed that the 1 and the 2 on the Greek typewriter were different for those that I am used to.
These are just parentheses and (now obsolete) accent marks and breathings. We write our numbers like the rest of the Western world.
Extremely interesting! Have you thought about including links to websites that you find relevant to the topics you discuss? I know you probably do your research on books, but still...
Quick note:
Greeks (better "proto Greeks") already had a sort of alphabet we call Linear B which in turn was a Micenean adaptation of the Linear A development by the Minoans in Crete.
This writing system was lost together with the whole achaean civilization during the so called "Greek dark ages".
I just wanted to see the letters
2:02 Those two using apostrophies are not vowels though they are still consonants
Greece had an alphabet, but it was more like heiroglyphics. They used phoenecian because it was easier to write.
Alphabet =/= script
I think they are symbols connected to the holy angels.they emit frequencies higher than any scripts around the world.
It would have added to the video, if you added the Cyrillic branch of the alphabets as well.
It would also have helped to explain the name alphabet itself.
Nice little video, Hilbert. Have you yet been able to visit the MS. treasure trove across the way at Corpus? Or is the current guardian dragon as formidable as Ray Page was when I braved his den?
είμαι ελληνας κ έχω να πω οτι είναι εύκολο να
μάθεις να γραφεις
This video needs greek subtitles.
Actually Greeks did have a different alphabet before they adopted the new one inspired by the Phoenicians.
🇬🇷 is older than arabs
Much of the early versions of the Greek Alphabet are all much much older than you are saying. They are from the Bronze Age, and the Greeks had been using a version of the Phoenician Abjad for a millennia or so in that time called Linear A and Linear B. The Minoans (which you ommited in your video, but are very important) also had their own writing system, but it is yet to be translated. "Nestor's Cup" is accurate, but claiming the Phoenician Abjad to be from the same period is just negligent.
The reason we have the modern Greek Alphabet is because the Ancient Greeks experienced a deep dark age from 1250 BC to around 700 BC. That's a little over 500 years without a writing system! To completely ignore this is blatent lack of research. Even the Wikipedia article on the Greek Alphabet mentions this in the "History" section.
History with Hilbert, and linking with Jackson Crawford... I'll have a masters in history before long...
We need to create letter to replace, ου, μπ, ντ, γκ.
Reasonable video to watch but there are in accuracy
There were Greek letters prior to Phonecian ones especially in crete minoan greek.
The main land greece must have had there own system otherwise how would they communicate with each other.
Could have said something about majiscule and miniscule script developed during the Late Empire.
Excellent Hilbert. Thank you Phoenicians, thank you Greeks, thank you Etruscans, thank you Romans. Cheers!
Please invert that map or use a different one. Visually messy and confusing for the viewer
1:17 didn't realize Hilbert spoke Polish 😳