Evolution of the Alphabet | Earliest Forms to Modern Latin Script 

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 ) 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.

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

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?

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.

@@bashiry4218 Interesting!

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.

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

*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...

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.

So its "abj"?

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.

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.

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

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

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.)

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

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?

@MichaelKingsfordGray I don't follow your train of thought there, champ

@MichaelKingsfordGray wtf lmao

@MichaelKingsfordGray...what?

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.

...and a J...

NO U

🤓

@@joopmoop4089 Totally ! 🕶

Espera _21 indeed there is no u

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"

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/.

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

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

Richtig Gut

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 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

Good suggestion.

@@UsefulCharts Thank you very much. 😊

Zera Omg best suggestion!!!

I second that.

What about the Knights Who Say “Nee”?

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.

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.

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.

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. 🤦

The Chinese：尔弱智乎？

IVST TRY TO BE QVIET

@@Baamthe25th Qvit rn

@@dd-nz8ry wtf man

Romas

:( now I can’t let letters goes not to ffffff

B

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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'.

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

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).

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

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

O is the oldest letter that has changed the least. Even in very ancient times.

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.

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. :-)