History of the Latin Alphabet 

So when the Europeans were getting waist-deep into Egypt and saw the hieroglyphs, they thought it was a mysterious magical incantations that died with the ancient Egyptian priests. Little did they know they were looking at the great-great-ancestors to the alphabets they were using. Imagine if we never found the Rosetta Stone, our outlook on ancient Egypt would be just as mythical as it was to the late Romans, paralleling the fate of the Mycenaeans with their Linear B, and probably not discover the real truth with regards to the origin of the alphabet.

Honestly that writing with alternating directions was brilliant! We should bring it back and you will no longer miss a line when reading!

Who would've known that A is actually just the oversimplified cow logo, lmao 🤣

9:06 oh that's really trippy to read

Yod, Giml, Het, Bet, Ain, Sin, Res are all still used (with the same meaning) in Arabic!! 😲

Proto-Sinaitic Script: "Dude, did your video just breeze past me in under 10 seconds!?" Paleo-Hebrew: "Bro, at least you got a mention."

It's SOO interesting to see how writing systems evolved with migration, like how Cyrillic evolved from Greek Scripts.

Fun Fact: The German word 'Kaiser' came from Caesar, since it was pronounced KAY-ZER

My ancient greek teacher told us that the lower case was actually invented because it required less space. And since ancient greek people used to write at ashlars , clay , wood and (less commonly)papyrus , so this property of smaller letters really did help. I dont know whether thats 100% accurate but well i thought it would be good to share

13:06 There is a Skillshare ad in captions.

I like the longer form! The shorter ones brought cool subjects up, but this really helped better explore a topic! Great video!

"Iulius Caisar" Now the German word Kaiser and the Russian equivalent Czar make so much more sense.

Egyptian: *is hard because it has over 700 symbols* Chinese people: 达到我们的水平

12:46 That is a great chart. I just saw the full thing (with the others writing systems). Such an interesting one that condenses so much information. Most of the world writes in a few writing systems. (Latin, cyrilic, Arabic, Hindu, Chinese, Mongolian, Japanese). While the first 3 that covers 80% of the world in area, came from the same alphabet, phoenician. It also shows how languages/writing systems are a sign of domination. Roman dominated Western Europe, and that domination was later brought to Southern Africa, the Americas and Oceania. The Arab was influenced by the Muslim Expansion. Indian was not centralized for thousands of years, so they have a lot of different writing systems. China and Japan was unified and divided several times, so that helps to unify the writing system. Of course, not every influence is a violent one. Many were friendly and commercial relations, but, nonetheless, we can see the pattern. No surprise that a major sign of dominion is when a tribe is prohibited to use its own language. As it has happenes many times in History.

Side Note about abugidas: Abugida characters are syllabic characters with a base vowel. Diacritics are then used to modify that base vowel. Usuually that base vowel is the most common vowel in the language, and instead of writing that vowel over and over again, it's just easier to have it as a part of the consonant. Take Devanagari प, by itself it makes the sound [pǝ] (pa). When a vowel diacritic is added, say ī, we get पी. For something to be an abugida, it must have that base vowel in the characters.

Is it just me or does "KhAnubises of the 31st century" sound like a good band name?

And now the emojis and stickers get us back to the hieroglyphs era

It blows my mind, that Julius Caesar practically sounded German.

Found the video really interesting. Most of the "original" characters kept the same name in Hebrew, and a lot of the words they mean are the same, too (Kof meaning the needle eye, for example, or Resh being similar to the Hebrew word for "Head", Rosh). I will add that Hebrew also has an alternative writing system, similar to lower and upper case letters in the Latin alphabet: "Dfus" (דפוס), literally meaning "print", which is used for books, documents and the internet, among other things, and "Ctav" (כתב), literally meaning writing, used only for writing

Absolutely fantastic job! This was very educational and eye opening and interesting. Thank you for this video!

Honestly I like this video! The fact you spend more time in it made it better. Stay with this

amazing informative video! thanks so much and keep up the great work

This is so cool. I'm currently learning French but I'm doing my ABC's (so to speak) in Greek and Arabic on the side, and this video made so many fascinating connections between all of them. Thank you!

Thank you very much for making this video 😁 Sharing it on FB!

very informative 13 minutes! this video deserves many million views imo.

Most of the Pheonician words are still used today in Arabic 😆💜

I’m really enjoying these longer vids!

Great video my man, very interesting topic

Great video Khaanubsi

I really enjoy this video that I watched it several times. It contains interesting information. Thank you.

This is fascinating thanks!

This was really interesting, thank you

This was all so interesting!

Congrats on 100K!

I wish you spoke a little bit about the evolution from proto-sinaitic to phoenician. There is about 1000 years of history between the two which you skipped over.

(1:00) Well "a letter" makes no sound. It's just the consequence of having a spelling and pronunciation. There are also languages that tries to match the spelling perfectly so there's only one sound per letter. Slavic for example that only pronounce C as /ts/ and G as /g/.

Been binging a lot of your videos lately, great info, and quite interesting, nice job KhAnubis!

The Latins and the Etruscans, our ancestors, played a major role in shaping the Latin alphabet, the most ubiquitous and widely accepted writing system that there is today. The Ancient Greek alphabet was of course the source of inspiration for it. I'm very passionate about this kind of stuff and I also like Cyrillic, which characters mostly originate from these two systems with the addition of a few unique ones. When it comes to handwriting, Italics is some of my favorite styles. Thanks for including the Pantheon, it always comes to mind when I think of the Latin alphabet, because of the incision on its fronton. Very informative and nicely done video! P.S. Little fun fact, the word "alphabet" comes from the union of the first two characters of the Greek alphabet: α + β.

Finally. Took weeks from the poll you did

No one: Iraq: E

Hi! Big fan. Can you also talk about the history of punctuation marks? Just a random thought. Thanks!

Italy's most lasting gift to the world.

Very good video - you know your stuff.

12:52 and despite that, Greek is still around, right next to the Latin giant 🙂

12:43 Great video! Just 1 little error on the Map is that 🇬🇼Guinea-Bissau on the West Coast of Africa isn't shaded Green but it should be as it's sole official language is 🇵🇹Portuguese (which is written in the Latin alphabet).

Can you do a video about the Vinca script and other proto-writing systems?

Congrats on 100k subs also happy Thanksgiving to everyone 😁

I just found this channel while studying hindi and i need to say: I am in love! Congratulitons and a hug from Brazil ^-^

The two "T" letters, Tau and Theta were SWITCHED in the transition from Semitic to Greek. Thav, which had a soft "TH" sound was converted into Tau. Tet, which had a hard "T" sound was converted into Theta. Also, Cadmus comes from the Semitic "Kedem" meaning "East" or "From the East" because the mythical Cadmus [and the real person(s) who was(were) the basis for the myth] came from the East, relative to Greece, Phoenicia. In the myth, Cadmus was the son of Agenor king of Phoenicia.

fwiw usefulcharts also has a youtube channel, pretty cool!

Now I wonder if samek - pillar are the origins of my last name 😱 Such an interesting video!

Up next how the ampersand came to mean "and" & how it became the only logogram in english?

Khanubis would be खानुबिस actually at 2:52

Imagine how the alphabet would change in the future?

Very interesting jumps from one language into another, and why we have the Q letter even if it's seemingly pretty rare in the English language (i.e. q being very common in Semetic languages).

thanks phoenicias for making writing bearable

Great video

My favorite Latin term: *Unus Annus* Those that know, know

Arguably the most recent invention to writing scripts with the advent of the internet is the addition of logographs (emojis) for body language, emotional indicators or just otherwise as a shorthand in text. Punctuation is also getting a bigger role in tonal indication as well. Otherwise i think the latin script could evolve due to preferences for different fonts changing over time. Plus I'd like to see letters for less common sounds to return like thorn for th/dd.

I love that in my language (Czech) every letter always sounds the same every time and everything sounds EXACTLY like it is written.

8:09 fun fact 日in chinese means "day" or "sun" (And ofc many other meanings when combined with other characters) It is pronounced rì in mandarin and jat9 in cantonese Another character that looks similar:曰 It means "say" in ancient chinese Eg Tom says=Tom曰

A lot of scientists, linguists, archaeologists, historians etc. are considering that 8,500 years ago, Romania was the heart of the old European civilization. The new archaeological discoveries from Tartaria, (Romania), showed up written plates older than the Sumerian ones. More and more researches and studies converged to the conclusion that the Europeans are originated in a single place, the lower Danube basin. Down there, at Schela and Cladova in Romania have been discovered proves of the first European agricultural activities which appear to be even older than 10,000 years. Out of 60 scientifically works which are covering this domain, 30 of them localize the primitive origins of the man-kind in Europe, where 24 of them are localizing this origin in the actual Romania, (Carpathian- Danubian area); 10 are indicating western Siberia, 5 Jutland and/or actual Germany room, 4 for Russia, 4 for some Asian territories, 1 for actual France area and all these recognisied despite against the huge pride of those nations. Jean Carpantier, Guido Manselli, Marco Merlini, Gordon Childe, Marija Gimbutas, Yannick Rialland, M. Riehmschneider, Louis de la Valle Poussin, Olaf Hoekman, John Mandis, William Schiller, Raymond Dart, Lucian Cuesdean, Sbierea, A. Deac, George Denis, Mattie M.E., N. Densuseanu, B.P. Hajdeu, P Bosch, W. Kocka, Vladimir Gheorghiev, H. Henchen, B.V. Gornung, V Melinger, E. Michelet, A. Mozinski, W. Porzig, A. Sahmanov, Hugo Schmidt, W. Tomaschek, F.N. Tretiacov are among the huge number of specialists which consider Romania the place of otehr Europeans origines and Romanian the oldest language in Europe, older even than Sanskrit. According to the researchers and scientists, the Latin comes from the old Romanian (or Thracian) and not vice versa. The so called "slave" words are in fact pure Romanian words. The so called vulgar Latin is in fact old Romanian, or Thracian language, according to the same sources... The arguments sustaining the theories from above are very numerous and I don't want to go into them so deeply as long as the forum is and has to remain one languages dedicated, to. In the limits of the language, please allow me to present a list of just a few (out of thousands of words), which are very similar/ even identical in Romanian and Sanskrit: Romanian numerals : unu, doi, trei, patru, cinci, sase, sapte...100=suta Sanskrit numerals: unu, dvi, tri, ciatru, penci, sas, saptan...100 = satan then Romanian Sanskrit acasa acasha (at home) acu acu (now) lup lup ( wolf) a iubi (considered slave) iub (love) frate vrate (brother) camera camera (room) limba lamba (tongue) nepot napat (neffew) mandru mandra (proud) lupta lupta (fight) pandur pandur (infanterist) nevasta navasti (wife) prieten prietema (friend) pranz prans (lunch time) Ruman Ramana (Romanian) saptamana saptnahan (week) struguri strughuri (grapes) vale vale (valley) vadana vadana (widow) a zambi dzambaiami (to smile) umbra dumbra (shadow) om om (man-kind) dusman dusman (enemy) a invata invati (to study) a crapa crapaiami (to break something) naiba naiba (evil) apa apa (water) and not AQUA like in Latin. It looks like aqua came from apa and not the other way around... and so on for more than thousand situations... According to M. Gimbutas, the confusion Roman (Romanian as in original language) = Roman (ancient Rom citizen), is generated by the fact that Romans and Romanians have been the same nation, the same people. The Dacians/Thracians and Romans have been twins. The illiterate peasants called Romanians, Ruman and not Roman. Why do they call so? Because RU-MANI, RA-MANI, RO-MANI, API, APULI, DACI and MAN-DA , VAL-AH are all synonyms expressing the person from the river banc or from the river valley. APII could be found under the form of mez-APPI in the ancient Italy, under he same name as the APPULI Dacians. APU-GLIA, (or Glia Romanilor in Romanian - Romanian land) can be found with this meaning only in Romanian (Glia= land) In the Southern side of Italian "booth" exists the first neolitical site of Italy and it is called MOL-feta. The name itself has Romanian names, according to Guido A. Manselli: MOL-tzam (popular Thank you), MUL-tumire (satisfaction), na-MOL (mud); MOL-dova (province and river in Romania, Za-MOL-xis, Dacian divinity. Manselli said that this archaeological sit is 7,000 years old and has a balcanic feature. I came up with this topic just to hear decent opinions and not banalities like those of a few days ago when while surfing for a language forum, I read all kind of suburban interventions. This topic is for people whith brain only. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-IhDMWmGOBrA.html

Such a long time to get the alphabet and now we're back to the begining with the emoji😄

Miniscule used to mean the small letters and the printers would put them in a case under the capital letters, hence the term lower case. Capital letters were called upper case since they were on the top case, and also called magiscule.

Great video! Would also like to add that the Egyptians adopted the Greek alphabet during the Hellenic period, changed how most of the letters were pronounced, in addition to slight changes in how they're written, added 7 letters from the Egyptian Demotic script, and by that creating the Coptic Alphabet :D

Loved the end.

I just love how he mixes comedy into his videos

Is this the third or fourth video I've found about the alphabet? Yep. Am I going to watch it anyway? You betcha.

Only writing left to right with lowercase letters: Meaning many in Ancient Greece wrote in alternating directions, in much the same manner as an ox plows a field. This would also explain how some of the letters got flipped over time, since the letters were also mirrored along with the sentences. Where did those periods (full stops) go?

That certainly explains the alternating left-to-right and right-to-left brought up in UsefulCharts's rendition. Like, imagine how painful it would be to write like that today.

Greetings from Mesopotamia Iraq 🇮🇶 the birth place of writing and civilisation

Wish this video was uploaded a year ago, when I was making my own language. Still interesting!

The loss of Þ in English kinda sucks, it would be useful today, it makes the “th” sound so thou would be spelt Þou. England didn’t have printing presses n the countries that did didn’t have that letter, so they subbed it with Y which is why we say you instead of thou. But imagine a world where the, there, them, that, through were spelled with Þ, so Þe, Þere, Þem, Þat (there was a short hand from of that which was spelled with Þ but a dash on top, it’s a bit like how and can be &). Anyways I don’t see a future where Þ comes back, especially since it looks a bit like P, but things could be quicker with it, so for now I’ll just write my hand written notes wiþ it.

Nice video

Having studied Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew, when I saw these similarities, I was like WOW!! how cool is that? Now they don't parallel exactly, but seeing one influenced the other is quite interesting. How I am sure if I studied more Semitic languages and others in the genealogy of Greek, I would see parallels. Very cool. (I skip a few letters here and there indicated by ....) Greek: Alpha beta gamma delta ....zeta eta theta iota kappa lamda mu nu ....... ....rho sigma tau Hebrew: Aleph bet gimmel dalet ...zion het tet ...yod kaph lamed mem nun ...... ..resh sheen tav

Good presentation

Here from Mr. Beat. I'm sorry, someone had to say it. Glad he sent me here too

How does this channel not have more subscribers? Khanubis has really bad luck tbh

Do Cyrillic next!

What is the academic disciplines that studies evolution of writing systems?

Cool and pretty precise video,,, I can read the Phonician and the Hebrew Alphabet easely but I wouldn't understand all of the Hebrew meaning of the words, but some of them are very close to Phoenician with some pronounciation difference,,, Shams in Phoenician is Shemesh in Hebrew for example...

Hahahaha. Good video. I haven't finished watching it yet but I like when you show that young man (might be you) with the Egyptian hat 😆

Is there a similar explanation for numerical characters we use today?

Lets say you got a great recepie for making bread. You want everybody to try your bread or your recepie. Water, yeast, flour, some spices of your choise. Mix the ingreadients and leave the dough for a while. After a while make the dough into one or several breadshapes. Leave the breadshaped dough or shapes for annother while again. After a while put the doughshape or shapes into the oven. In the oven let the bread be in there untill the golden brown collour appears. Once the bread is golden brown it's done and ready to be eaten. By passing on your breadrecepie by mouth, after several mouths the recepie might have distorted so much it's a diffrent bread. By writing down your great breadrecepie everybody got access to the exactly the same recepie. By that reason alone it's good to write. :)

The alifbata ancient language of Philippines in south east asia ... Is also derived from middle east & phonecian even if they had no direct contact,

Ye olde English expansion pack is a bit thorny ;)

I like how you put a mask on your pfp

Oddly, because of things like Emoji, we are heading back towards the older system types. Though we are getting a blend.

Wasn't brahmi actually a different script but just borrowed some characters from (Greek?)

😂 as a left-hander, I would say writing from right to left is more comfortable than the opposite

Just a small tip , the proto Sinatic script evolved in Egypt too ; in the Sinai peninsula

Please make history of Japan writing system (Hiragana, Katakana, and Chinese)

@ 2:53 you have written Khaanubis incorrectly in Devanagari (Hindi)

Great vid as always Small thing: you use modern Greek pronunciation for explanations in the video, but Anciënt Greek was radically different in its phonology (generally). For example, you said the letter chi has the pronunciation /x/, and in some situations /ç/, but this is only true of modern Greek; the original pronunciation was /kʰ/

a lot of the words past 5:30 are still used in modern egyptian arabic

Khanubis in Hebrew would actually be ח'אנוביס, at least based on the Hebrew spelling of khan.

0:09 Love him or hate him, he spittin facts

The biggest thing that I would want to add is that one of the big reasons for the change in the character shapes, besides style of course, is the mediums used to record the characters. The Egyptians basically painted so they had a very broad range and style of character even after moving to hieratics which is often seen to be what the Phoenician script is generally based off of with the tools that they used limiting (I don't remember what the primary tool was for them). But then the Greeks used waxed boards which caused many of the shapes that the Phoenicians had used to be come more angular, and then the Latin being heavily influenced by the use of chiseling out of stone giving it it's distinct appearance.

Only writing left to right with lowercase letters: Meaning many in Ancient Greece wrote in alternating directions, in much the same manner as an ox plows a field. This would also explain how some of the letters got flipped over time，

Wow you seem to be very knowledgeable ina languages and writing systems... Did you study this in college or something?