How do I know Latin? I studied it in college and have taught it to teenagers for the last 10 years. How do I know about the origin of Roman numerals? The information presented here was taken from a paper called "The Origin of the Latin Numerals 1-1000" by Paul Keyser in the American Journal of Archaeology (Oct., 1988). To learn Latin well, you can start with my videos and stay tuned. I hope to have something by the end of the summer for new Latin learners.
Not to butt into this conversation, but I wanted to point out that our knowledge about language evolution can only go back about 6,000-10,000 years. Any languages related more distantly than that don't necessarily have much resemblance - the noise is greater than the signal. So even if all modern humans were connected by an African emergence event 100,000 years ago, we would not be able to detect any common language ancestor. Really, who knows when the first language arose, and where.
Hey one last thing. I'm the same guy that asked about "Incredibilis" yesterday lol. I looked for somewhere to email you and couldn't find anything. Anyway to the point, I am a memory trainer & psychological performer, memory is a specialty of mine. I travel and teach people, corporations, students etc how to memorize large amounts of information quickly. The point is, I've been teaching myself Latin. Always wanted to learn and finally decided to just pick a teacher and start. So naturally I've been developing memory tricks and applying my systems while I've been learning, watching your videos. It has made learning things such as the alphabet, names, sounds, rules and such amazing. Basically I watch a video once, use my tricks and the info is locked in. On to the next video. Unfortunately I don't know anyone else that wants to learn latin so everything I'm coming up with is used by me, and me alone. Which isn't a waste but I thought, maybe someone else could benefit. Point is, I would be happy to write up what I've done and send it to you. If you never use it, hey that's fine doesn't matter to me. And if you do someday, cool. It would be something you teach day one, then never again. Since they students/viewers would then be able to apply everything as they go, if they wish. And the tricks for memorizing the alphabet and vowel names and sounds were priceless for me. Lemme know! Oh I forgot i was logged in under the Channel im developing, my name's Joe Riggs. worldofjoeriggs.wordpress.com @worldofjoeriggs on twitter. To put a name and face to the absence of either, ha.
latintutorial this is really fascinating!! And its funny, because before you explained it, I thought the circle with a vertical line was just a theta turned sideways xD Awesome video:)
When kids get introduced to Algebra, this is the absolute must see! I've heard so many people say what's with these letters in my numbers, as I also said as a child. Then the teacher pops on your video of well actually... Thank you for absolutely amazing videos!
if you take the proto-M and slice it in half across the equator, it becomes an m, also. ↀm also, while Occam's Razor is convenient, and usually produces the most logical answer for a problem, it does not necessarily apply to human languages. Languages grow and change constantly out of shifts in the way people speak and write, and while the second theory is most logical, language evolution is not always that simple. It's very possible, even if it is more convoluted, that the first theory is correct, or some mismash of the two, with some surprise outside influence involved.
Great video, as always! Yes, people in old times used letters to represent numerals. The same was with Old Slavic, and while we talk about it, Etruscan's 100 look like Slavic Ж (Zh). It's very interesting subject, so please keep up with great videos. Happy New Year!
Interesting you see Proto-M as a crosshairs and not a wheel (which is immediately what I thought of and what I’m sure the ancient Etruscans/Romans thought).
@TTTopGun To further the point about the parentheses: association of numerals with letters of the alphabet came late in their development (meaning, the Romans saw similarity with what they were doing and already existing writing, and so conflated the two). So the CIↃ must have originated from something else much more simple. I myself haven't seen an inscription with an obvious deep parentheses from Roman times - which doesn't mean it didn't exist, but further reinforces its later development.
Another possibility for consideration would be that the ancient Augustinian usage of the symbol (at 07:47) could be read as two D's placed back to back and having the value of DD or 500+500 or 1000. This would follow the already established Roman notation system of, for example, the value of VII which is intended to be read as 5+1+1 or 7. The bonus for the scribe would be that he can make do with one less stroke of his stylus!
@TTTopGun The line augmentation over the number is medieval (much like the numeral M), and it appears that the () method is confused with the origins of the thousands numeral (as described in the video, moving from the crosshairs to the squashed infinity symbol). Medieval uses of Roman numerals are fine, but as a classicist, that is beyond the scope of my investigation.
+latintutorial Please, help me. I´m trying to write my "Divisa". I want to know if these forms are right: "In fronte aut in contrarius, sed nunquam medius" , "In fronte de ore canes, aut adversus. Numquam medium". Thnks and waiting your kind answer,
@TTTopGun I don't see why that's a problem. Ancient writers will represent large numbers with words, e.g., XI milia militum - 11 thousands of soldiers. If you want to talk about millions, it's XI milia milia. And if you're doing addition, either you add using Roman numerals because that's all you have, or you use a device that's more algorithmic in nature, like an abacus.
Oh crap! 1:29, Now you've just blown my , where's the emoji face with the top of his head exploding?? ...,mind!! Oh ok, having read what you said in comments, I've subscribed! I was the only kid at about 10 or 11 years old, hell bent on learning Latin! And because we had an amazing headmaster he personally & with great compassion explained that it wasn't within his powers to stop the school board from removing funds for learning Latin, esp as I was the only person to really want to learn it! My world was crushed! So I've subscribed! 😁 I'm 63...it's never too late!
＠9xxxxxxxxx "Every writing system in the world had it's beginnings in the Nile Valley and Central Africa." nope, the Chinese one didn't started in africa
Wait a minute The Germanic runic writing system has nothing to do with Africa nether did any writing system begin in africa. And secondly the beginning of the writing system actually begin in Mesopotamia not Africa. The north Africa and central Africa writing system was influnce from Mesopotamia writting system which can be seen by the world's oldest Alphabet that been found in the Mesopotamia region. Other then that a few countries in asia and a few countries in ancient Europe invented their own writting system with no out side influences. Africa was basically the only continent that got all of their writing system from other continents this us easly to find out just by doing proper research.
Actually, he's referring to the majority of the writing systems of the world, which all account their origins to the Ancient Greek alphabet. In turn, the Ancient Greek alphabet came from the Phoenician alphabet which took the form of simplified hieroglyphics...
It's true, not every writing system in the world originated in Africa. But most did (I think the only exceptions are the Chinese logograms, the Mesoamerican glyphs and the Mesopotamian cuneiform system, although only the first one is still in use and/or produced child systems). Here's an infographic that illustrates how most of the systems we've been mentioning do come from the Egyptian hieroglyphs (including the Norse runes, the Indian devanagari or the Arabic abjad). i1.wp.com/starkeycomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Starkey-Comics-Family-Tree-of-ABCD.jpg?resize=697%2C816&ssl=1
Wait, which one comes first? The writing system of a language or a numeral system? I think it's likely to have a numeral system first for trading and stuff and a writing system later on for whatever purposes. Then it's possible that they came up with numerals by imagination and images from daily life.
No kidding! I knew 1-10 and I was curious as to what the L was and even the origin. This one video and learned 1-1000 and the many was they can be inscribed! Great vid!
Wait, I don't get the Greek counting at 1:40 Isn't Iota the 9th letter? So why would it be 10? Same with Ro - wouldn't that be 90 instead of 100? Or am I missing two letters somewhere?
I remember that in school when I was a kid in school they taught us that C is 100 and M is 1000 because they'd be the initials of the Spanish words "cien" (centum) and "mil" (mille) hahahahaha; they obviously told us that in order to make it easy. Great job and great videos. Salutem ex Mexico
this was very i testing given that we allways say that 5 = V witch was not a roman letter. V was in latin was an upper case U so is explained allot for me. thank you
No need for an archaeologist, there are ample records of IIII being 4 in the ancient world. Only really in post-classical times (i.e., the Middle Ages) did IV become the standard, as stated in the video.
Are there any written records that suggests some of the foundations for the numbers came from china? I see some similarities in these and the Chinese characters 一 二 三 四 五 六七八九十 布i 千 It's just a question fueled by curiosity.
No, and it's very unlikely that this is the case, given how early Roman and Etruscan numerals developed and how far away China was (with limited access at that time to cultures outside the Mediterranean). My guess for the similarities that you are seeing is just simple human nature for representing 1 as a line (a finger, perhaps? Or just the most simple line as possible for the simplest letter?), then 2 and 3 as just variations on this line.
+latintutorial all ancient civilisation represented the numbers likewise . for example the Sabaic language . numbers like Latin were represented with vertical strokes . and kh for 5 cuz 5 in Sabaic stats in kh. and 'a for 10 also cuz 10 starts in a in Sabaic . ☺ anyway . they all had the same level of intelligence 😉. Sumerian may stand out for how they rearranged their numerals . look it out !
What you can do is visit their wiktionary pages: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%9B%9B#Glyph_origin They are very interesting, sometimes even giving lesser known alternatives. :) Do note the "See Also" list, it links to most of the other numbers.
Reading through the comments here makes me kind of sad. A lot of people tall about the pronunciation. But instead of saying sth like 'wait I thought the letter .. was pronounce like.... Or is there anything I don't know about this. Can you explain?' (because, you know, on this channel there are lots of videos that show that this guy clearly knows a lot of stuff about latin) they all go like 'duude, you're so wrong. It's pronounced like ..' I mean, of course, only because sb knows a lot about sth, doesn't mean that he can't be misinformed about it to some degree. But still, people should think about this more logically before writing a comment By the way, thanks for the good, interesting video!
It does irk me that the Romans didn't catch on to the idea of zero - stared them in the face - and to ignore it must have created havoc in their calculations.
This is a very good subject and I would like to see more about it. I would like to see facts though on why the Latin language uses letters for numbers. They weren't the only ones. 4 is not iiii. 4 is IV. 9 is IX 14 is XIV and 19 is XIX and not XVIX they shortened it as much as possible. Less writing. Or what about 49? Is it IL? No it's XXXXIL? Or XXXXIX?
Peter Alfons Loch It can be either IIII or IV. The Romans tended to use the shortened version (IV) only where space was limited, like tombstones. My video on Roman numerals has more information on this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Q5_2o8MITH4.html
The subtractive method of Roman numerals only became standard in the Middle Ages. IIII as 4 was pretty typical for the ancients! Check out my video on this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Q5_2o8MITH4.html
