You didn't mention that the reason Sequoyah's script looks like he was illiterate and just copied letters he thought looked nice. Was because he was illiterate and just copied letters he thought looked nice.
He wasn't completely illiterate, he could recognize some words spelled out, but not enough to understand how they function. He actually invented numerals first which were partially inspired by devengari in shape if I remember correctly. Then he developed the original "cursive" script. which had a big touch from Arabic but he had to change it to fit the printing press, sooooo Ꭰ is a Ꭱ is e etc etc etc etc. :)
@@landon8214 you're correct, technically-- the above post meant that, when Sequoyah was creating his aplhabet, he started with the numbers first, then the letters. The Arabs still "invented" our number system... Although the Sumerians invented the "first" known number system.
I love Mongolian script too it looks cool and relatively easy to write! Tibetan, well as per mentioned the spelling rule is hard to get your head around at first but there are certain rules to stop it from going TOO wild, so... with some practice, it's good.
My personal favorite is Georgian, followed closely by Hangul. I recently came across the Canadian script a few months ago and really like how it looks.
The Inuit languages are official languages in Nunavut, a Canadian northern territory. In the south, I often hear land acknowledgements when we gather. For example, the last conference I went to, we were on the land of the Anishinaabe Peoples and the Haudenosaunee Peoples. There is an official definition of "Indian" in Canada which refers to the aboriginal peoples. People from India are called South Asians. I am an immigrant to Canada.
Not really, there's a lot of sounds that require a lot of symbols. Even such a simple word as Swedish Oro(anxiety) is weird in IPA [²ɯᵝːrɯᵝː] the only simple part is the r. I'm from Sweden and I can't say it. Well I don't speak standard Swedish so perhaps that's why...
@@L1M.L4M I don't know. But it's a possible feature to be included. I'd also be amazing being capable of phonetically reading whistle tones in languages or languages which basically are made up by whistling. And to not include such when trying to contain all sounds a language can have is langosism.
The Gothic alphabet is actually used by the modern gothic revival community. The use of the so called Ahsabairka is sadly hindered by Unicode not supporting a lowercase and the lack of quality fonts out there.
In my opinion, one of the most underrrated writing systems is Mandombe. It's used to write 4 of the languages spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Kokongo, Tshiluba, Lingala, and Swahili. I really like how geometric its characters are, and the way it's constructed. It was invented in the 1970's by one guy who claimed that it was revealed to him in a dream. I recommend looking it up, the story behind it is really interesting!
I think you missed a few... The Sinhalese letter ඝ (gha) Sinhalese letter ස (sa) Sinhalese letter ය (ya) Sinhalese letter ය්රී (yree) Sinhalese letter ධ (dha) Sinhalese letter ධි (Dhi) Sinhalese letter ධ්රි (Dhri) Sinhalese letter ට්ඨි (tthi) Sinhalese letter ඣ (jha) Sinhalese letter ඞ (Hard 'Da') Sinhalese letter ඩි (Hard 'Di') Sinhalese letter ශ්ර (shra) Sinhalese letter ශ්රී (shree) Sinhalese letter භ (bha) Sinhalese letter භ්ර (bhra) Sinhalese letter ඝ්රා (ghra) Sinhalese letter ක්රි (kri) Sinhalese leter බ (ba) යීධ්ඨිධ්රිසිධිඞට්ඨිජ්කිඣඣස්ක්ස්ය්රී
My top ten most favourite scripts: 10. hangeul script: It is by all standards, the best writing system for the korean language and the best writing system ever devised. 9. aramaic script: the compact, flowing and mystical aesthetic is unmatched. I personally think it is the best abjad there is. 8. tengwar: the elven script developed by JRR Tolkien. Enough said. 7. Ancient greek script: Just something about the fluidity of the alphabets. Also the diacritics and the terminal sigma. 6. The latin script: far more versatile than people give it credit for. It has stood the test of time. 5. Hentai-kana: Fell in love with this one after seeing a calligraphy video on meiji era names of girls in japanese. It just looks brilliant, each syllable is a work of art. 4. Balinese: the unusual mix of regularity and flow. It feels free flowing and constrained at the same time. It is simply a well formed script. 3. cursive cyrillic: uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu 2. Devanagari: It is simple personal bias, and also the fact that it can be used for almost every Indian language without much modification. 1.5!!! Cursive bichig: It is art. See it. 1. Modi: a compact CURSIVE abugida (direct descendant of devanagari). Also the original script for my mother tongue.
@@livedandletdie not if you don't understand it though 😛 , and I actually have tried making con-scripts myself, and it is a serious pain to come up with cursive forms. So I pretty much revere anything cursive, or any script that looks flowy now.
Modi and Gurmukhi are actually better than Devanagri, they both have better cursive flow and Gurmukhi was actually designed to handle the sounds found in all Indian languages, Arabic, Farsi and the tones that are found in Punjabi which is the only tonal Indo European language.
Korean? 😂😂😂😂. That bish only made for the Korean language, can not write any other language where as scripts like Russian or the Roman alphabet can be used by numerous languages
I think that Tironian notes is an interesting script, it started out as a normal shorthand but due to being in use for a very long time it actually became a prestige script of sorts, at its peak it had 13 thousand symbols and was used for actual published books with a cleaned-up orthography, and its "&" symbol became widely adopted. I also really like cuneiform, because a language made of indentations in clay seems ridiculously useful to me, you can literally write with no ink or paper and erase letters by just rubbing them out with your finger, and due to having no lines it can be extremely compact, an experienced cuneiform writer could grab a fistful of clay and write like 30 lines of text on it using only a reed stylus. Also, there are these devices called wax tablets that were commonly used in Western civilization from ancient Greek times up until the 1800s, they were like two small picture frames containing a soft wax and binded together like a little book that you could open up and write in using a stylus, similar to a small portable whiteboard; however this took a lot of skill due to Europe's reliance on Phoenician-derived line scripts, I'm actually amazed that we didn't invent our own home-grown cuneiform during this time period. And I would argue that cuneiform is superior even for the ink-and-paper medium: imagine if you had little stamp pads on your fingers representing the different cuneiform marks and you typed letters directly onto the page, so we wouldn't even need to invent pens in order to write, and I bet it's much faster than a pen. We do actually have a modern cuneiform-like script which is called Braille, but it's used only by blind people which is probably why it looks so unattractive (btw I have no doubt that some blind people in ancient Sumeria could read cuneiform, since it's just a series of holes in a clay surface). Speaking of which, imagine if we did all write in Braille, we could read text without even looking at it. And a Kindle wouldn't even need a screen, it could just be a machine with a bunch of dots that pop up, and you can drag your finger across the dots to read while you watch a movie or something. So I kind of like Braille, but I feel that it needs some fixing to be a great script.
Hangeul is basically a successful constructed script and I love it for that. I also like runes, I read about them in a divination book and just waiting for a trip to the countryside to collect stones for them.
Sequoyah's original Tsalagi syllabary looked very different, and you might want to check that out too. The version still in use came about basically from sending it to the printer's. They could either create totally new type based on his more complex squiggly-looking script, or slightly modify a bunch of characters they already had and go from there. So, the cheaper and easier option won out. At least one pic is available online of a handwritten copy attributed to Sequoyah from a museum collection, showing the original longhand and print forms together. Not much resemblance between them. I actually think the OG version looks way cooler.
I'm extremely bias bc I'm a native Russian speaker, so my number 1) is Cyrillic. My favourite alphabet based on it: Serbian Cyrillic and Chukchi Cyrillic 2) Demotic is so PRETTYYY +Egyptian hieroglyphics. I love them. 3) Every Indian script. I love them all 4) Semitic scripts. I love how they represent their root system + they're beautiful 5) Thai
I really like Cyrillic because at least in Russian, the language I’m learning, the lower cases tend to be the same height except for letters like б. It makes it look really neat because they seem like they fit in their own square.
My favourites (Mostly on aesthetic purpose): 10) Latin writting 9) Georgian script 8) Hebrew alphabets 7) Devanagari script 6) Mongolian script 5) Tibetan script 4) Egyptian hieroglyphs 3) Yi script 2) Chinese characters 1) Hangeul (Korean script, which is my motherland's script)
"Katakana is significantly simpler than hiragana" - that's like saying that upper case letters are significantly simpler than lowercase letters or that one font of the latin alphabet is significantly simpler than another font
idk cause katakana is literally simpler than hiragana in that it is made from parts of kanji rather than entire kanji themselves. I had a problem with hentaigana even as a joke being called its own writing system, when all it is is hiragana that didnt make the cut after the 1900 spelling reform. like it's literally the inverse of a writing system lol its a system of what not to write. the literal translation of hentaigana 変体仮名 is "variant/changed body kana" and is a more apt comparison to your comment than katakana imo
I've watched a video about japanese's writing systems and that sparkled my curiosity, it's been 200 days since I've been studying it non-stop, hiragana looks cute, katakana looks badass and kanji look difficult, the perfect pick for a new language to learn
Sutton SignWriting should be in there. It's really cool. Very distinctive, and also straightforward to read (though I find it harder to write). And it renders a whole massive group of previously unwritten languages writable.
Ogham was also used in Scotland to write Pictish. Some of the lines went in different directions to the Irish Ogham scripts but that's just them wanting to be different. Also, since Pictish has gone extinct it's the only examples of what the language was like apart from place names!
Þe Engliſh language has þe cooleſt writing ſyſtem if ȝou chuſe to uſe all þe bells & whiſtles þat were ſterilized out by þe printing preſs. It miȝt be odd at firſt, but I find þat þis ſtyle features much more diſtinct overall word ſhapes þan ſtandard orþography. More aſcenders & deſcenders to ſet words apart from each oþer. Plus, þe letter Þ looks really cool, & þis alſo allows Y to act only as a vowel.
I'm a huge fan of the Greek alphabet myself. I love the lowercase forms of the letters; they look smoother and sleeker than Latin lowercase characters. I wonder why more languages don't use the Greek alphabet? The only major language to use the Greek alphabet today is Greek itself, but there are some other minor languages spoken in and near Greece that do use the Greek alphabet as well (Arvanitika and Tsakonian mainly), and historically other languages in the eastern Mediterranean region did use the Greek alphabet. I should note that Arvanitika is a dialect of of the Albanian language spoken inside of Greece; otherwise, Albanian uses the Latin alphabet.
@@sbclaridge the Greek language has historically not been manipulated to fit other phonetic systems, and given it only has 24 letters total, many languages today can’t fit their sound inventories effectively within even an altered Hellenic script
my personal favourite is georgian, i love how all the letters look like cute pretzels also as a Guatemalan I'm proud to say we learned how to read mayan numerals at school. it works for nothing but saying "oh, there says 5898" whenever you see ancient stuff at museums, but it's still a dope ability ig
I'm glad Mongolian got a special mention at least, I am trying to learn both the language and script and I think it's pretty neat. But some of my own special mentions would go to Phags-pa, Telugu and Georgian. They all look pretty cool IMO. "Hello" in Telugu: హలో "Hello" in Georgian: გამარჯობა I'd show Phags-pa, but I don't think it's supported. And looking at some of the ones on your list, I thought trying to learn Cyrillic was bad enough with Latin-looking letters that sound nothing like the Latin.
the brahmi script evolved into Siddham an Tibbetan in the east of the subcontinent, which both look insanely cool (also Sylheti Nagri is probs the most underrated south asian script imo lol)
Awesome video, thanks for making it. How exactly is katakana simpler than hiragana? Its like having the same syllabery but twice in 2 different fonts. Also i like hiragana, katakana is barely used compared to hiragana.
Have you looked at SignWriting? It can write any sign language, and with some ectentions, it van also write dancing, scate boarding and much more. Remember, language is not just speech, signed laguges are languages too, and they can be written. And they do have some cool gramatical features
Right there near the end, and I had to listen several times to be sure, you said number one was "used in Japan until the *earlieth* *twenty* century." That's an easy one to miss. It almost got by me. It's not the usual verbal gaff. Cool video. Haven't heard of some of these. Will have to do some research on them.
I'd like to add some honorable mentions. - Boring Latin (English that does have no special letters) - Spiced up Latin (Like German which has the original latin plus cool bonus letters such as ä ö ü and ß) - Arabic (It looks cool but it is to tiny on computer screens) - Latin++ (The Polish one where they used latin letters but added cool stuff for every letter to work with their language) - Cyrillic (іт юст лукс реалли ґуд анд алсо гас латін леттерс) - Georgian (Looks gorgeous )
I'll add Sundanese. Sure it's mostly replased by the Latin script but it looks like, and I say it totally out of love, how it looks like a generic science fiction "Alienese" script.
As someone who has also studied Japanese, I prefer hiragana because it’s more loopy and noodle like and is easier to write in and remember and make look nicer.
I've been teaching myself some hentai gana recently. the history behind it is really cool and I want to delve into more of the old manyougana poetry that came from chinese educated japanese poets. also funny name.
As a native Arabic speaker , i love the Arabic script so much , even though alot of westerns always underestimate it by saying it looks like spaghetti whatever , which i see no connection ع ث ل م ن ط ك ي س ش ض و ذ ح ز أ . But as matter of fact it's a very beautiful elegant and the no western script in my opinion comes close to the beauty of Arabic script , especially the Arabic calligraphy is something beyond beautiful . Also u did not have to put the war criminal George bush , he indeed liked the arab to the point of doing war crimes in iraq , that was so insensitive
I'm a sucker for indian and generally central asian area scrips(even though hindi and begali look completely different from tamil and stuff). Also I love cursive scripts like arabic and mongolian(does that count? idk). Also Oghams super cool great choice for number 2
தமிழ் is so cool and weirdly easy to learn, abugidas are amazing! Just take a look at knot, butterfly, cow riding a snake, and inductor with a trailer: இ ஐ ஊ ணை, also circles: ஃ ... and then there's kshau: க்ஷௌ
I know you sorta glossed over it by mentioning Brahmi script but I think this video needs at least an honorable mention for THAI! Admittedly the way it functions is lowkey a little dumb, but it looks absolutely beautiful if you ask me
4:06 I'm pretty sure the letter on 6th row in 3rd column is a Sinhalese letter in the Cherokee alphabet example you used. I checked the original one and the letter was not there. You should've noticed as you even made Sinhala an honorable mention with the exact same letter. Unless this was intentional.
These are good ones, but Tifinagh (also called the Berber or Amazigh script) and Tibetan (basically Devanagari, but 100 times better) are an easy top two for me. Also, Georgian script > every other Greek derived script.
my favorite alphabet is Cyrillic, I don't know how to explain it exactly, but the way it sounds, the designs, I don't know, I just know that I like it a lot, so much so that I learned to read it myself (I don't know anything about the Slavic languages or the other languages that use it, and my favorite letter is this one: Д
Thought Georgian and Hangul would've made the list. They're certainly some of the tidiest writing systems out there. Also, Katakana is only slightly simpler than Hiragana. 😑
It helps when talking about the Cherokee Syllabary to note that Sequoyah was totally illiterate when he decided to create a writing system for the Cherokee nation to use.
