Writing systems of the world! #language #chinese #history #didyouknow #education

We often hear about the “Chinese alphabet,” but it’s more accurately described as a “logography” - but what does that mean? Let’s learn about different writing systems and the languages that use them!

#language #chinese #history #didyouknow #education

[wrdsatwrk]

So, one correction… there *are* a few systems that we might called “Chinese alphabets, ” namely Pinyin (the most commonly used Latin-based transcription of Standard Chinese, a standardized form of Mandarin) and Bopomofo (a semisyllabary - that is to say, not strictly an “alphabet” - used to transliterate Standard Chinese as well as other Sinitic languages).

Both of these systems are very interesting in their own right, and I definitely should have mentioned them - sorry about that! Hopefully my intention to clear up the distinction between “logographies” and “alphabets” is still clear. Thanks for watching :-)

[GvinahGui]

> Shows the word "unbreakable"
> Breaks it apart "un break able"
Me: 😮

[joshuachan]

Imho 牢不可破 is more like an idiom
You can say "firm" (堅固) instead of "unbreakable"
But if you really want to say "unbreakable", literally, just say "不可破" (un-can break) 😂

[kraykyle]

As a Chinese person, my sincere condolences to anyone who was convinced to try learning it, because even I struggle with reading and writing sometimes, and every day I'm depressed that we didn't have a person like that one Korean king that simplified their writing system.

[Ilikemarinescience]

Learning how to write in Hindi as an American English speaker was painful.
“Ok, I’ve just memorized the 50 consonant letters. Done!”
“Now you have to learn the vowel add ons and write them in the correct places.”
“THERE’S MORE!?” Lol

[Gideon]

In Hebrew we do have signs for vowels, in the form of small dots and dashes under or around the consonants. But after the first year or two of elementary school, they are usually dropped. You can figure how to read a word from the context. So a Hebrew sentence would read like this:
if yu undrstnd wht's wrttn hre, tht's prtty mch th wy we wrte. It's a vry cmpct wrtng sstm.

[kotsmor]

Which is why English orthography is not an alphabet, it's an etymology logography /nsrs

[an_rosban]

I loved this one! Learning about writing scripts is always really cool, and I love videos explaining how languages are related or influenced by other languages.

[fernandor]

The main reason why English spelling is so messed up is that the standardization of spelling happened before and during the great vowel shift. And virtually no spelling reforms since then.

[suvigyamishra]

I always liked Indian system or abugida ( no, not just because i am Indian) but because its so easy! No letter has multiple pronunciation, there are no silent letters, and vowels are different than their counterparts (vowel combined with consonant)

[Leonlion]

Hope we get to have a part 2 about the components of Hanzi. It can originate from a pictographs like 木 (wood) looks like a wood from the trees, but also a "phonogram" radical that indicates how a word is sound like 字 (子 indicate roughly how 字 is pronounced)

[chinmustache]

So many writing systems coming from Phoenician…if i remember right, that’s because writing was only ever invented a few times (that we know of)

[Slapbattler]

I never new how the Chinese logography worked I just knew it worked different form English. I find it fascinating that each symbol represents a unit of meaning

[Slapbattler]

A symbol representing a single morpheme sounds really cool

[brahmbandyopadhyay]

Petition for a part two for rest of the kinds of alphabets (like cherokee, mongolian, etc)! This video was so interesting

[martinvalencia]

There is also chinese tsu in which are pronunciation guides used for beginners and children.

[alexandragrace]

Wow! I love your channel! Keep up the great work.

[PayalP]

Could listen to you talk all day 🥰 lately my yt feed has told me i love linguists and im here for it!

[Cassius]

What kind of language is Thai and Lao?

As someone who’s Thai I’ve ever really thought of it as being entirely different from many western languages. As it has an alphabet and character for individual sounds much like Swedish (which is _technically_ my first language).
But it does function differently.

I’ve never really thought about it or tried to look into it but your videos got me actually wondering.

[martinparker]

Nice intro to world scripts!

Two minor quibbles.
In the use of the Latin alphabet by English and several other languages, not all letters represent a single phoneme, and certain sets of two letters (digraphs) often represent a single phoneme with two letters. E.g. ‘sh’.
Also, Arabic and Hebrew can represent vowels with diacritics in certain contexts.

I’m looking forward to your deeper analysis of specific scripts, including perhaps how some Chinese logograms are built up from smaller parts, some of which are phonetic in nature.

Thanks for delving into one of my favorite subjects!