Why are there two a's?

There are two ways to write the letter a! No not 'A' and 'a', but the swooshy a and circle a. Why have we created two different ways to write the same letter? Is it just coincidence or was it on purpose? Will we forever use TWO a's?

#h0ser #letters #history

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Why are there two a's?, a a

[hser]

sorry for the audio on this video, was trying a new mic that didn't work out

[emorygleason]

everything you say sounds like you’re about to make a joke but never do. i love it

[HoneyyChai]

“The letter a is derived from the Egyptian letter of a bull head. Not sure what it means, but it’s a bull head.”
Love this sentence

[solarpriestess]

The portrayal of Niccolo de Nicoli as an exaggerated clipart of an Italian baker made me laugh way harder than it should have, especially when he frowned. Great stuff.

[veggiet]

It's interesting, I remember being taught the "double story" a in my textbook, but then the "cursive" a by my Mom. So as a child I thought this was actually just a style choice. I also learned cursive so I just assumed that we were just borrowing the cursive version, which made sense because it was easier. I had no idea that this was a historical shift.

[niismo.]

Thanks a lot for this, it's genuinely a question I had on my mind a while ago

[zvidanyatvetski]

The reason for the bull's head representing the letter A and other vowels comes from the fact that the word for bull was something similar to "Alp" which became "Alef" in Hebrew and "Alfa" in Greek

[unusuariodinternet]

Seeing a single history 'a' in a computer is uncanny.
Italic 'a' is so beautiful.

[michaelweiske]

I actually write using the "double story" a, for the reason that it does take longer to write. I've had a bad habit of writing too fast and my letters being nearly illegible to anyone else, so by slowing down and taking my time it becomes easier to read.

[hatsunetunes]

Storytime: When I was in kindergarten learning how to write, I insisted on writing the double story 'a' because that's what it looks like in books, but my teacher told me I needed to stop and only write single story, just because that's what everyone else did. I went home and told my parents, and my dad actually agreed with me, and he decided to change his handwriting from that moment on. To this day my dad still writes the double story 'a' even though I actually just use single story now because it's faster lmao

[rizzen]

Once i heard that when you type "a" in italic on a computer it changes into a single story "a", i IMMEDIATELY opened ms. Word and started doing what was said.
After i hit ctrl+i on the letter "a", I WAS MINDBLOWN.
never knew that kind of small things that the software developer adds, have a history behind it.

Well done video!

[Yeard]

I’m so stoned I had to listen to the opening paragraph like sixteen times to understand it

[arinmei]

I use the double story "a". When I was younger I wrote the single story, but I somehow ended up with writing the double story as I got older and now I can't get out of it lol.
I thought the reason was simply a matter of choice, so thanks for making this video! Now I have something else to add in my stock knowledge.

[nicholasho]

I'm also interested in why we have 2 capital I's, and why one of them looks almost exactly like a lowercase l.

[BarelloSmith]

The double storey "a" is actually faster to write, if you just write it like a curved alpha. You only use one continuous movement, instead of two. I used to write the single story "a" in my handwriting, since it was the way I learned it at school, but after a while it turned automatically to a double storey "a" since it didn't interrupt my writing flow as much.

[elitettelbach]

This is one of those things that I probably saw at one point and didn’t question it. I’ve never really thought about the two types of lowercase a’s. But this was a great breakdown of it. Also the fact that italicizing an a turns it from double story to single story is super cool!

[In_Our_Timeline]

The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it from a true alphabet). In turn, the ancestor of aleph may have been a pictogram of an ox head in proto-Sinaitic script influenced by Egyptian hieroglyphs, styled as a triangular head with two horns extended.
the consonant sound that the letter denoted in Phoenician and other Semitic languages, and that was the first phoneme of the Phoenician pronunciation of the letter so they used their version of the sign to represent the vowel a, and called it by the similar name of alpha.

[Morn__]

I don’t know if it’s the same in the rest of the world but in Italian school they teach us that there are two types of writing: “stampatello minuscolo” (print writing) and “corsivo” (cursive).
The first “a” belongs to stampatello minuscolo and the second one belongs to corsivo.

[rthlrpk]

When I was in grade 6, I thought the double storey "a" looked fancier and so I literally trained myself to write that one. Sometimes I would still accidentally use the single storey, but after a while I got used to it and I've been using the double storey one ever since

[DutchDread]

I just realised, that while I can easily read the double story a, I don't think I've ever actually written it. I wouldn't even know how to. It's odd that in my mind I barely realize that there are multiple shapes for the same letter, it just feels like the same letter to me. Learning as a child is amazing, wish I could still do it.