History of the Latin Alphabet

The Latin alphabet has become arguably the dominant writing system over much of the world's languages, but how exactly did it come into existence, and what pressures over its 3,000-year history shaped it into the script we know today?

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[mfaizsyahmi]

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.

[hhhieronymusbotch]

Proto-Sinaitic Script: "Dude, did your video just breeze past me in under 10 seconds!?"

Paleo-Hebrew: "Bro, at least you got a mention."

[WaterVolt]

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

[ahnkor]

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

[MythologywithMike]

9:06 oh that's really trippy to read

[give_me_my_nick_back]

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

[fahadalsaggar]

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

[ianeons]

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

[evaggelia]

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

[andrewromine]

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

[JesSuPer]

13:06 There is a Skillshare ad in captions.

[jefferygoldmann]

Egyptian: *is hard because it has over 700 symbols*

Chinese people: 达到我们的水平

[TrueSchwar]

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.

[andrebenites]

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.

[Artur_M.]

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

[ernestolombardo]

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

[OlafOlive]

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

[oz]

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

[hassiaschbi]

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

[jeromydoerksen]

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!