Leaf-Friendly Alphabets 🍃✍️

The curly letters of languages like Balinese, Thai, and Telugu may have been designed to be written on leaves. The unique curves in these scripts help preserve the delicate leaves, preventing them from splitting when written on.

Palm leaf manuscripts are an ancient form of writing and preserving texts, predominantly found in South and Southeast Asia. They were made from the leaves of the Palmyra palm or other suitable palm species. The process of creating palm leaf manuscripts involves several steps:

Selection and preparation of leaves: Mature leaves were carefully chosen for their size, quality, and lack of blemishes. The leaves were then cleaned, dried, and sometimes boiled to make them more flexible and durable.

Cutting and trimming: The leaves were cut into uniform sizes and trimmed to ensure straight edges. The length and width of the leaves varied, depending on regional preferences and the intended use of the manuscript.

Curing and polishing: The prepared leaves were then cured, typically by exposing them to smoke, which helped to prevent insect damage and decay. After curing, the leaves were polished using a smooth stone or other polishing tools to create a smooth surface for writing.

Writing: The text was inscribed on the leaves using a stylus, usually made of metal, bone, or wood. The stylus was used to etch the characters, making slight incisions in the leaf's surface. The writing systems used often featured curved lines, as angular letters could cause the leaf to split.

Ink application: To make the writing more visible, a mixture of soot or charcoal and oil was rubbed onto the leaf's surface, filling the incisions made by the stylus. Excess ink was wiped away, leaving the characters clearly visible.

Binding: Holes were made along the spine of the leaves, and they were strung together using a thread or thin cord. The manuscript was often bound between wooden boards for protection.

[akshatswami]

The language the guy is carving on the leaves is actually Sanskrit.

[immaterialspectator]

Norse runes are the opposite. Because they were primarily carved in stone you won't find a curved line in basically any rune. Mesopotamian is also lacking in curves, because it was written by pressing a stylus into unhardened clay tablets which were then baked.

If you think of it like that, hieroglyphic languages like Egyptian are the weird ones.

[苏蒂慧]

I grew up in Bali and we were taught to write the traditional script on that leaves (we call it “lontar”). What you said is correct. However, I would like to clarify that the actual lontar is pretty hard and tough to write on (unlike the leaf on which you wrote with markers). Writing on it feels like carving your name on a wooden table with a knife, hence we use semicircular or c-like motions to write most of the characters. Other than that, the video explains everything perfectly. Many thanks for covering this!😊

[dannymartial]

This is such a cool fact of human language. Each language is a product of its environment. If we made a language today, it’d probably be something optimized for digital screens.

[jb]

South East Asian students be like “I’ve got a 100 leaf essay due tomorrow”

[trimegistus]

North Indian cultures also write on palm leaves. But the species of palm leaves used in North India has a different venation which supprts more angular letters while as you go South, the species of palm tree changes and you get more curled letters.

Bengali and Odia languages are extremely close to one another but have completely different scripts for the same reason i believe.

[janchristianwismarsaragih]

My tribe used to write on bamboos. The letters are kind of longer, they look like "~" but longer and have dots.

[watch-LuoXiaoHei-please]

Balinese here! Thank you for making this video! Though we don’t use leaves to communicate in modern days, we still use letter carving in competitions as to preserve the culture.

We burn candlenuts till the outer layer turns dark aka soot to smear the carvings.

[ralphy]

My language is Malayalam. മലയാളം and my ancestors also wrote on palm leaves ! It's a very curly language.

[Banzybanz]

The word for page in many Indian languages is the same as the word for leaf. Like in Marathi, we say 'paan' to mean both leaf and page.

[the_fifth_letter]

As a Telugu person this really interested me. Never knew this about my own language. Thank you!

[angkarbasil]

The scripts of South Asian and Southeast Asian nations are so beautiful. They are very unique and curley and they are definitely my favorite scripts, especially Burmese. I wish there were more resources on where to learn Burmese.

[novelle]

ମଜାଦାର ତଥ୍ୟ: ଖଜୁରୀ ପତ୍ର ଉପରେ ଲେଖିବା ଖ୍ରୀଷ୍ଟପୂର୍ବ ପଞ୍ଚମ ଶତାବ୍ଦୀରୁ ଆରମ୍ଭ ହୋଇଥିଲା, ମୁଖ୍ୟତ ଦକ୍ଷିଣ ଏବଂ ଦକ୍ଷିଣ ପୂର୍ବ ଏସିଆରେ |

[drawer_resp]

As a Thai who have seen some old palm books in museums, I never know it's the reason behind the shape of our alphabet!

[zorro-tramposo]

I've never thought about how the material a language is traditionally written on will change how it looks.

[forTehMemes]

It’s incredible on how languages have evolved over the years. I only speak and write in English but it’s so fascinating to see how other languages work

[PrettyHMachn]

I have always loved this about ancient Indian texts. They are almost always on these leaves that are tied together, kind of like the study cards and index card packs that you can get now. The scratch and ink technique is similar to scrimshaw.

[grantlester]

The evolution of written languages is a relationship of symbols and what materials they’re written on. Nice video!

[chikaknight]

Okay as a printmaker, it makes me so irrationally happy to know someone actually writes/used to write a wholeass language basically doing intaglio (without the press of course)

[WinMOo-gxvk]

Our Burmese letters evolved the same exact way you mentioned. The Early Burmese carving letters were angular and in rectangular shapes, and as the ages passed the use of palm leaves rose and the letters were adapted to it.