Top Ten Coolest Writing Systems

in this video i will rip off one of my other videos

[mrmimeisfunny]

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.

[Deibi]

10) 0:12 Gothic
9) 0:52 Katakana
8) 1:17 Futhorc
7) 1:48 Brahmi
6) 2:08 Armenian
5) 2:55 Ancient South Arabian
4) 3:24 Canadian Syllabic
3) 3:56 Cherokee
2) 5:02 Ogham

1) 5:37 HENTAIGANA 🐙🐙🐙

[lowellcunningham]

The Mongolian script is pretty cool, but Tibetan is even cooler!

[benseac]

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.

[Emily-oxyn]

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!

[kaengurus.sind.genossen]

I agree, we should bring back the Gothic script

[BIG_BADASS]

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)

[LM.LM]

I think IPA is interesting, mostly because almost every sound that can be made by a human has a symbol.

[pentelegomenon]

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.

[chinmayjoshi]

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:
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.

[jadsel]

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.

[nunyabiznes]

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.

[mollof]

Canadian Script is the coolest because it's used in the Arctic!

[vismaykedilaya]

as an indian, it drives up the f*cking wall how linguists can't pronounce "devanagari". come on you guys can pronounce everything else but not that? just a small rant i had. love the video. please enjoy your day.

[niky]

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 <3 it's just pretty
6) Tibetan. Yes, their overcomplicated system too
7) Chinese <3 all about them
8) Burmese <3
9) Syombo script is interesting and I love their base
10) Georgian looks like :3 it's cute
11) Armenian

But tbh the tier is bullshit here, I love all of these systems equally and even more

[一花のぬいぐるみ-ze]

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

[lampboy]

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)

[Snickersboy]

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 )

[hypnoskales]

"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

[qwertyTRiG]

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.