Evolution of the Alphabet | Earliest Forms to Modern Latin Script

I find it interesting how a letter that looked like an "I" became "Z" and the one looking like a "Z" became "I"

I think it's incredible that after more than 3000 years, some letters still somehow resemble the original symbol, like the upside-down bulls head in A, the ladder in H, the snake in N and the eye in O

The letter Thorn was still in regular use in England at the time of the invention of the printing press but, because it was not used in the German alphabet, standard typesets did not include it. Instead, English printers used a capital Y as a surrogate because it had a similar appearance. So 'The' (which would have had a Thorn instead of TH) was rendered 'Ye' but pronounced the same way. "Ye Olde Boke Shoppe" would have been pronounced as "The Old Book Shop", not with a Y sound at all.

Still one of the best videos about any topic out there. Gets all the information you want across clearly in a heartbeat.

Imagine how big of a genius you would have to be to get the idea to attribute symbols to verbal sounds that you can then write down to form words

Thorn is a very interesting letter which I wish we kept around in modern English instead of using a "Th" digraph to make the same sound. Since most early English printers didn't have a thorn letter, they would often substitute a "Y" for thorn, which still survives today in an attempt to make something seem old and nostalgic, such as "Ye olde...". Most people will pronounce the "Y" like a modern Y, but since it is meant to represent the letter thorn it should be pronounced the same as the modern English "th" digraph.

W "double U" is actually pronounced "double vé" in French, meaning "double V", which makes more sense since it's shaped like a VV and not a UU.

This actually explains a lot of stuff. the names of different writings like alphabet, abjad, and abugida, all originate from the first few letters (abgd). In Serbo-croatian, for example, the word "abeceda" (meaning alphabet) literally means abcd. Also explains why the cyrillic aplhabet is ordered similarly, but not quite, like the latin one.

Every alphabet: Goes through quite a few changes O: Literally O

Having been involved in a Greek letter group in college, I never realized that Omega & Omicron were simply Big (mega) O and Little (micro) O. This was a good reminder.

10:44 Cool how C still makes a double function (which can mean k- as in cat and s- as in city) but back then it was K- and G-. What is REALLY interesting is that in Hiragana (Japanese Sylabic Writing System) the G is also derived from the K (with only a mark to distinct). Pretty cool how 2 distinct cultures/societies merged on seing a similarity between k- and G-. Both are in the back of the throat (g- is even more far back) and... Well, it is so interesting how sometimes we make 2 symbols for the same sound or represent 2 different sounds with the same symbol. Edit: OMGGGG. THE G IS JUST A C WITH A LINE IN IT!! OMGGGG SAME THING HAPPENED!!! Edit 2: Omg. Zed is just like the month February. Let's just change whatever is in last. But, in February's case. It used to be last and nos it is not, while Z is the last letter preciselly because it is not so used. This makes so much sense. Of course it is not the whole alphabet that uses this order by popularity, but it really shows in the last few. Pretty cool!

Real eye opener to ancient alphabets! Very informative! Thanks!

It would be really interesting to trace this alongside the runic and cyrillic scripts and see how they all contributed to each other.

In Italy, when I was little, 25 years ago, at school I learned at first a shorter alphabet: the letters j k x y w were missing because we didn't need them for italian words... than I learned the complete one that I use everyday but, in my mind, even if my name has a k in it, they remain as foreign letters to me 😂😂

Fun fact about 10:17 In Turkish language, the letter C still sounds as a J or a G (as pronounced in the word “general” or “just”) But the letter G sounds as it is pronounced in words like “glass” or “great”.

just found out about this channel .... what a beautiful way to learn i enjoyed this so much and looking forward to what else will be found on this channel .. thank you

In Scandinavia, ”w” is actually called ”double v”. In Swedish, it’s not considered a separate letter when it comes to dictionaries and other times when words are placed in alphabetical order. It’s considered a variant of ”v”.

That’s so fascinating, I love charts like these. It makes sense now why some of the letters are backwards, I didn’t know Romans and Greeks would interchange between which direction they would write

It would be interesting to also consider the development of all of the letter like cyrillic and various Asian systems, and their occasional influence on each other. Then there is hangeul developed by Sejong, the fourth king of the Korean Choson dynasty in 1443 . It's purpose was to improve literacy, which had been hampered for many by the complexity of Hanji (Chinese characters).

Fascinating and brilliantly described with beautiful charts because it's a complex topic I know nothing about. Subscribed!