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Evolution of the alphabet
(i.redd.it)
The Romans really turned around that archaic Latin.
Personally I always thought it was easier to have the line on the left side and then the different stuff on the right side. Probably from being right handed.
Eg: B D E H K L M N P R
Those all have a line on the left and the right side differs
Not sure if true but I did hear somewhere that a big part of the Roman changes were to make carving letters into stone tablets and buildings easier.
It certainly explains using more straight lines in eg M and N. But maybe the flip also makes it easier to carve if you're chiseling right handed? I'm imagining how I'd chisel a K.
I can only think that writing on parchment was more common.
Fun fact, in the Arabic alphabet it starts out Alif and Ba just like alpha and beta here, and then veers way away from this chart into its own awesomely weird territory (thought German was “guttural”? try this nonvowel nonconsonant so far back in the throat you need consent and a physician’s referral) but JUST when you think you’ve lost your way, RIGHT the alphabet nears its end, you stop and stare because right there are four letters, in this same exact order, so familiar it might be a song you learned as a child: the letters K L M N.
The Phoencians took this invention to other places too, and this cluster of familiarity crystallised in the Arabic alphabet in the same order. Almost like a gene we could point to that says we had a common ancestor centuries ago, we were once so close that we learned the same thing from the same people.
“Almost like a gene we could point to that says we had a common ancestor centuries ago, we were once so close that we learned the same thing from the same people.“
Cultural genes are called memes. It’s kind of unfortunate that we usually only think of memes as jokes.
Kind of ironic that you're complaining about the evolution of language on a post about the evolution of language.
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Idk. Definitions change. Like, literally
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This chart does show different stages of alphabet in the lineage of the Modern Latin Alphabet. But these changes happened due to parallel interactions with other languages and alphabets not shown, so it is a little obscuring to call it an 'evolution'. Probably being overly pedantic but that's kind of the realm of linguistics.
Pretty cool nonetheless.
I was a little disappointed they didn't show letters that were removed from the modern Latin alphabet but existed in the 2000 years since Rome, like thorn.
So Z became I, and I became Z? Weird.
I don’t know about you being a Z, but I always fancied the idea U and I.
…meh I dunno, there’s got to be some clever wordplay in there somewhere. Anyone more intelligent want to chip in?
...is this loss?
Such tender words.
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How did 'I' evolve into 'Z' while 'Z' evolved into 'I'? Seems like a good ol' switcheroo.
I wonder what caused the alphabet to essentially get mirror flipped from archaic Latin to Roman.
If by "ancient Latin alphabet" you mean the alphabet as depicted in charts like this you're talking about the Archaic alphabet, not the alphabet the Romans used for Classical Latin. The Romans after the Archaic Period used the same alphabet as we do (with minor additions depending on our precise European language), at least in inscriptions--Roman cursive is very different in form. The charts you're looking at are very misleading, in that Latin was written in the Archaic Period either right to left or boustrephedon, alternating direction with each line. But these are only the very earliest Latin inscriptions. By the time Latin really starts to be used regularly as a written language it is being written left to right, with the letters oriented to suit.
Yeah I wasn’t really sure how knowledgeable Matt Baker from usefulcharts is in ancient languages. Until I see actual sources I’m treating this chart as nothing more than guess work.
Skepticism is always a safe bet lol.
At one point during the flip every letter were written sideways which gave us the infamous archaic roman phrase "IIII IIII IIII"
One dyslexic roman emperor is my guess. I have no evidence to base this on.
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⨂︎ and ⌽︎ not getting the love they deserve.
The step from Proto-Sinaitic to Phoenician is like the 2015-2020 era when companies simplified their logos to an extreme degree.
I have absolutely zero expertise in the field, but every time you see something like that in history, I always wonder if it was primarily spurred on by a change in writing medium. E.g. paper vs tablet.
It would have been cool if it included the modern Greek and Cyrillic alphabets as well
Never change, T
Pour one out for my bois:
- PlayStation accept + cancel combo
- electric pole
- the actual M
- tree
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All this talk of archaic to Roman and no talk of how serifs are being done dirty.
Serif bias aside, awesome.
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Is "L" drunk or something?
I wonder what the next stage is going to look like, if changed at all in the future?
❤️💀😭🔥🫶✅✨😊😂🫡🙂🥰🙏👍😍👀🫠🫂🤓🎉🗿
Love, death, tears. Eternal damnation is caused by human emotion. The correct path is in the stars. Humanity laughs gayly as they salute their fellow man and idolize him. Prayer is the answer, we watch lovingly as god watches us. We film the bumbling nerd as he falls to the ground, we celebrate the ancient athlete.
😊💩🤡
Fuck.. Hahahaha
I think it's a miracle that people 2000 years ago were using the same alphabet as us. I guess it just goes to show how important the longevity of recorded information is.
The most insane thing to me is that — as far as anyone can tell — a phonetic alphabet was developed only once in all oh human history.
Hangul is the phonetic alphabet used in Korea.
Yes, but it’s quite recent, only a few hundred years old - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_Hangul
Not exactly. There are some phonetic bits of Asian writing so it’s happened at least twice.
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Also known as the "reading rainbow"
So "A" evolved from cattle. Must of been from the Angus breed.
Very cool.
I'm not sure what a channel dedicated to this would even be called, but I would be so down for that.
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this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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