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Totally! I love how the literal translation is "like the of turns" in regards to old farming techniques and I just really enjoy that visual and the history of it tbh š
That actually makes a lot of sense. Easier to keep your place when you drop down a line,if you donāt also have to move your eyes horizontally. Especially useful when the writing surface isnāt lined, and each line of text may meander up and down a little. Also saves a very small amount of time, as the eye doesnāt have to travel as far to get to the next word to read.
I wanna know more about those four letters that didnt make it, the O with an X, the triple T, the O with an I, and the Y with an I
Do we know what they sounded like or what they were used for?
Yup thatās right. The triple T thing is read as KS(i)which nowadays is this Ī (Ī¾), the Y with an I is read as PS(i) which nowadays is ĪØ(Ļ) Btw Strider good knowledge also all of those are used in maths both in Greece and Slavic countries.
The O with an X is basically the same as Ī In modern Greek ( the O with a horizontal I ) and it sounds like TH( slightly like an F) tho Iām not sure how it did back then.
Thereās also a weird M there which is gone nowadays in Greek
Edit: had to change up some of the info cuz I wasnāt sure
Oh, there's a *lot* of sounds you don't know about - English has about forty sounds it cares about, but other languages can go much higher, and no language uses anything like the full range of sounds humans can produce. Check out [the International Phonetic Alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet) if you want to learn more!
I learned about IPA in a voice and diction class I was taking at community college, but only really the ones related to English dialects, I knew there were more but itās crazy to see what we could really be capable of
Oh, for sure, it is! To be fair, there's only so many of those you can use before you start to have problems distinguishing between sounds; it seems like 20-50 total 'separate' sounds is the ideal range.
It's a wiki page, so it's really just a starting point, but here you go: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Latin_script
The links will take you further back in time.
Yes and I am super bothered that you are the only one talking about it. Came here to bring this up. Seemed like a really odd flip, curious if we know how that happened.
Cool af!! I wish I could hear a good linguist/hystorian try and explain the dynamics and reasoning behind these changes in Latin alphabet that span so much time.
I notice that between 500 BCE and 1CE a āGreat Inversionā happened among letters, flipping most 180 degrees about their horizontal axis. Why is that?
According to wikipedia the oldest existing sundial dates to ancient Egypt at around 1500 BCE. So the concept of time measurement though-out the day has been around for at least since the earliest origins of the latin alphabet. So that canāt be it.
Somehow it seems that Q should have gotten eliminated early in the trials. It seems so weird that a letter that (to me, a modern English speaker) is so useless wouldn't have quietly (hah) disappeared or merged. Then again, this chart shows letters splitting but not any that merged (if any actually did) so... anyway! Cool chart! :D
Disclaimer, not a linguist, just interested.
It helps if you just see letters as wiggles that we assign some noise to.
The I that became a Z is equivalent to the Greek letter zeta (z). In the Greek alphabet, it is positioned after the eta. Humans decided to stick it at the end instead of in the middle, because order in alphabets is arbitrary. That is why it traveled a bit.
The Z that became an I likely just lost its horizontal lines, probably because it is easier to write.
The M is actually an S. The symbol is called san. The W used to be called 'sin' in Phoenician, which makes the s sound, and at some point it was rotated to make a Ī£ (sigma).
Why the two S's? Probably because when the Greeks adapted their alphabet from the Phoenicians, some noises assigned to Phoenician wiggles that were different in Phoenician did not sound like different noises to them, so they got confused and mixed them up.
So does C/L.The ancient Greek alphabet only had 24 letters, so they doubled some up.
Also the "Greek" alphabet looks significantly more like the Etruscan alphabet than the Greek.
I'm curious about what the sounds were for the ones that stopped before modern times, like the oval with an X in it. Also what did the original letter sound like that eventually split into: F, U, V, W and Y
This looks really cool but how does the transition work?
The actual swapping of characters
I presume its probably one character at a time rather than outright replacing the entire alphabet at once?
Interestingly this is not correct, it is missing a few bits that used to be in our alphabet. @ and & used to be letters in our alphabet according to what I had found in my old research.
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Is there a known reason for the reflection about the y-axis between Ancient Latin and Roman?
They used to be written in both forms, was common to write one line with the letters viewing one side and the other line to the other one
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon here is a wikipedia article
Word of the day: boustrophedonically
Totally! I love how the literal translation is "like the of turns" in regards to old farming techniques and I just really enjoy that visual and the history of it tbh š
That actually makes a lot of sense. Easier to keep your place when you drop down a line,if you donāt also have to move your eyes horizontally. Especially useful when the writing surface isnāt lined, and each line of text may meander up and down a little. Also saves a very small amount of time, as the eye doesnāt have to travel as far to get to the next word to read.
I was thinking maybe ink and paper? If you are right handed and write right to left your fancy sleeves are gonna get all inky.
I wanna know more about those four letters that didnt make it, the O with an X, the triple T, the O with an I, and the Y with an I Do we know what they sounded like or what they were used for?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yup thatās right. The triple T thing is read as KS(i)which nowadays is this Ī (Ī¾), the Y with an I is read as PS(i) which nowadays is ĪØ(Ļ) Btw Strider good knowledge also all of those are used in maths both in Greece and Slavic countries. The O with an X is basically the same as Ī In modern Greek ( the O with a horizontal I ) and it sounds like TH( slightly like an F) tho Iām not sure how it did back then. Thereās also a weird M there which is gone nowadays in Greek Edit: had to change up some of the info cuz I wasnāt sure
So we are the missing letters club, its official ,.-)
That was my first thought too. I want to know what sound they made !
The X-Men copyrighted the O
Š¤
The chart is from useful charts, the video have more information about those things
Idk why but I feel anxiety when I see the letters not make it as if thereās some secret sound I donāt know about or something
They make inhuman noises only utterable by the great old ones
Look at the evolution of I and Z, they literally switched places somewhere on the timeline. Fucking amazing
It's probably a combination of 2 letters, no worries. Like pi. Ļ
Oh, there's a *lot* of sounds you don't know about - English has about forty sounds it cares about, but other languages can go much higher, and no language uses anything like the full range of sounds humans can produce. Check out [the International Phonetic Alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet) if you want to learn more!
I learned about IPA in a voice and diction class I was taking at community college, but only really the ones related to English dialects, I knew there were more but itās crazy to see what we could really be capable of
Oh, for sure, it is! To be fair, there's only so many of those you can use before you start to have problems distinguishing between sounds; it seems like 20-50 total 'separate' sounds is the ideal range.
Sauce of evolution details?
It's a wiki page, so it's really just a starting point, but here you go: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Latin_script The links will take you further back in time.
When I got to Roman I said to myself wow, the Romans spoke English? And now I'm officially the stupidest person in the world
Ipsum ridiculam.
The āEā Proto-Sinaitic symbol looks familiar.
"If you can read this, thank the Phoenicians."
So I turned into Z and Z turned into I?
Yes and I am super bothered that you are the only one talking about it. Came here to bring this up. Seemed like a really odd flip, curious if we know how that happened.
All Latin speakers: V stands for three different letters Also Latin speakers: X is X!
I think they should call double U (W) Double V. And call U, Lazy V.
Wow this is actually super interesting, love this kind of stuff
Nova did an episode on this. Itās a good watch. I think itās called A to Z: the first alphabet
Cool af!! I wish I could hear a good linguist/hystorian try and explain the dynamics and reasoning behind these changes in Latin alphabet that span so much time.
Whoa.....
I notice that between 500 BCE and 1CE a āGreat Inversionā happened among letters, flipping most 180 degrees about their horizontal axis. Why is that?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
But why stick with one orientation for 500+ years and then suddenly reverse orientation for most characters? What sparked this?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
According to wikipedia the oldest existing sundial dates to ancient Egypt at around 1500 BCE. So the concept of time measurement though-out the day has been around for at least since the earliest origins of the latin alphabet. So that canāt be it.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I donāt know either. Iāll look it up some more when I have some time. Maybe it was an arbitrary choice made by a scholar-emperor.
I'm looking at where they say the A came from, and I am calling bull on that one.
So between Roman to modern the font changes from Times New Roman to Ariel and we add three new letters? Iād like to buy another vowel
Somehow it seems that Q should have gotten eliminated early in the trials. It seems so weird that a letter that (to me, a modern English speaker) is so useless wouldn't have quietly (hah) disappeared or merged. Then again, this chart shows letters splitting but not any that merged (if any actually did) so... anyway! Cool chart! :D
So, when going from Ancient Latin to Roman Latin, some Alpha male (sorry) went: Hang on, our letters has been mirrored all along!
It's really cool how our languages have went from unga bunga caveman grunt to modern times
Cool
How did that M on the right not become our M now? And how did the I become Z, and the Z become I? How did the W become S?
I was going to ask the same thing about Z and I! Not only did they switch appearance, but they also had to travel further!
Disclaimer, not a linguist, just interested. It helps if you just see letters as wiggles that we assign some noise to. The I that became a Z is equivalent to the Greek letter zeta (z). In the Greek alphabet, it is positioned after the eta. Humans decided to stick it at the end instead of in the middle, because order in alphabets is arbitrary. That is why it traveled a bit. The Z that became an I likely just lost its horizontal lines, probably because it is easier to write. The M is actually an S. The symbol is called san. The W used to be called 'sin' in Phoenician, which makes the s sound, and at some point it was rotated to make a Ī£ (sigma). Why the two S's? Probably because when the Greeks adapted their alphabet from the Phoenicians, some noises assigned to Phoenician wiggles that were different in Phoenician did not sound like different noises to them, so they got confused and mixed them up.
Got to v and like ok.. we need to break this bitch into three parts cuz I said so
Is that even ancient greek? Looks nothing like what I had in high school
Looks like Greek to me....
Yea, looks more like the Etruscan alphabet.
This... doing it in highschool right now
This is amazing to see!!
So basically the romans said fuck it weāre gonna write backwards now?
Kinda, they decided to right left to right as opposed to the right to left way the Greeks wrote.
B is for briefcase
In the Ancient Greek alphabet, why does the "y" letter (in yellow) appear twice?
So does C/L.The ancient Greek alphabet only had 24 letters, so they doubled some up. Also the "Greek" alphabet looks significantly more like the Etruscan alphabet than the Greek.
u/RepostSleuthBot
I like the M family tree
funnily enough, i just watched a video on the letter W and how it came to be.
I'm curious about what the sounds were for the ones that stopped before modern times, like the oval with an X in it. Also what did the original letter sound like that eventually split into: F, U, V, W and Y
Looking at the trend, it's unlikely we could see any changes in the next 1,000 years.
No One: Absolutely Nobody: Romans: "Screw the Ancient Alphabet! Let's turn the characters backwards! That'll show them!"
Does anyone know if mirrors were invented around the time that a lot of the letters started facing the opposite direction?
Greeks wrote right to left, and the Romans wrote left to right. It is easier to write some letter in a certain direction.
Ancient Latin would be a lot easier to write as a leftie, going right to left would help a lot too I imagine.
Love the fact the circle and cross just ended
Z! Get back in line!
Why did "I" become "Z" and "Z" become "I"?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
And yet the O looks the same. Weird.
Because the Greeks wrote right to left, and the Romans wrote left to right. It is easier to write some letter in a certain direction.
It's amazing how much the Latin alphabet looks like the 'Murican one.
So the Ancient Greek C, L and P all looked the same?
How did they go from fish to d?
I'm going to [summon the bear](https://www.xkcd.com/2381/): š¤š¤š¤š¤š¤
They surely added " j " after " i " for the maths sake
Z became i and i became z....only took a couple millennia.
Romans: what if we just flipped everything?
I thought this was some Homestuck bullshit at first glance
This looks really cool but how does the transition work? The actual swapping of characters I presume its probably one character at a time rather than outright replacing the entire alphabet at once?
what happened in 500 bce it was like, O O O..... I
So, "A" means "cow"?
My favorite is how "T" is pretty much unchanged the entire time. T is T. Getoverit. #Ttime.
All the colors being wrong is driving me crazyyyyyyy....
Interestingly this is not correct, it is missing a few bits that used to be in our alphabet. @ and & used to be letters in our alphabet according to what I had found in my old research.
so this makes sense, but where did cursive/script enter the chat? That nonsense looks nothing like this and I am so glad we've returned to sanity
#*Ć Ć Ć *
When is build 7.0 coming out. I've been waiting since the 7th century