᚛ᚈᚑᚋ ᚄᚉᚑᚈᚈ᚜ and ᚛ᚑᚌᚐᚋ᚜

Ogham is an old Irish script made by carving notches into stones. It fell out of use more than a millennium ago - but it's an interesting exception to a linguistics and computer-science rule that I'd never even realised existed. Let's talk about the Ogham Space Mark.
Thanks to all the team at the British Museum! You can visit their KZbin channel here: / britishmuseum
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[@TomScottGo]

An alternate title for this video was "The Space That Isn't A Space", but that's a bit more difficult to translate into Ogham. Thanks again to all the team at the British Museum!

[@alexmercer7083]

Tom Scott why private??

[@gummypoppa]

That's great and all but all I see is boxes, chief

[@youssefaitoumanssour9441]

ⵜⴰⵏⵎⵎⵉⵔⵜ ⵏⴽ ⴱⴰⵀⵔⴰ Tom Scott ⵅⴼ ⵓⵢⴰ ⵜⵙⴽⴰⵔⵜ

[@palashjain5036]

Cool

[@FoxDren]

then whatever browser you're using is missing some unicode charaters in the font it uses

[@Ignideus]

This video is gonna be hell to try and search for later

[@MisterAppleEsq]

Just search “tom scott ogham”.

[@CarsMeetsBikes]

That answer is too logical!

[@TheNotoriousHRT]

"and"

[@WouterWeggelaar]

and the tags! tom scott, tomscott, ᚛ᚑᚌᚐᚋ᚜, ogham, unicode, space, ogham space mark, british museum, things you might not know,

[@PlayMoGame]

Just like it so it gets added to your liked videos playlist

[@pugsareawsome5202]

Imagine being surrounded by ancient irishmen and one says "ᚁᚏᚔᚅᚌ ᚆᚔᚋ ᚈᚑ ᚈᚆᚓ ᚑᚏᚁ"

[@tito_zz9217]

“Bring him to the orb” lmao

[@spandexter1234]

As an Irish person, I can tell you that you should run as fast as you can.

[@DrKaii]

@@tito_zz9217 how did you translate that, if it wasn't a joke?

[@Heyim18bro]

huh, more legible then what irish people ramble on about these days

[@franchufranchu119]

@@tito_zz9217 WTF Titazzo, I find you in every corner of every youtube comment section, and I've also met you in a mimecraft server before

[@MrHatoi]

I love how Unicode, the most modern standard for how we represent characters, had a debate over how to represent an alphabet that hasn't even been used for thousands of years.

[@MrCh0o]

I mean, they have some historical value and it beats preserving everything as images, I guess

[@stekra3159]

You know just incase you want to right a papers ore make youtube videos about it.

[@dumnor]

Future things aside, but can you really be universal system if you can't even handle what has been before? They had to get cracking or its their reputation on the line.

[@ximono]

How else would I be able to say ᚛ᚎ ᚊᚈᚅᚋᚌᚎ᚜ᚖ?

[@iamalittler]

But they don’t have the triskelion!

[@rustyspurs771]

Subtle genius of this that most people won't realize: Once you have started carving into something, continuing is really easy, most especially in the case of straight lines. Getting started is extremely difficult by comparison. That is, unless you start carving from the edge. When all you have to write on is stones, Ogham is quite literally the pinnacle of efficient communication.

[@hengineer]

So it's the earliest cursive script

[@eekee6034]

This makes carving sound like sawing, especially with a fine-toothed hacksaw on a smooth metal tube. @@hengineer Good point!

[@MrCh0o]

Well, if you have to make something that lasts ages, then yes, I suppose the idea of using edges and lines is nice. How efficient the script itself is is probably up to debate, though :D

[@CARDSSerus]

We should do something like this now, but just meaningless symbols. Then have historians/linguists/scientists of the future be convinced that it's some ancient text and try to find meaning in it

[@ConstantChaos1]

It's so easy, I use it as my signature when tagging (I run through sewer drains to carve blessings under houses where I've had to pick up patients, I can only sleep for a few hours a day so it's a good way to fill my time

[@toucaninterieur8011]

Yes Tom, tell me about rectangle-rectangle-rectangle and rectangle-rectangle rectangle

[@entropyzero5588]

What the hell kind of device are you using that you still get these placeholders for Unicode symbols in 2018? 0o

[@toucaninterieur8011]

Well I have a Galaxy S5, so... maybe it's just trolling me

[@wolfiy]

Haha I have a custom font on my phone it displays black squares with a question mark inside

[@fish4225]

@@entropyzero5588 I get these all the time.

[@garrett2449]

@@entropyzero5588 OnePlus 5t, released Nov 2017.. must have a reduced Unicode font.

[@GaviLazan]

Are you trying to crash our phones again?

[@uhsmiggs]

Again?

[@ExEBoss]

*+Sunshine Smith* *+Tom Scott* has done a number of videos on weird phone bugs with unicode text which causes the phone to crash.

[@RudeGuyGames]

There's also that Chrome one.

[@danwic]

My phone displayed it just fine :p

[@RubyPiec]

@@danwic r/woooosh

[@clementpoon120]

i can't believe that unicode actually can handle the title. probably the most underrated human achievement.

[@xGOKOPx]

Why? There's nothing difficult here

[@seshpenguin]

@@xGOKOPx The sheer scale and intricacies of Unicode, and heck, many standards in general is definitely a achievement.

[@yackablejohnson1485]

No.

[@KairuHakubi]

I thought they were just commas and apostrophes and slashes with strikethrough on XD

[@yuhaoc]

@@xGOKOPx Unicode is incredibly difficult, especially for non-alphabetical languages like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

[@scottd9448]

I had to fit some projectors at the British Museum one night about 15 years ago. After my work was done, I was looking for security to let me out of the building. I couldn't find anyone for about 30 minutes, so sat on my toolbox staring a the Rosetta Stone for a while. Being in the museum, with no one around with the greatest translation of ancient languages was a moment in life that I doubt I could have again.

[@alejandrocivitanovae8320]

If no one was there, you could take something as a souvenir from the museum😆

[@scottd9448]

@@alejandrocivitanovae8320 not a good idea.

[@alejandrocivitanovae8320]

@@scottd9448 Why not? The British museum is the largest exhibition of stolen objects in the world, such as the Parthenon statues, so stealing from thieves is not a crime.

[@scottd9448]

@@alejandrocivitanovae8320 If they were not stolen by the British and others in the past, they would not exist today.

[@robokill387]

@@alejandrocivitanovae8320 they were not stolen, the were bought fairly from the authorities at the time, the Ottoman empire.

[@MNalias]

Oh, i see. That's why they make all those "edge" phones. To properly display Ogham.

[@recklessroges]

Best excuse for them so far. (Pointless "progress". Make it water proof and drop proof? Nope, make a curved screen that is even more fragile.)

[@FrostyFoxGamingIGM]

@@recklessroges they have the highest water resistance level.

[@conorgiles]

... New idea.

[@trelligan42]

Yeah, I bought a (Galaxy s7) Edge phone. The edge features lasted a whole day before I disabled them. Picking up the phone became MUCH easier.

[@2BTO]

@@recklessroges the phones have been water resistant for years 💀💀💀

[@alexanderf8451]

Unicode really has to be considered one of the greatest accomplishments of the modern world. The fact that I can easily switch between English and 日本語 and expect virtually everyone who encounters those characters to see them rendered correctly is astounding. People under maybe 15 have probably never encountered a webpage full of broken unreadable encodings for an unsupported text standard.

[@GegoXaren]

Unless they come across websites that uses Microsoft IIS...

[@VeganCheeseburger]

Actually the biggest accomplishment is big titty anime girls

[@GegoXaren]

@@VeganCheeseburger FLATT > THICC.

[@bbgun061]

Apostrophes are the only characters that I often see encoded wrong.

[@WilliamAndrea]

@Ben That´s ridiculous J

[@frac]

I love that the ᚛   ᚜ characters draw the corner of a box edge on. Very straight-to-the-point.

[@dkwgallery3876]

I've been carving Ogham for awhile now. It helps me learn more about Irish history.

[@mrf4ncyp4nts]

Tom I thought we were done with these unicode disasters

[@JayJonahJaymeson]

You think there is an end to weird Unicode quirks?

[@SteelSkin667]

The nature of linguistics probably means that there is an infinite supply of those to talk about.

[@EMan32x]

@SteelSkin667 and that's the best part about linguistics :D

[@rodigoduterte9192]

Thats why language study still needed, human loves to make random letter

[@zangeh]

Disasters? Not at all. These are super fun!

[@Griffiana]

I've used this alphabet for my DnD game. Screw Dwarvish lettering, they're Ogham now.

[@theramendutchman]

That is so cool! I've just crudely transcribed text to Cyrillic because they're both square-and-pointy looking characters that are used in a lot of languages (in Dwarvish, Orcish, Giant and a bunch of other in case of the Dwarven script. In literally most of the languages in our world in case of Cyrillic) Ogham seems more "fantasy"-esque to use, though

[@miniak9593]

@@theramendutchman Did it look like тхис тхинг лмао

[@theramendutchman]

@@miniak9593 "Master Dwarf, what do we attack?" Dwarf: тхис тхинг лмао

[@mcplumpkin6191]

@@miniak9593 this hurts to read

[@Validole]

@@mcplumpkin6191 Probably hurts native russian-speaker eyes even more.

[@Alchemy818.]

I’ve made many conlangs for books I’m writing and one of my favorites is written from top to bottom and is all connected through a line. The spaces have specific characters and this language is where I learned how to do that

[@aengberg1]

My favourite space character is Buzz Lightyear,

[@Seraholethysie]

Nicely done via polysemy and/or homophony.

[@fv9422]

Oh no...

[@nutsirimaunjit7427]

r/technicallythetruth

[@audr1enlive]

this is my favourite comment

[@andotus7637]

I like how it just ends with a comma

[@klop4228]

Zero-width space is also nice to stop programs from turning your emoticons into emoji

[@bbgun061]

Or write them backward (-:

[@user-ld4qt6ci7b]

Woah, thanks!

[@Liggliluff]

Or when you want to write that it is 2​:00, without KZbin making it into a time stamp.

[@HaydenX]

Also good for general use cases of specific words and or punctuation that is normally forced into automatic formatting. A good example of this is *​notbold​* versus *bold* . edit...apparently, a zero-width space doesn't disrupt formatting in YT comments...TIL.

[@klop4228]

@@HaydenX I believe YT comments are incredibly simplistic, i.e. anything between the underscores and/or asterisks is formatted. So if you just put a zero-width non-joiner in between your two asterisks, you've written an italicised zero-width non-joiner.

[@PhileasLiebmann]

This is one of the major inspirations for New Phyrexian, a conlang in the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. There's actually a whole subcommunity in the MTG fan community dedicated to decoding and translating New Phyrexian, it's really cool.

[@gardenshed6043]

I’m studying a little about ogham for a short story I intend to write. It’s intrinsic to magic when it comes to druidry. It’s nice to know how real druids would write it instead of the modernised way.

[@dagwoodland853]

The title translates to “Tom Scott and Ogam”.

[@HattieMcDanielonaMoon]

How did you figure that out?!

[@caitthenerd7470]

Using the characters shown at 1:03 and a bit of common sense

[@Norgodir]

The video includes what 'T', 'o' and 'm' look like so we can find "Tom ..ott" and "O..m" in the title with relative ease and from there the deduction is not too hard to make.

[@juliomolina28]

Thanks dude. PD: I've searched Ogham on Wikipedia and I've seen the table ;)

[@ark9122]

@@caitthenerd7470 some people can only see rectangular boxes in place of the letters

[@lukeoreilly464]

Hell yeah, Ireland. I remember learning about these in primary school and writing words/our names on one.

[@sweetasterium]

Primary history class in a nutshell

[@thatrandomguy9841]

@@sweetasterium I think we learned about them in a religion workbook, Alive-O and we wrote our names on a drawing of an ogham stone

[@meowLy_]

Oh my god yes I remember thatt 😩💕

[@notwonderful6296]

Oh dam that sent me back ahaha

[@31ll087]

@@thatrandomguy9841 You just made me go on a ten-minute nostalgia trip looking up the Alive-O soundtrack, Thank you.

[@h-Qalziel]

There was also a language in Scotland called Pictish which used a variant of Ogham. One of the main differences between Irish ogham and Pictish ogham (apart from slightly different characters) is the fact that most Pictish ogham inscriptions were written on the face of the stone instead of the corner, entirely removing the practicality that comes with using the corner.

[@BrianBorumaMacCennetig367]

The picts stole the idea off the Irish.

[@h-Qalziel]

⁠@@BrianBorumaMacCennetig367No need to be like that. The Irish invaded Scotland and settled in its lands next to the Picts. The Picts and the Scots (as the Irish were called then) were constantly in contact and war with each other. They would have been influenced by each other in their language and cultures over 100s of years and since the Scots would have used Ogham, that was the only writing system the Picts had seen so they would have learned to use ogham as well.

[@BrianBorumaMacCennetig367]

@@h-Qalziel All the history and mythology of scotland is from Ireland all our sources for scottish history and mythology rely on Irish texts.

[@TheSuperRatt]

While true... that is a hell of a lot of wasted space of a gigantic stone if you're only using the edges!

[@littledanmcnamara1840]

Good to see Ogham getting some exposure

[@michaelkarnerfors9545]

03:25 "An exception to a rule I did not even realise was there" Sometimes rules are defined (at least in part) by their exceptions. Because even if all you have is the exception, that exception could not exist if there is no rule to except from. So you can - in theory - define a rule by its exceptions alone.

[@Rithmy]

but then the rule's definition is not always closed unless you are sure that you know every exception that is possible. But yea, for practical use its possible and sometimes offers a different view!

[@lsedge7280]

@@Rithmy Which is sometimes preferable. It's a case of "would you rather new cases fall under or outside of the scope of the rule".

[@wojciechmuras553]

There's an old idiom in Polish: "Wyjątek potwierdzający regułę" - "An exception, that only solidifies the rule" :)

[@photonicpizza1466]

@@wojciechmuras553 It's in English as well, "the exception that proves the rule." In fact, it's in almost all major European languages, it spread during the middle ages.

[@SpiritmanProductions]

@@photonicpizza1466 Sorry to spoil things, but the word 'prove' in this case means 'test', not 'confirm'. It's still used in the phrase 'proving ground'. (Compare Dutch 'proef' / 'proeven', which is the verb 'to taste', and 'taste' and 'test' have the same ancestor.)

[@20quid]

I wonder if Ogham is the only language that is written in 3D as a feature, since it is typically written around a corner.

[@pamilajo]

Quipu are knotted ropes. The words or numbers - depending on what it is - is dependent on which direction the knot is turned as well as how many turns and where on the rope it is knotted. So there you go... another three dimensional language.

[@ConstantChaos1]

No it isn't i dont know the others but I can type and read the language it's odd but not exclusive it's hust the conqueres tend to force "reform" on other languages I know aincent hawaiian is read similarly to ogham that's why hawaiian treasure (made by modern artists not stolen goods) decorates my family hall

[@lukasd.4389]

Braille?

[@edgelord2965]

1:01 How to use Feynman diagrams to communicate.

[@NeonRabies]

I come back to this video often and I'm always delighted about how succintly you summarise this interesting quirk, thank you so much for making this very interesting quirk of linguistics easy to understand. The fact that you also add an interesting spin in terms of computing and how to encode language is just the cherry on the top. Sincerely, thank you very much Tom.

[@ercole1488]

Title says “Tom scott” and “Ogham”. Thank me later. Also yes, if you search “Tom scott and Ogham”, this video will come up.

[@ifacro]

Interestingly enough (I guess), Ogham in Ogham is written 'ogam' ᚑ o ᚌ g ᚐ a ᚋ m

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

And neither the h nor the g are pronounced

[@xexpaguette]

@@HappyBeezerStudios *o a m*

[@ausernameiguess7058]

thank you very much I'm too lazy to look it up

[@queenmcninja7751]

thankyou ^-^

[@NicoKupfer]

Hi Tom, I'm Catalonian, and I thought this might interest you. In Catalonia we have the double L (meravella - miracle) and the "L geminada" (lit: doubled L), which we write with a dot (l·l) as in Paral·lel. (and it's pronounced like the italian ll). The interesting thing is that the dot · IS actually a breaking space: if a word doesn't fit on the line, it can be separated, whereas a double-L can never be separated: Me-ra-ve-lla, but a double L can: Pa-ral-lel. And, in that case, you don't write the dot and use the hyphen instead... but there can never be a confusion! isn't that neat?

[@allanrichardson1468]

I remember from high school Spanish that "CH," "LL," "N~", and "RR" are considered separate letters (making a total of 29 letters in the alphabet) for sorting and looking up in a dictionary. I've never seen a dot used to separate two "L"s which are not meant to be a single "LL." I don't remember ever seeing a Spanish word with two consecutive single "L"s or single "R"s. Is that a feature of the Catalonian dialect which differs from standard Spanish? Or a special feature for spelling foreign words like the English word "parallel" in your example? I also remember learning that in "pure" official Castilian Spanish (is that like RP in the UK?), C in "ce" or "ci" and Z, but not S, are pronounced with a lisp, like English "TH" in "thing," and that LL is pronounced like the LLI in English "scallion," but that in most other Spanish speaking countries (mostly Latin America), the former is pronounced like an S, and the latter like a Y. But I never studied Catalonian, although I know that you don't really consider yourselves "Spanish" like the folks in Madrid!

[@paubosch7261]

Catalan is a language, not a dialect, Allan.

[@paubosch7261]

I was going to say the same. This dot is indeed a space that separates two syllable of the same word.

[@allanrichardson1468]

Pau Bosch Sorry, I realize that the difference between two different languages a two dialects is the degree of mutual intelligibility between them. I thought that Catalan speakers and “standard” Spanish speakers could, with some difficulty, understand each other. Of course, some people cynically suggest the difference between a dialect and a language is whether it has borders and an army. And I know the people of Catalonia have been trying for centuries to get those. In the meantime, it seems that (unless Christopher Columbus was, as some claim, a Catalonian rebel posing as Genoese to avoid capture) there were no groups of colonists identifying as Catalonian settling in the New World, and thus no Catalan speaking American nations, just Spanish and Portuguese.

[@KaitlynFedrick]

@@allanrichardson1468 Catalan and Castillian are quiet different, even if some mutual intelligibility remains, Spanish is closer to portugese than catalan, and nobody calls portuguese a dialect of spanish

[@MrMegaManFan]

When I feel the weight of age bearing down on me, watching a Tom Scott video like this helps me feel young again. I mean it. Learning something I didn't know revives me. If there was an afterlife I'd want it to be filled with all the things I don't know and all the time to study them.

[@dustinjohnson9968]

Not gonna lie, I thought Tom was doing a video on the Phyrexian language but now I’ve learned about Ogham and am all the happier for it!

[@SomeBritishGal1]

That "ŀl" ligature shown at 2:57 is used in Catalan to distinguish a long /lː/ from a palatal /ʎ/, which is spelt "ll" like in Spanish.

[@liamtaylor3576]

I don't think Chromecast supports the text in the title. It's rectangles with crosses in them

[@AshnSilvercorp]

must've thought it was a cult summoning phrase

[@BertGrink]

Strangely enough, Internet Explorer DOES support this strange script.

[@Victor-kv4jt]

Can someone list all software that supports these characters as neither my android phone nor tablet can recognise them

[@Mostlyharmless1985]

Victor iOS is flawless in the KZbin app

[@Vengir]

@@Victor-kv4jt I don't think Android can handle it. Try a Windows PC (and I read that apparently iOS supports it too)

[@dar4061]

Love how the Irish stone is in display in a British museum.

[@matthowells6382]

Well, the stone was found in England....but so what if a museum has artifacts from other cultures? That is kind of the point of a museum, you can learn about the history and artifacts of many different cultures and peoples in one place. Plus the civilisations most artifacts come from are not around anymore, it's like Stonehenge has very little to do with modern British people despite being in England. So we can either give the millions of people who visit the Britsh Museum a chance to learn about these stones, or we could just leave it where it was for no one to see I guess😂

[@AndorianBlues]

Irish speakers travelled around these isles a lot and left their stones behind. There's a few in England and a lot in Wales.

[@ElysiumCreator]

That stone is from the UK and carved out with Old Irish, the ancient precursor to all Goedelic Celtic Languages, Irish, Scottish and Manx

[@joshshire]

I have recently discovered your channel and I love it! I've been trying to stop myself from ploughing through all of your videos too quickly, so I don't run out. Thank you!

[@p11111]

And of course unicode/utf8 supports it...

[@ZardoDhieldor]

Since emojis, nothing surprises me anymore...

[@1024x2]

*unicode

[@1024x2]

*unicode

[@p11111]

Yea but all the cool kids use the utf8 variant of unicode ;)

[@daanwilmer]

Unicode is the one that supports it. UTF8 is just a way of writing down unicode, which doesn't need to know about which symbol you're encoding.

[@EarlSquirrelsonn]

I used to have a necklace with my name carved in Ogham. Growing up in Ireland...

[@niamc2301]

I have one too! My favourite piece of jewellery!

[@ConstantChaos1]

You get that sort of thing in ohio alot too, it wasn't that uncommon at my university to hear people talking about going to Ireland to dance or her people asking for "slán agus piobar" in the dining hall

[@augustlorcan7986]

@@ConstantChaos1 goodbye and pepper?

[@sccjono]

salann agus piobar.

[@Michael_Lederman]

Of all the videos you've made that I wished was longer, this one gets the crown.

[@castillelarkin]

Great work Tom! As a linguist of Irish heritage and a tech enthusiast, this was particularly fun to watch. Love your videos.

[@TravenTalks]

btw, title translates to "Tom Scott and Ogham" Well, technically the second part is "Ogam", but I think that's just an alternate spelling.

[@HollyOak]

Ogam is old Irish, Ogham is modern Irish.

[@adammacgreagoir4924]

In Irish h isn't technically a letter, it's just a symbol that changes the pronunciation of the letter before it, and at this point people didn't write the h at all, they only represented lenition much later.

[@AlRoderick]

In a lot of your more language-oriented videos, I notice how the more localized and ancient languages have features that don't translate to technology like printing very well, they only work for people speaking in person or writing in a particular context, but then I have to remind myself that English and other living languages tend to have these features historically as well, we've just allowed the form of the language to adapt to the technology of things like printing, especially since we've taught formal language out of printed books for a few centuries.

[@JayLeePoe]

_i want to state for the record that the video thumbnail almost looks like you're standing next to a giant layered chocolate cake. I'm not wrong about this_

[@gurururuwarararara8164]

Truth

[@Pimkly]

That’s exactly what I thought!!

[@politereminder6284]

Probably why I clicked. I have no idea what this video is about even after watching though. 😳

[@jakegomez2111]

It was really cool to hear Tom talk about Phyrexian. Yawgmoth would be proud 🙏

[@TheBranchan]

Funny, I actually had this book when I was younger called "The Monsterology Handbook", which included basic Ogham lessons and in it's fictitious lore said it was the language of monsters.

[@alienplatypus7712]

I looked at this stone and wondered about it last weekend when I visited the British Museum. I didn’t guess it’s script was so important to a subject I love so much.

[@re-unbox896]

Wish there were more quality youtubers like you. Didnt even spend 5 mins of the video convincing me to like and/or subscribe.

[@obviousness8113]

I'm an amateur etymologist so I find this truly intriguing. My favorite aspects of language are the exceptions to the rules. They'll teach you a lot!

[@SpiritmanProductions]

Like English adjectives are genderless except blond / blonde, for instance.

[@s6th795]

More language! Thank you so much, Tom!

[@NahrAlma]

Language for evermore!

[@p11111]

Oh crap in js /\s/.test(' ') == true. Tom is right!! :P

[@alextrickier4613]

vptes1 +

[@lordelliott42]

Are you trying to test the validity of a unicode character with programming based in unicode? o_O Is that supposed to be the joke?

[@109Rage]

He's just testing whether or not Javascript implements unicode properly. Or that Tom Scott does.

[@p11111]

I'm testing to see if the character ' ' is considered to be whitespace. It is.

[@isaiahbathurst3844]

What's a whitespace

[@matthewhogans6507]

In carpentry we actually still use this kind of linear / cuneformaic writing to show complex measurements (high end trim profiles, multiple measurements, etc.) It usually involves a scrap of material, but for whoever is cutting, it works much more efficiently than describing every action needed.

[@Havocking117]

I've been looking for this video for almost 2 years

[@lawrencecalablaster568]

Tom, ogham is one of my favourite things. Thank you for making this video.

[@ConstantChaos1]

I was scrolling down my feed and I literally had to ask a friend to make sure I wasn't hallucinating

[@JackhammerJesus]

"A space does not have to be a space!" This is especially interesting when you compare it to buddhist concepts of "space" and "emptiness". A space, the way we use it, IS something- it is a break, it creates order in the letters. In Zen buddhism Mu describes the empty space, which is itself NOT part of the text, but the foundation (the empty paper) on which text can happen. So it makes a huge difference if you have a text that is silent or if you just don't have any text. It was so important that people even used to write "This space was left empty on purpose" in books. tldr; I want the interpunct back.

[@jacobharvey2946]

My spouse and I got married in Ireland (we’re from the US) and we got custom engravings on our wedding bands with Ogham. The line goes all the way around.

[@janellwilliams2394]

Well, I guess the Oggs HAVE been in this part of Lancre for a long time...

[@odyseya]

Finally

[@MisterAppleEsq]

2:14 Where are the options for I Don't Know and Can You Repeat the Question?

[@mizutoryu242]

You're not the boss of me now and you're not so big. But thumps up for the comment.

[@Tryaxor]

It's in the middle

[@DarkIzo]

Life is unfair...

[@bonenintomatensaus]

How to like a comment twice

[@LuckyBird551]

In Nigeria, there is the Benin and Edo people that developed a chromatographic system of writing. That is a writing based on different color combination's and graphs. In other words, the color used to paint a letter gives that letter a different meaning for every different color used. They havea color based writing system, the only one in the world that I know of.

[@Scampi95]

The joy when you discover a new Tom Scott video that you had missed

[@AntonioKowatsch]

I feel like a mega-nerd because I already knew everything about Ogham. I learned about it when I was in 8th grade. Ever since I read The Hobbit I became obsessed with ancient languages and writing systems. I am also affiliated with one of the oldest Irish clans. So far I mastered cuneiform, all the runic alphabets (even fictional ones like Tolkien's dwarf runes), Ogham, and Ge'ez.

[@ConstantChaos1]

I speak Irish and Welsh and can read Ogham and the elder futhark so same (I am also half decent with the various arcane and angelic scripts like enochian and passing the river)

[@AntonioKowatsch]

Wow, that's really impressive.

[@ConstantChaos1]

@@AntonioKowatsch eh, not really, the language Center of my brain is a bit wierd so actually speaking any one language us hard for me, I ki da get them mixed up (even my English and Russian or whatever) I pushed myself too hard and dammages it (I was prideful and tried for like16 at one point and Vietnamese really messed me up)

[@GeekIWG]

What I find funny is that they felt the need to add this ancient alphabet to unicode, but then again unicode also includes Egyptian hieroglyphs. 𓉔𓇌𓀁

[@mehdimarashi1736]

It was not about the "need". There was enough room for every script ever used by human beings in Unicode, and they even had some extra room for things like emojis. There's still room for a million more characters, so, if you ever found or invented a new alphabet, propose adding it to the Unicode. If you wonder what can you fit in one million characters, it's about the size of a 400-page book!

[@TELEK1NET1C]

i think most ancient languages are in there for historical text purposes, because even if they're not used today, there still needs to be characters to type so they're able to be documented

[@stgigamovement]

Unicode has a special space character in it that is now used for a completely different purpose. Unicode has a Zero-Width Non-Breaking Space, which these days is used as the Byte Order Mark, which signifies to decoders which byte order was used. However, the character if it appears after the beginning of a string is still supposed to be treated as a Zero-Width Non-Breaking Space, so it's not a control character, rather, it's whitespace. Its purpose as a Byte Order Mark only came later. The reason why this character was used is because if you invert its byte order, it becomes the noncharacter U+FFFE. It helps that the Word Joiner in Unicode serves essentially the same purpose. But yes, it's possible for a space to be invisible and not break lines.

[@iamalittler]

I always had the feeling that the evolution Fuþark just followed how hard it was to create curved shapes. Ogham is just bringing that to a new level.

[@syprague1889]

Comment les vidéos de Tom Scott peuvent-elles être toujours aussi fascinantes ?

[@GreyJolly]

But was that something that I might not have known? Hey Vsauce, Tom here, but what is something?

[@IamTheShermanator]

"Hey it's me, Destin."

[@admiraladama5877]

GreyJolly some....thing. Sum(thing). The sum of a random set of things is called a..........

[@recklessroges]

Welcome back to Tom Scott and a treat espécial.

[@cae289]

@@recklessroges Nice, I love Jesters. :)

[@PokeNebula]

An abstract noun might be a noun that is abstract. But what does it really mean to stract your abs?

[@firewordsparkler]

Tom scott: British Museum Me, as a reflex: give it back

[@h3cch347]

Came for the ᚛ᚈᚑᚋ ᚄᚉᚑᚈᚈ᚜, stayed for the ᚛ᚑᚌᚐᚋ᚜.

[@DracarmenWinterspring]

Sounds like how underlined text in formatted text includes lines under the spaces between words in the section it underlines. Except encoded into the unformatted form of text.

[@raid.leader]

Boxes and less boxes

[@TheGrundigg]

Fewer boxes*

[@LinuxIsNotAnOperatingSystem]

Poor stupid/ancient OSes.... :( Working fine on Chrome OS and Android 8.1

[@katiek.6333]

Tom it is 2023, I am randomly hopping through your videos, I am working on a master thesis (not about Oghams but tangentally related) that has resulted in me spending months reading victorian antiquarian articles about Oghams, a thing I only learned existed last year. This video was just reccomended to me. I am losing my mind,

[@TheKOzality]

Now I know what script I'm adding to my D&D campaign for my players to translate. Thanks Tom!

[@autumnisbetterthanspring]

This language remind me of that alien language from movie *Arrival* Except space, that language have absence of time.

[@RaymondHng]

Just connect the two ends of the Ogham script together to form a circle.

[@shrimpbisque]

It's not necessarily that the heptapod language doesn't have time. Rather, the heptapods (and thus their language) acknowledge the non-linearity of time. Their writing is circular because they see time as folding back on and interacting with itself.

[@autumnisbetterthanspring]

@@shrimpbisque oh...got it, thanks for explaining it better mate

[@autumnisbetterthanspring]

@@RaymondHng hahaha

[@diamondflaw]

Haven't watched Arrival yet somehow... but TIL that the aliens from it would get along well with the Tralfamadorians.

[@johncanning8154]

"the Irish contingent had some 'very' strong opinions" .. when your culture and heritage has been attrited for as long as ours, your eye-brow raise gives me more hope than disappointment.

[@cerberaodollam]

Not to mention, y'all are some passionate people, and I mean this in the best possible sense of the word.

[@davidfiler7439]

Just to provide a little balance (pointless no doubt), in their time the Irish have pillaged and kidnapped their way around the British Isles for centuries. Why? because they were slaver's, a perfect example being St Patrick (possibly from Wales) who they kidnapped as a child. Check out this wiki should you wish to know more - From the 9th to the 12th century Viking/Norse-Gael Dublin in particular was a major slave trading center. Another interesting factoid, many Scots are the descendants of Irish settlers, both nations regularly crossing over to each others patch.

[@cerberaodollam]

@@davidfiler7439 you think that justifies Trevelyan's actions?

[@animula6908]

Yes, but we can all probably concur we don’t want to hear the English try to go into this very deeply. They’re not the ones to accurately describe it surely.

[@davidfiler7439]

@@animula6908 Dunno, I'm Welsh.

[@eoghan.5003]

It was really cool to hear you talk about this. Not only do I speak Irish but my name is quite like Ogham

[@BobMcCoy]

*Captcha has joined the chat*

[@pabloschrute]

We had to learn Ogham in History in Secondary School (North West of Ireland)

[@FrozenRoxas]

Unrelated but this guy is absolutely GORGEOUS and his voice as well

[@AFN2750]

“The Irish contingent had some very strong opinions” ...of course they did

[@kerosine2896]

Yayyy Irish Pride!! Seen this video a few times and I just realised I've seen these markers in Irish class at school lmao. They do make us learn some of these in our secondary school when we're young.

[@yoshi0k262]

Sound like a plastic paddy dude

[@prezentoappr1171]

@@yoshi0k262 paddy rice one? what...

[@nothanks5630]

@@yoshi0k262 Definitely a plastic paddy, I don't think Kerosine ever stepped foot in Ireland. And saying everyone learns Ogham in secondary school isn't true, also saying when we're young in Secondary School is odd, you'd think Primary School would fall under that, I don't think Kerosine knows how school works here.

[@yoshi0k262]

​@@nothanks5630 fr ogham in ireland is super non common to the point of ogham stones not even being areas of interest the only mention of them in secondary was a couple paragraphs in a junior cert history book its a shame because its cool af

[@jamieswingdem9812]

Tom Scott, the only youtuber who doesn’t rely on any form of clip bait for big views.

[@JetFalcon710]

There's also Daily Dose of Internet

[@Koutouhara]

I wish there was a longer video about the language itself. I find it fascinating :)

[@fdwr]

That little space caused me some interesting considerations when I was trying to implement a justification feature in a text rendering API.

[@ronture8279]

The stone's text: *exists* Me: "Fanoni Maqvirini"

[@mksabourinable]

Hey for once I actually knew about this thing before an educational video on it!! But that's because I'm [Irish] Druid, so ogham staves are a thing.... You end up needing to be able to read it to use em. I'm not very good with them yet..... (Druidry as in the pagan religion.... Lots of pagan religions that got wiped out by Christianity are kinda making a comeback. You can think it's dumb if you want but it's just what I believe. I personally think that if your religion isn't hurting anyone and gives you spiritual fulfilment then hey, it's valid. I don't care if you worship a flying spaghetti monster, just so long as you respect my religion too.)

[@ConstantChaos1]

Same dude, it's kinda funny hanging out with wiccans and just watching them figgure stuff out

[@jamestheotherone742]

just use/force the strike thru tag to carry thru spaces

[@SkyQuakee]

Tom scott needs an award for having the best youtube video titles

[@tomstaunton1804]

I remember they taught us to read these in primary school over here in Ireland. Don't remember any of it though

[@warbler1984]

Really...I use this everyday.

[@datboi7535]

***looks at title*** Me: is this loss?

[@yoymate6316]

ᚆᚂᚋᚇᚗ

[@38mb.]

@@yoymate6316 NO

[@thecianinator]

@@yoymate6316 oh my god

[@aman-hl9re]

We need this series

[@TheKameronk]

I am shocked and frankly quite proud that I knew your title was in old Irish before clicking on it.

[@lochness96]

Ireland is an incredible place with a great history and Mythology!

[@thatrandomguy9841]

History yes but mythology in which i presume you mean Celtic culture and history is also to do with the Scottish and the Welsh

[@aodhanmorris3410]

@@thatrandomguy9841 Only because the Scottish are Irish descentants, the word "Scot" is Roman for Irish Gael

[@BrianBorumaMacCennetig367]

@@thatrandomguy9841 Most Irish history and mythology has nothing to do with wales and scotland either. You're clearly jealous.

[@Asdayasman]

We should make up new languages specifically to annoy the unicode consortium.

[@flyingkage]

I thought the script in the title looked familiar. Thanks for teaching me more about it.

[@ivanwilliams6158]

I've been working on a conlang for a long time and this is the closest script I've ever seen in the real world to the weird writing system I made for my conlang, really cool to see! For anyone curious I have a line through the middle, but it isn't straight, it angles up or down, becoming vowels. Meanwhile the consonants aren't separated from the vowels at all, all writing is equally spaced 1 vowel, 1 consonant. So the language is simply a curvy or angled line with dots and dashes through or on it. An 8 character word, without becoming logographic almost looks as short in writing as two english letters sometimes.

[@MasterGeekMX]

Other boys flirting: "Babe, Did I mention that I have a motorcycle?" Me flirting: "Babe, do you know that an ancient runic language makes the exception on computer character encoding?"

[@aman-hl9re]

You should win

[@RokeJulianLockhart.s4eb2q]

@@aman-hl9re I'd fall instantly

[@christianschultz9715]

well you will win

[@flangopink]

bruh hey dude

[@seamusoblainn4603]

There are no runic languages

[@tbtb66]

Wish I could read the title...

[@dparag14]

Go-to school. You might

[@KurtRichterCISSP]

How much do you want to wager that someone at the average school can read Ogham?

[@ErikN99]

Computers and ogham!

[@NoNameAtAll2]

I wish I could read boxes with crosses inside

[@dparag14]

@@ragnkja too bad they won't give your money back

[@Stanley-Wallice]

Sir, thank you for educating and educating me through our many hours spent together on the "synopsis of the entire internet" KZbin, Sir. *Salute

[@mrkultra1655]

Thanks, that is quite fascinating

[@MikeV8652]

This Ogham writing to me looks much like the now-primitive barcodes that the United States Postal Service applies to letters and requires to be pre-applied by the sender to most bulk mail and junk mail. I see less and less of it all the time, because so much of my mail just never arrives...

[@GoatTheGoat]

What about underlined Roman text? I believe that works identically. A continuous underline is drawn through "empty" space characters and when the text wraps to a new line, the underline is terminated and continued with the text on the following line.

[@rebmcr]

That's formatting, not a character.

[@GoatTheGoat]

How does it being formatting and not a character change the algorithm for displaying (or not displaying) the line on the screen?

[@pluto8404]

-space or not to space-

[@Cruxador]

@@GoatTheGoat It displays the characters with the formatting applied to them. It's not important from an end user perspective, it only matters for reasons of the details that get it there. Like the difference between red plastic and white plastic painted red.

[@piteoswaldo]

Cruxador, the whole point of the video is something that doesn't matter to the end user. Why would someone bother if the Unicode calls the line they're writing a space or not?