THE ALPHABET EXPLAINED: The origin of every letter

Every letter of our alphabet has a story to tell. Join me for an A to Z of A to Z.
I'll explain...
𐦃 The Egyptian hieroglyphics that became our letters
🏛 Why W is called "double U"
🇫🇷 Why do the French call Y a "Greek I"?
💤 Is it ZEE or ZED??
✏️ How I and J were the same for the Romans
🤔 Why we can easily confuse U and V
Let's get cracking!
===LINKS===
A is for Ox by Lyn Davies: / 5040123
(Thanks to those who suggested I read it)
Weird plurals in English: • Weird plurals in Engli...
Lost letters of the alphabet: • LOST LETTERS OF THE AL...
Check me out on Twitter & TikTok:
/ robwordsyt
/ robwords
==CHAPTERS==
0:00 Introduction
0:43 The birth of the alphabet
1:25 Hieroglyphics: A & B
4:13 C, E, K, M, N, O & R
6:04 L, S, D & Q - Early Semitic
9:23 F, U, V & Y - Ypsilon
10:35 W - double U
11:34 I & J - Latin double
13:08 G, H, P, T & X
14:29 Z - zed or zee?

[@kreuzundqueer2158]

The hieroglyph for time is actually a determinative and can also be used in the Old/Middle Egyptian word 'zp' (for example 2 zp means twice, literally two times). It is not a button though, the image provided here is a bit weird, it is supposed to be a moon. Even though the alphabet was inspired by the Egyptian hieroglyphs, their sounds/interpretations are not of the same value as in Middle Egyptian. For example the Canaanites assigned the value/sound 'M' to the wavy water sign, in original Middle Egyptian it was an 'N'. The hand sign for the 'K' was originally in standard Middle Egyptian a dj-sound like in 'jungle'. On the topic of Canaanite-Egyptian work relations and the origin of the alphabet, I recommend the work of Ludwig D. Morenz. And looking up the Hathor-Ba'alat sphinx which looks pretty cool.

[@RobWords]

Wonderful, thank you

[@travisdyer7230]

0x

[@hippojuice23]

Dyslexic, I thought you wrote "a man's poet!" 😅

[@MyChihuahua]

It depicts the 7 day week cycle inside the metonic cycle of 19 years. As close to the True Scriptural calendar as the calculations of man can get.

[@sup9894]

The image for time it's meant to be a moon? Or more specifically the phases of the moon? I thought that it should be the phases of the moon or the sun turning around the earth (or both) right away!!

[@thesalinator3557]

I'm no linguist, so correct me if I'm wrong, but The reason so many of these characters seem to flip horizontally, is, I believe, because some of those ancient languages could be written both left-to-right, and right-to-left. So instead of starting over on a new line when you get to the end of one like we do now, they would continue on the next line going the other way. And when this was done, they also wrote the characters backwards (probably so you could tell which way to read them). And the backward version of those characters just stuck.

[@RobWords]

You are absolutely correct

[@bigscarysteve]

Yes. In ancient Greek, this phenomenon was called "boustrophedon," meaning "as the ox plows."

[@pauljsm]

This comment is one reason why comment sections are so useful. Thanks! I had no idea.

[@garrettsmith6014]

Really cool

[@anglopicker4718]

That's fascinating, thanks. but why do they all seem to flip vertically over their transition journey?

[@jafkp4411]

Rob's tasteful alliterations around each example are done just right, man's a poet

[@swedneck]

Rob's artful alliterations around all archetypes are assembled adroitly

[@K1lostream]

@@swedneck I intended identical, if inferior, illustration.

[@duckduckgoismuchbetter]

Here's some world class alliteration for you. 😂 "Bells" Monty Python comedy skit kzbin.info/www/bejne/jKbHYaZ6bL1noKM

[@masterimbecile]

Apparently good enough to get him a job as a host in the German news channel DW.

[@pauljsm]

He's fantastic!

[@Eric_In_SF]

It’s pretty clear the Romans were very artistic. All the changes they made to the letters were to create uniformity in shape and format, so they all occupy the same space, they all have similar vertical lines, horizontal lines, and angles and curves, and most importantly, the minimum amount of strokes. Would love to see a video about that. This one was pretty enlightening Thank you.

[@sapinta]

It make sense for an alphabet used on monuments and carved in stones. The Romans also had cursive writing, which is much more messy.

[@PotatoeSnow]

That's interesting cause English would be extremely easy to write in stone or wood. I can't remember if rob or another video, but they did vid about how the things they wrote on shaped various writing systems. Like in Thai or somewhere it's more swoopy and prob cause rigid turns would cut the leaf stuff they traditionally write on. Something to that exact extent.

[@JohannesWOW]

you're thinking of the creation of fonts.

[@PlanetIscandar]

Just to inform you: The so-called "Latin" Alphabet was brought to Italy by the Greeks. More specifically from Kymi, a city in the so-called "Euboea" Island (correct: Evia).

[@droprelease4820]

In addition to your artful alliteration, I really want to commend you/your editor for the brilliant letter transformation animations - it really helped conceptualise how a seemingly abstract hieroglyphic pictograph transformed into a letter

[@Matty002]

yeah that was really cool to watch

[@KingoftheWelsh]

Spitting facts that was very helpful indeed

[@simpleau2]

I'm French and it just clicked that Y is called 'greek i'! We spelled it igrec in school but they never taught us its 'i - grec'. The evolution of language is so fascinating, love the videos!

[@Eurystheas]

To us Greeks it’s ύψιλον Υ what you call igrec

[@sued3512]

Tres bien.

[@_.stargazer._]

same in Polish, Y is callled igrek

[@k.whatever9046]

im not french but the realization hit me too! 9 yr old me used to wonder why it was called that

[@danielF_3]

It's quite the same in Spanish, we call it "i griega", and I also just realized that we call it literally "greek i"

[@waverod9275]

One of the important things behind the C/G split (and the C/K doublet) is the path from Greek to Latin via Etruscan. Etruscan didn't have voiced stops, so both Greek kappa and Greek gamma represented the same sound. Kappa evolved to K, while Gamma evolved to C. Latin did have voiced stops, so they made the G to make the distinction again.

[@WaterShowsProd]

I don't know about Ancient Greek, but in modern Greek Gamma is unstopped at the back of the throat, different from Kappa; a bit "breathier", if you will.

[@peabody1976]

@@WaterShowsProd Ancient Greek has a three-way distinction in stops: voiced, voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated. The gamma was a voiced velar stop, where kappa was a voiceless unaspirated stop, and chi was a voiceless aspirate stop. It's with time that the system became a two-way fricative system with the third item becoming a voiceless stop (where gamma and chi are pairs, and kappa is now the isolate). It happened to beta/phi//pi and delta/theta//tau as well. (Modern Greek now also has reborrowed /b/ and /d/ in initial position and kept it pre-nasalised in native words).

[@WaterShowsProd]

@@peabody1976 Thank you. Interestingly I found that The Karen Language-an ethnic group which lives along the Thailand-Myanmar border-or at least The Pwo Karen, not sure about Sgaw, has a voiced velar sound, like Gamma. I noticed it listening to some people speaking in Karen.

[@oceanwavex]

Rob you are misleading people on this subject matter and the A is nothing what you say it is........an "A" upside-down bull....BS more like.

[@RLee-we1fc]

​@@oceanwavexwhat do you mean?

[@miriambucholtz9315]

Back around 1960 or so, I learned the Phoenician alphabet from the encyclopedia in order to write in a diary I had that wouldn't lock. I also taught the alphabet to some of my friends at school for note writing that couldn't be deciphered by teachers. Some of my friends ended up getting detentions for it, but they said they were well worth it. Years later, I went to Israel and learned Hebrew. By then, it was easy.

[@tygical]

i read this wrong and thought you were saying some really goofy shit but yeah that's definitely some mischief

[@VectorJW9260]

why would you need a lock on your diary

[@gusloader123]

@@VectorJW9260 Rather obvious: So that other people (usually gossipy females in the house / dormitory) do not read the writer's thoughts / secrets / ideas / dreams.

[@HabitualParadox]

I did the same in high school, but with the runic/futhark alphabet with my best friend. :')

[@christofferraby4712]

The Phoenician, Canaanite and ancient Hebrew alphabets were pretty much identical. The descendants of the ancient Israelites('Samaritans' in English)from the northern kingdom of Israel who never left the land but became a tiny minority after the Byzantine Empire killed off many of them and they became a minority by the time the Arab Islamic conquest but till this day the Samaritans still use the ancient Hebrew alphabet for their own religious and cultural studies and literature. They are the last living population to use the oldest alphabet in the world.

[@Brascofarian]

Thank you. I'm an English teacher in Japan and I think this video will be interesting to some of my high school students. Kanji is obviously still ideo/pictogramatic and may as well be bloody hieroglyphs, but hiragana and katakana have come from similar transformations that our alphabet underwent. I'm not saying it will help them learn the language, it won't, but at their level, it's just some interesting facts.

[@pokolba9]

True! I'm here in China at a uni and also did the same. The students found it extremely interesting, plus you know Chinese language also uses Pinyin, which is the latin letter transcription of Hanzi 汉字. It's really intriguing to see all these connections nearly everywhere.

[@josephmclaughlin9865]

Yes, definitely present this to your students. They will (most of them) find it interesting and useful.

[@pixnay]

I disagree about kanji- as you know the kana are derived from cursive kanji. The kanji themselves have these stories often. Thanks for the video. Super informative and I never knew past aleph

[@RadenYohanesGunawan]

I just realised that hiragana came from cursive kanji lol.

[@brassmule]

Nothing hits the spot quite like a new RobWords video first thing on Saturday morning. It's been exciting and rewarding to see this channel continue to grow. Keep up the great work, sir!

[@owamuhmza]

What did the leopard say after watching the latest Robwords video? “That hit the spot”😂😂 I’ll show myself out….😂

[@oceanwavex]

Rob you are misleading people on this subject matter and the A is nothing what you say it is........an "A" upside-down bull....BS more like.

[@freeman7788]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/gHbIlHl3f7uFfLc

[@eliasblum753]

I love the fact that my child (who is six and still in the process of learning to read) and I can watch your videos together - and we both learn something new.

[@RobWords]

Perfect!

[@andersgrassman6583]

I started off by introducing only capital letters to my daughter, and in the form of those magnetic plastic one's, that she played with on the refridgerator, while I was cooking meals. Then, I went on not only introducing minor letters, but also at the same time introducing the idea that how exactly you write a letter (sound), is a matter of convention, and what you personally like. (I prefer an old style "a" rather than the modern "o"-like with a straight stroke added.) I did this by adding other sets of magnetic letters, that looked different. Also since she also of course also rather quickly needed several copies of letters for spelling. This clarifyed I think a lot about spelling and and other concepts to come. Or perhaps rather started thinking processes around conventions and successful communication. Which made it easier to later add confusing letters not really used in Swedish, like "W", "Z" and "Q", and just for fun, the German "double 'S", as it is supposed to be used in our family's sirname. (Incidentally, the name should also end with two "n's", but that doesn't make sense in Swedish, so my father's generation dropped it, but it's still on the headstone on the family grave.) I want to stress the whole process was driven by my daughter's curiosity, and carried out as just fun, playing around. In her case, this meant she could read and write by the time she was four, but different children want to learn things in different ways and orders, and in my view, there is little point in stressing the process.

[@Just-Juli]

A content writer who is currently learning Old English here.. Just want to say that I would like to give a round of applause for your script writer! The presentation of the content is just fascinating!

[@Ploni.Almoni]

I just stumbled upon your channel and am delighted. As a language illiterate myself, I have found your videos enlightening and entertaining. I have an entire new appreciation for language. Bravo!

[@tyleraricci]

I am a linguist and glad someone made a simple video to explain several years of my undergrad studies.

[@martinkuliza]

well.. that's not something you hear everyday

[@GlenCarne]

Perhaps you could have a go at my question, Tyler?

[@deivisony]

​@@GlenCarne I am no linguist nor Tyler but what is your question Glen?

[@ranro7371]

Arabic not Hebrew/caanathing. Hebrew is too mumbled. (lost b for p, v and no h just kh, no s just sh) as opposed to Arabic which retained all the original consonants, infact julius caesar's Arabic pronunciation is identical to the one presented.

[@divineintervention212]

@Tyler Ricci, I remember once my professor mentioned that letters were originally designed to mimic different genital postions. He said that's why certain letters in certain dialects are considered masculine or feminine, such as in Spanish. As a linguist have you ever heard of this or was he just blowing smoke up our azzes.

[@MyMy-tv7fd]

the flipping of letters left-to-right and vice versa comes from the fact that even in ancient Greek (and other languages like Egyptian hieroglyphics), it was quite acceptable to write and read left to right or right to left and this was determined case-by-case per sentence by the direction that the assymetric symbols were facing. Hieroglyphs could also read top-down, but not down-to-top.

[@bigscarysteve]

In ancient Greek, one line in a text would be written from left to right, and the next line written from right to left, and so on repeating the pattern. This was called boustrophedon, which means "as the ox plows." The letters in one line would face in one direction, and the letters in the next line would be mirror images of those in the first line.

[@rebeccarebeccaa2515]

@@bigscarysteve I thought I had heard that happened. Wasn't sure if I remembered that correctly. Seems confusing from today's perspective. How did they write going the other direction??? I think my head hurts just from thinking about it

[@bigscarysteve]

@@rebeccarebeccaa2515 How did they write going the other direction? When they got to the end of a line, they just moved down to the next line--without going back to the other side of the paper--and wrote in the other direction. My brother had trouble with this when he was learning to write in the first grade. Of course, if you write in boustrophedon fashion, then everybody has the problem that only left-handed people have today--namely, that you smear the ink of what you've just written as you continue to write further.

[@indigobunting5041]

@@bigscarysteve I'm a lefty that hated the ink smear. It mostly ended up on the side of my hand. Usually happened in grade school when I was made to use erasable ink pens back in the late 80s. Thankfully most pens don't cause this problem.

[@bigscarysteve]

@@indigobunting5041 I'm about twenty years older than you, I'd guess. Erasable ink wasn't a thing when I was in school. Luckily for me, I'm right-handed so I didn't suffer the ink smear problems, but I saw the lefties suffer as you did. My father was a high school shop teacher in the 1950's. His classroom was set up with work benches that could only be used in a right-handed fashion. My father had a student who was left-handed, and who rightly complained that he couldn't use his work bench. My father didn't know what to do, so he told the kid to try to learn to work right-handed because "it's a right-handed world." The kid went to the principal and complained about what my father had said. The principal came back to my father and yelled at him. "You can't tell him it's a right-handed world!" For the rest of his life, my father always noticed every southpaw he came across. He'd always say to them, "I see you're left-handed. You know, it's a right-handed world." I love the fact that you said "ink pen." I grew up literally just a couple blocks north of the line between a dialect that distinguishes "pen" from "pin" and a dialect that doesn't. The kids in my school were in two different camps: those who said "ink pen" and those who just said "pen."

[@velprox1]

Thank you so much for all of your videos. Our 5 year old loves your channel! He has always been fascinated with the alphabet and reading and making words in general. Needless to say our driveway is covered in much of your teaching!

[@gregorholzl1347]

as a german native speaker who learns greek and bulgarian at the same time, i have to thank you. your vid cleared the big confusion in my head! thank you!

[@ewmlloyd]

One thing I found most surprising about our alphabet was that when you look at the sequence O P Q R, the first two letters (O and P) are followed by pretty much the same two letters with "tails" (Q and R). What surprised me even more was that I didn't notice this until relatively recently!

[@laneyking2044]

You're so right, I never realized that! That's a kind of thing I notice when learning another alphabet but never even saw in my own language

[@majorkramer]

It seems a lot of these letters were just made up through the communities cultural environment & a little imagination. Others seems like it evolve over time & their dialect. Thus the consideration expression, "English As The As The Bastard Language"

[@RubelliteFae]

OQ PR JIL CG FE VY... DB?

[@ewmlloyd]

@@RubelliteFae HA HA!

[@maccaswam]

​@@RubelliteFae NM dbpq ijy (K IC) 🤨

[@VictoriaKimball]

Regarding Zee/Zed. I'm an American, but I'd argue for Zed! Here's why... I used to work in graphic design and database publishing. Sometimes the programmer would have to walk me through some procedure using DOS commands whenever he updated the process. He spoke English, but had an accent. (He was from an island in Finland where they only speak Swedish.) When he said Control-Z, it sounded just like Control-C. Those commands did VERY different things!

[@YarennSagorXiyat]

Just say Zulu

[@VictoriaKimball]

@@YarennSagorXiyat ... OH MY!

[@greebo7857]

@@YarennSagorXiyat Precisely why the phonetic alphabet was invented, but we can't all agree on that one either, and it has changed considerably over the years.

[@YarennSagorXiyat]

@@greebo7857 You mean IPA ?

[@HermanVonPetri]

There is of course no right or wrong way for a culture to pronounce their letters, but I have to defend the use of "zee" in American English. "Zee" follows the custom for several letters who's names mimic the sound that they make and ending with an "ee" sound: bee, cee, dee, eee, gee, pee, tee, vee. "Zed" on the other hand, isn't consistent with any other letter name in the English speaking alphabet. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with calling it zed. Just as double-u is unique, zed doesn't _have_ to fit any pattern. And if we are concerned about being misunderstood in speech then we are going to have to change a lot more than just the "Z."

[@bisratezra8247]

Having watched this I can now see why some of the letters of the semitic language Amharic (= main Ethiopian language) look like they do. Very informative episode!

[@nephiilim]

i love so much that this chanel exists. everytime i feel like media is killing my brain cells i come here to recover

[@lostincyberspaceIII]

What I find really interesting is that a lot of the changes over the years came from the tools that they were used in their writing. It would be neat to see a follow up that talks about this interesting point that if poorly shared with the world.

[@westzed23]

Yes. Roman alphabet used straight lines like "V" for U. The Romans carved letters into stone so straight lines were needed. It would be very interesting to have a video which covers this topic.

[@LRM12o8]

@@westzed23 That's why I thought (and was taught in school, I think) the U looked like a V in Roman writing. However, they could have easily made a flat-based U with three straight lines (basically a rectangle with the top line missing) to distinguish it from V if such a distinction made sense to them like it does to us. So, the explanation that the Romans saw U and V as the same makes a lot more sense to me.

[@allanrichardson3135]

@@westzed23 Yet there are plenty of Cs, Ds, Gs, Os, Ps, Qs, Rs, and especially Ss, carved in stone with perfect curves. And on modern stone buildings (like American banks and courthouses), Js and Us also. The modern examples of U-to-V carving (such as BANK AND TRVST, or BANK & TRVST) are imitations of Roman carvings.

[@westzed23]

Yes there were curved letters but I think it was just quicker in ancient Rome to carve straight lines when they could. Their alphabet wasn't like the Norse runes which had no curves.

[@RealConstructor]

The letter H is is in Dutch used for Hek, meaning fence. It’s almost the same as the Phoenician sound for fence. Fascinating. In Dutch we also have the letter IJ, or the Dutch ypsilon. Written as two letters, but used as one letter, the 25th together with the Y. The Y is used in originally foreign words and the IJ in originally Dutch words. When we learn to write in elementary school, we write the lower caption as one letter by connecting the bottom of the i with an arc to the j (a sort of u glued to the j with two dots above the i and j). It isn’t written as such anymore, because it isn’t on keyboards, it’s now the two letters i and j.

[@bigscarysteve]

When my father was a soldier in the Second World War, he was stationed in Antwerp. He was amazed that all the typewriters there had a key for "IJ' in addition to the keys for "I" and "J" individually.

[@swedneck]

In swedish we have "häck" for hedge, which is also pronounced the same as "Hek"! Also, it sounds like the written ij just ends up being ü? which either is a very opportune coincidence or an interesting bit of etymology.

[@oldplucker1]

Old English Hecg. Meaning any Fence or hedge.

[@mathmusicandlooks]

@@swedneck it looks much more like a lower case y with the two dots above.

[@lohphat]

"ij" is present in Unicode as a single ligature. IJ uppercase (When an initial capital, both are capitalized, e.g. IJsselmeer) ij lowercase The "IJ digraph" wiki page has fascinating info about the usage and history in Dutch, Flemish, and Afrikaans.

[@pierrevillemaire-brooks4247]

Thanks for this great report ! As a French Canadian I totally understand and enjoy these subtleties , especially given how we have butchered traditional French with our abbreviations and odd pronunciation.

[@Paline18]

As an Hebrew speaker it's cool to see how sound of word remained in the letter, for example the letter R that come from head is making sense to me because the Hebrew word for head is "ROSH" which starts with the letter R .Also the letter M that came from water, and water in Hebrew is "MAYIM" yet again starts with the letter M. BTW the letters ALEF and BET are also the first 2 letters in Hebrew.

[@floodingthesea9366]

And in Hebrew Ba-eet is a house while bet is the letter. In the bible, the word Aleph and Alaphim many times mean ox and oxes. O which comes from Ain is the Hebrew word for Eye and also happens to be an hieroglyph of an Eye.

[@Malik_Sylvus]

The hebrew didn't invent anything, they just took the existing Phoenician alphabet. ALEPH doesn't mean OX even though the symbol is a ox HEAD, it means all Pet animals, the ox was the king of pet animals because it was the most helpful for its agricultural work. And 3Ayn means originally SOURCE symbolized by an Eye in the egyptian hieroglyphs, 3Ayn is a source of water and a source of light (EYE).

[@-Belshazzar-]

​@@Malik_Sylvus aleph doesn't mean ox, but aluph dose. Aluph in hebrew is a champion but in ancient hebrew it means the head of an ox, ancient hebrew is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, as Phoenician is. Phoenician is a Greek name, at the time the language was not called Phoenician, and both languages ancient hebrew and proto-hebrew (Phoenician) was rather similar

[@Malik_Sylvus]

@@-Belshazzar- old hebrew is a creolic language made of different semetic egyptian and greek idioms, just like nowadays hebrew is a creolic language made of Arabic dialects and several others languages, so if you want to be accurate don't try to find the real meanning of a semetic word by referring to Hebrew. By the way tons of semetic words used in hebrew language are given false meannings.

[@-Belshazzar-]

​@@Malik_Sylvus no, ancient hebrew was spoken before the Greek ever got to the area. ancient hebrew letters, (because we are talking about letters, the spoken language was different obviously) were mostly derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs and proto-hebrew (Phoenician) Greek came to the area later. The Greek took the Ancient Hebrew letters and maybe some Phoenician not the other way around. Ancient hebrew was chisled on stone and since most people are right handed it was chisled from right to left. The greek used paper and ink, and so when they took the hebrew alphabet they wrote it from left to write because otherwise the hand would smear the ink, you can see many Greek letters are actually ancient hebrew letters only flipped. Arabic is a semit language that was developed from hebrew and Aramaic, modern day hebrew uses hebrew and Arabic but the Arabic itself originated from hebrew. I as a hebrew speaker can read Aramaic and understand some (my grandfather was fluent in Aramaic) Arabic people can't read a word in aramic

[@Mostlyharmless1985]

What I love about how we talk about letters has so much to do with printing. For example upper and lower case letters were literally stored in the upper and lower cases of the font, which was the storage for a specific typeface, which could be the slanty italian or italic style! And we mind the leading of the text with tabs of lead. It’s just cool to me how much of it is carried over despite not having a lick of anything to do with physically pressing lead letters to paper.

[@gmr1241]

A cliche came from the same typeset. This kind of printing was still in use in the 1970s as far as I know.

[@robinrehlinghaus1944]

Didn't "italics" develop from the latin-script-based late medieval Italian humanist writing as opposed to the Germanic fracture blackletter?

[@Mostlyharmless1985]

@@robinrehlinghaus1944 yep the German fonts started as carved wood then copper.

[@ravinmarokef]

5:38 In Hebrew, the letter that makes the "R" sound is called "Reish", which derives from the word "Rosh" meaning head. My correct prediction was therefore not unexpected. And at 6:42, that letter looks like the Hebrew "Shin", which makes the "S/Sh" sound. Besides A and B, the English letters D, I/J, and M, correspond to the Hebrew letters "Dalet", "Yud", and "Mem", which come from the words Delet (door), Yad (hand), and Mayim (water). It's really amazing to see traces of older languages especially ones that I can speak or have knowledge about in the English language / Latin alphabet!

[@UncleUncleRj]

I wholeheartedly believe the Hebrews of old gave us our modern writing systems and took cues from the Egyptians hieroglyphics because they had just escaped slavery from them just as the Bible says.

[@matan4il]

@@UncleUncleRj you are not mistaken. Hebrew is a Canaanite language, so everything discussed in this video derived from the ancient Hebrew/Phoenician alphabet.

[@matan4il]

@ravinmarokef That's because Hebrew is the language of the letters that can be referred to as Phoenician or ancient Hebrew (or ancient Aramaic, etc). Literally, every letter's make you heard as Phoenician is the Hebrew name of the letter. The thing about D possibly coming from door or fish? Definitely door, as Dalet is literally coming from delet, Hebrew for door.

[@joshstarkey8883]

I'm learning a bit of Arabic and I spotted some similarities as well. My initial impression is Semitic languages stuck more closely to older versions of the characters whereas the European languages needed to adapt them more.

[@ur-nammu]

​@@matan4ilit's way more complicated than that. Hebrew is a Canaanite dialect related to but distinct from Phoenician. Other Canaanite dialects in early inscriptions used a clear fish with fins for the D sound. Aramaic is somewhat mutually intelligible but an entirely different language spoken by a different culture, the Aramaeans and Chaldeans (founders of the Neo-Babylonian empire after migrating from Syria to southern Mesopotamia). Hebrew did not give us writing, Egyptian did via Phoenician and other early Canaanite dialects of polytheistic peoples in Sinai and the Levant.

[@sayari2027]

What a great teacher. Thankyou for this .

[@helloSanders]

I loved the candor, editing, and absolutely the content. Thanks for sharing your work~ Made my day better.

[@malkah8832]

As someone who speaks Hebrew, it was really interesting to watch this video, because the words that these ancient letters where representing that led to their modern sounds are still used today. B was a house, a "bayit", D from a door or fish, "delet" or "dag." The source of WYUVF comes from a picture of an arm, or "yad." M was a picture of water, or "mayim." It's really amazing to be able to understand the logic behind where all these letters came from.

[@skibidipop]

If i am not wrong, ancient egyptian "water" or "sea" had a very close spelling as "mayim"

[@DorBooga]

I'm also speaking hebrow so I can tell this is what I sense too

[@janAlekantuwa]

And what's extra cool is that the Latin and Hebrew scripts have a common ancestor in the Phoenician script (which, IIRC, was also used to write Paleo-Hebrew). While the Phoenician script did evolve into the Greek script (which itself gave rise to the Latin, Runic, Irish, Gothic, Coptic, and Cyrillic scripts), it also evolved in a completely different direction within the Levant, giving rise to the Aramaic script, which itself is the common ancestor of the modern Hebrew, Arabic, Mongolian, and Syrian scripts, as well as a bunch of Indian scripts

[@korana6308]

@@skibidipop Also in Russian and Slavic languages in general "morye" , means a large body of water which in modern Russian refers to a sea (and I think in Spanish and Portugese too), And I suppose that in English you have the word "marine" which probably had the same origin.

[@empatikokumalar8202]

A: Sınır demektir B: Güvenlik demektir C: Ekleme - eklenme E: Uygun olan D: Ölçü demektir. ....... M: fayda demektir Arapça, Türkçe, öyle sanıyorum ki ibranice de buna dahildir, ingilizce hepsinin kökeninde bu yazdığım evrensel dil temel mantığı vardır. Daha ayrıntı isteyen varsa yazsın verelim.

[@Gregjameson6911]

Alef is still used for the letter A in Arabic, and the w that turned to S in Roman is actually still very similar in the Arabic س for ‘S’ and Cyrillic ш for ‘Sh’

[@the_mariocrafter]

The Arabic letter Shein is the “sh” sound to and the Seen letter is just S

[@mmaa5109]

Ur right, S still has 3 upward-going lines in Arabic, Arabic alphabet came from nabatean, nabatean came from aramaic, and aramaic came from phoenician/canaanite

[@PashaSchneiderman]

Cyryllic ш probably came directly from Hebrew ש

[@moshe4696]

And Hebrew sh and s ש

[@thealmightyaku-4153]

Cyrillic is basically just derived from the Greek alphabet.

[@totthor423]

Your videos are AMAZING! Love it! Always been in words ethymology and I thought I knew a bit , but you really teach me a lot! Thank you!

[@DhruvRajSharma]

Brilliantly presented. Rob Watts! Thank you!

[@luizalmeida5398]

Just to add, P and Rho were written quite the same, as the sound /p/ in Greek was given by the letter Π pi, so Romans decided that the sound for trilled or alveolar tap /r/ should be a P with another leg: R. Another story: labiodental /f/ was a quite uncommon sound, Greek had bilabial letter phi, and i can't recall any Etruscan word with this phoneme until the emerging of the Roman Republic. Firstly, for /f/ Etruscans spelled with an H, since their letter F sounded like /w/ from Phoenician waw / Greek upsilon. So, The ancient city of felsna was pronounced uelsina, but written felsna/velsina. Neo Etruscan alphabet brought a letter shaped like an 8 for this F sound spoken by their neighbors. While U was already doing its job in Latin, no need to differ F with a digraph FH, and then this is how F emerged in latin from Y.

[@xenonx.4172]

The Etruscan alphabet came from the Cumean alphabet, which was a western variant of Greek alphabet before it standardized using the Ionic (eastern) variant, and many letters looks more similar to the current Latin alphabet ones rather than standard Greek ones. The letter rho actually had another leg in that variant like the latin R if you look closely at older inscriptions.

[@meravmario]

The words for the early alphabet, ox house, hook, water snake, etc, are still the same in Hebrew, the words star, still today with the corresponding letters - water is maiym, head is rosh etc

[@HippieVeganJewslim]

Oy vey, I was about to say that. Bayit is house ב. Gamal is camel ג. Rob also mentioned that D might’ve been fish, or dag ד. Coincidence? My Israeli father mentioned that kaf כ looks like a hand. Ayin is eye ע. Qof is monkey, ape ק. תודה רבה!

[@adrianblake8876]

Except for the word he said was the source for the letter Het... Where did he get that it meant "fence"!?

[@OldLordSpeedy]

Yeah, where do you write it, in Thai they use exact this things (but hedge is hen) as visual symbols to learn the first letter for the alphabet. Thai have 44 consonants and around 10 vocals (many used for loan words). Interesting details.

[@HippieVeganJewslim]

@@adrianblake8876 they got it from the Netherlandish word hek, or fence. Just kidding, dunno whether that is a coincidence or not.

[@fransvanderwerf7485]

brilliantly put Rob. Thank you for this concise presentation!

[@amcguigan2389]

You are absolutely brilliant. Then you add the excellent graphics, your amazing and entertaining delivery, the unique and fascinating subject,the well-done editing, and your channel is certainly unmatched. Thank you!! Also, your accent is very appealing❤

[@rmckinnon]

We had a print shop in the school I went to, and the trays that held the uppercase letters were in alphabetical order, except J and U which were at the end. This was a holdover from when J and U weren't yet in the alphabet. That the sorting survived to this day always fascinated me! (The lowercase letters were not sorted alphabetically, probably more in line with their frequency of use).

[@davideddy2672]

As a former printer ❤

[@k-drex4826]

I'm a history buff and I never realized the long and storied history behind 26 simple shapes that have helped create and shape the world around me. FASCINATING DOCUMENTARY! THANKS FOR MAKING IT!

[@mrbobpineapple4068]

For R, the Hebrew equivalent ‘rosh’ (ר) spelled out in Hebrew means head. The language is pictographic which is pretty neat

[@traver1965]

Thanks for a great video. People like you connect us to the past. Explains the past for us. It is one thing to find a 3000 year old statue but people like you can translate inscriptions on it giving life to people way back in time.

[@Skiddla]

some Chinese similarities 7:03 door 門 11:53 hand手 14:15 lush/plentiful 丰 three三 Could be coincidence, but with all the recent discoveries around humanity's history being lost around cataclysmic events, i would bet there was a pictographic language that spread to those ancient peoples

[@GL-iv4rw]

13:34 sun 日

[@thealmightyaku-4153]

I certainly don't buy into Graham Hancock's or any of his fellow travelers' 'Catastrophism' nonsense, but there is a TED talk by a lady who talked about Ice Age symbols showing remarkable similarities over very large distances, basically across Eurasia and North Africa, at least, possibly hinting at long-distance trade and also a possible common starting point for all Old World writing systems.

[@Belarithian]

Having the same/similar symbol for "hand" or numbers is no wonderful. Every human has hands, and count small numbers almost the same way (usually with fingers, in a decimal system). This can be applied to more abstract ideas to a lesser degree (e.g. lush/plentiful can be paired with a tree full of fruit) No need for complex theories of lost (even alien) civilizations and whatnot, apply Occam's razor.

[@michaelcross9557]

@@thealmightyaku-4153 It could also point to the near-extinction of the homo species, when the ice age pushed humanity to the brink and left only a few 10s of thousands of our ancestors, though I guess that supports the common starting point theory. You know what's really remarkable? Cat's Cradle string play exists almost everywhere humans have settled. What is it about Cat's Cradle that makes it so ubiquitous across almost all cultures?

[@Abeturk]

In the language of the 𐱅𐰇𐰼𐰰 people 𐰕𐰰 > Öküz = Ox 𐰀𐰞𐰯-𐰼 > Alp Er= ox-headed man (warrior) Alper Tunga > Afrasiab > Frāsiyāv 𐰌 > Eb > ev = Home 𐱃 > At = Horse 𐱅 > Et = Meat 𐰼 >Er = Male /soldier 𐰠 >El = Hand 𐰴 >Keyik = Deer 𐰖 >Ay = Moon

[@micmic3979]

Extremely insightful, helps you to have a better understanding of Language's. Thank you

[@ELFKidsVideos]

Outstanding content and delivery. I really enjoyed this. Thank you for taking the time to make such fantastic content.

[@RobWords]

Thank you! And thank you so much for watching.

[@williamj.bagnall4564]

As a graphic designer, I love type, letters, symbols, and their origins. This was fun to watch and now I need to go and buy a book. Thanks for this. Loved it.

[@freeman7788]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/gHbIlHl3f7uFfLc

[@wynnaura1115]

I LOVE your enthusiasm and joy you have for language! It is SO wholesome to watch your videos seeing your excitement! Thank you so much! And I didn't even know, that Part of my Internet Name was once a letter ❤🤩

[@monp.4903]

Just found your channel. Can't wait to watch your videos! I love all this "where it comes from" stuff!

[@alex94941]

Fascinating! When I studied linguistics I learned stone carvers would work from right to left so they could better judge the spacing of the letters since the left hand held the chisel and covered the text. Scribes using ink would work left to right using the right hand so the ink would not smear. That may explain some of the verticle transposition in letters. Very few poeple could read at this time and since so many "letters" were just symbols of everyday objects (gate, ox goad, ox, house, etc) which had no left right orientation anyway.

[@manuelbrs8467]

In Latin, the K went before A: kalendas, kardo, Kartago, etc. most of these got replaced with C later on. Q was used before U only when the U was followed by a vowel: aqua, equester, loqui, quorum, antiquus, etc.

[@ThatBernie]

In older inscriptions (i.e. during the Republican period) the letter Q was used before all instances of U/V, e.g. the word for ‘money’ was commonly written as PEQVNIA, but by the Imperial period the rule you mention came into effect and so this began to be spelled PECVNIA

[@LRM12o8]

In the version of Latin I learned at school there was no K, the Latin alphabet had only 24 characters, I was taught (obviously the language evolved and changed throughout its lifetime). I'm not sure which one the other unused letter was, I think W. The Q-before-U rule is the reason I don't understand why we have Q at all. It's completely redundant in all languages I learned that have it, German, Latin and English. EDIT: coming to think of it, Z is also redundant in German, it could be perfectly replaced by TS in every instance...

[@ThatBernie]

@@LRM12o8 That was the same standard I was exposed to in High School and College, and it’s a standardization that developed in 1800’s Britain, not ancient Rome. Unfortunately the way that Latin is commonly taught often leaves students woefully unprepared to read ancient inscriptions, although part of the issue is due to the fact that ancient inscriptions tend to make heavy use of abbreviations, which requires the reader to have a very thorough knowledge of Latin in order to fill in those gaps.

[@maxmclaughlin7762]

I was gonna say the same thing. I remember kalebdas for calendar and it being ka ce/ci and qu/qo but it all evolved into c or qu plus a vowel

[@danwilson1040]

The queer quiet queen quickly queried and quartered the quota of quinces and quarrelled with the quartermaster about the questionable quality and quantity of kumquats and quail from Quebec.And quipped if I had a quid for every Q I’d be quids in then quit.

[@dontworryitsdi]

wow! fascinating! i love the excitement the information was delivered with, it made it easy to engage and get excited too. a lot of information in a short moment, but i feel like i absorbed quite a lot of it. lovely, thank u!

[@_MasterP]

Thank You Rob incredibly insightful and useful information!

[@refinery.studio]

I would have never thought I would say something like this, but I was absolutely enthralled learning the history of Roman letters - exclusively due to your witty side notes and thoroughly-informed knowledge base. First time seeing your channel. I am very impressed. Keep up the great work sir. Cheers from the other side of the pond!

[@--Paws--]

This brings me back to elementary school days when I was still getting more familiar with English, I ran into calligraphy books which is next to a bunch of language learning books. I didn't really read it just skimming enough to understand what it as about. It was interesting to see how some of the letters and characters are all so similar yet pronounced and used differently for each language.

[@scottcarr8738]

Thank you for this. I study language obsessively and this is quite concise for the amount of information that it contains. Great lesson, Thank You! P.S. I am buying that Davis book tomorrow. Thanks again!💯

[@DirtCobaine]

What a golden video. See I knew the history but I could never really fit it together. This video paints that picture amazingly. I will never forget this information

[@brucetidwell7715]

This was AMAZING!! Seriously, Rob, I will watch this at least half a dozen more times to actually take in all of the facts and trivia that you just, almost literally, blew my mind with. Being both *very* intellectual and *highly* visual, this relatively tiny video is worth hours of contemplation. I wish I could hit the like button at least 26 times.

[@BoogieBoogsForever]

Ok we get it. 😂😂

[@megw7312]

Blow it some more by finding: Cymroglyphics 01 Overview

[@Bob_just_Bob]

As an American who’s been studying Chinese I found this fascinating to see how the characters of the Roman alphabet changed from their original forms just as Chinese characters have evolved. Great video thanks

[@davisbrowne1906]

And also that the window that became our H is so like their ri symbol for sun (which you'd see through a window)... Which struck me particularly because when learning (introductory) Chinese the links to pictures was central to memorising, even though there are so many uses where the meaning eventually has nothing to do with that origin - maybe just suggesting the sound. I had never considered my own letters in the same way. Funny that I remember kinder level teaching of our letters as "bat and ball" for "b" or "drum and drumstick" for "d" - I'm sure children around the world have been taught various pictorial mnemonics for our letters.... Maybe they could just stick with the real ones though it does seem A is for Ox is a harder sell.

[@alukuhito]

Japanese kanji is also pretty interesting, with some Chinese characters still used today that China has since revised, and vice-versa with lots of Chinese characters that Japanese revised. Then there are the hiragana and katakana syllabaries based on kanji.

[@GL-iv4rw]

Europe had its own indigenous writing system from the Minoans, but it's such a shame they had to adopt from the Afro-Asiatics due to the Late Bronze Age collapse.

[@alukuhito]

@@GL-iv4rw What did it look like? Any links?

[@GL-iv4rw]

@@alukuhito Linear B

[@chrisverr7001]

So very interesting, thank you for sharing that knowledge 👍

[@giovvlogs]

I just discovered this channel today. And I love the facts and the pun. Definitely will be subscribing.

[@barbm9580]

I had a friend whose last name was Linda. She said her ancestors came to America from Germany and their name was Zinde. But the way they wrote their z’s looked more like L’s to Americans so their name got changed (likely by census takers) to Linda.

[@AutPen38]

It happened quite a lot with the first settlers in America, as well as displaced people (e.g. Jews fleeing Europe in the 20th century). When people were "processed" at the borders, or in censuses, their names were written by hand on long lists. Due to unclear writing, or poor recognition skills, the names ended up getting mangled on official documents, leading people's names being officially changed by accident. (It even happens on birth certificates sometimes. I've come across people whose official name is spelled wrong because of an error by a parent, or a typo by a registrar.)

[@SirContent]

Linda means cute

[@barbm9580]

Linda means “pretty” or “cute” in Spanish, but not in German. The name her ancestors came to the US was “Zinde”. It hot changed to “Linda” by Americans who thought the Z was an L.

[@lethalbroccoli01]

It's been historically proven that names were not changes at the census, but rather by immigrants due to pressure to adapt to American culture and nomenclature

[@anonymouse903]

​@@barbm9580 it also means "pretty" or "beautiful" in portuguese, I wonder if the origins of the word and the name are related

[@HayTatsuko]

I'm so glad I ran across your channel a few months ago. Been catching up on some of the older material. I love linguistics channels and think yours is one of the best around. Thanks for doing what you do!

[@i_marcus_quintus]

Not mentioned here is the reason why letters keep getting reversed and rotated. When right-left reading order languages were appropriated by cultures who preferred left-right, it was easier to reverse the character with the direction than it was to keep the character. So from Egyptian (RL) to Greek (LR) to Etruscan (RL) to Roman (LR) we basically have a story of each culture reversing and simplifying the characters.

[@june.w.1288]

Thank you, that is most insightful!

[@johneric3886]

This is my favorite video of all your videos. Traffic work!!!! I learned a lot.

[@user-ov2fc5sd1e]

Fun fact: the first letter of the Arabic alphabet is "أ" which is pronounced as "Aleph" , and it's a direct equivalent to the letter A when paired with other letters to make a word

[@frogsnack7072]

And in Hebrew it's 'Eleph'.

[@salvia506]

​@@frogsnack7072 sorry but it's the same: aleph

[@frogsnack7072]

@@salvia506 I've seen it spelled with an 'E'. Same pronunciation, I bet.

[@legendofzoloxolo1425]

El is the God Saturn that many worship to this day

[@marisadallavalle393]

Another fun fact, the letter "s" in Arabic is similar to the number 3 in Arabic.

[@chej9]

11:22 That “Oui, Si.” Is a genius joke

[@nxte8506]

Ikr, I just clocked it then decided to check the comment section 😂

[@carultch]

An Englishman, a Frenchman, a German, and a Spaniard were all watching a street performer. The street performer asks his audience if everyone can see well enough. To which they reply: Yes Oui Si Ja

[@WildPatriot]

Such a fun and informative video!! Love your content ☺☺

[@RaycrowX]

Excellent video Dev, thank you so much!

[@marilyn8490]

Love this video. I teach Spanish and so much I see in pronunciation of their alphabet letters. Fun to see how things moved from one culture/language to subsequent ones, who in turn adopted and morphed the letters.

[@cumpilled]

i’m a spanish speaker and it was this video that made me make the connection of y being “greek i” literally blew my mind

[@judeirwin2222]

Quentin, Portugal, just next door to Spain, calls “y” to “ipsilom”.

[@twang7193]

Me too! I have always wondered why. I can't wait to tell everyone it's a Greek i (hey I don't get out much lol)

[@JamieHumeCreative]

I love this! Thank you!

[@jeffheineken6709]

Excellent Rob, great insight! Thank you

[@jesseshapira669]

Every one of those letters except for X has relatives in modern Semitic, some are used in Arabic or Hebrew in a very similar way to how it was used in ancient dialects. The letters U, V and W are represented with the same letter in Hebrew, also in Arabic although it doesn't have the sound of V at all, some native Arabic speakers tend to pronounce it like F which might explain something. also the letter Q looks about the same in modern Semitic as in ancient dialects, in Arabic and Yemenite Hebrew it's easy to notice the difference between Quf and Kaf. I'm hoping to watch more videos on the subject, especially if you can make the same review on Russian alphabet. Thank you very much.

[@Abilliph]

Actually x is based on the letter that became the Hebrew Samech. ס

[@k.whatever9046]

love this comment, i was noticing the same things too

[@josephmclaughlin9865]

X is kind of an oddball letter in the languages I'm familiar with, English being primary. In most cases in North AM English it's spoken as KS. I know there must be a story on the internet about why that is, but I haven't taken the time to hunt it down. Xavier in spanich is Ha-bi-er, and in RP it's ZAY-vyer. But I hate, absolutely hate when my countrymen call Xavier, "ex-AY-vyer." "Where did you go to Uni? " "Francis ex-AY-vyer."

[@MustafaKulle]

Thank you so much, Rob. I have only praise for this video. I come from Cyprus, and ever since I was a kid we were constantly told "the Greeks invented everything" and yet there is archeological evidence that shows there was civilizations with languages of their own dating back to the Canaanites and the Phoenicians before the Greeks set foot on the island. Again, good work, Rob. 👏👏👏👏👏👏

[@joedee1863]

The Phoenicians were Canaanites also known as Philistines. The Greeks called them Phoenicians after the Phoenix or Chinese Golden Partridge. As they became a world wide seafaring nation other races joined them like the Hittites and they became quite an ethnic mix. The Carthaginian Royalty boasted their Philistine ethnic connection.

[@dieselgeezer18]

i haven't heard anyone say that the Greeks invented everything (im greek). But we do take pride for how much we have contributed to the world. The fact that the Greek alphabet is derived from the Phoenician alphabet is no secret and is taught in schools and most people who know some history know this. Though its not like Greeks did not contribute anything to the alphabet. They made changes and improvements, and then the Etruscans adopted it and thats where Latin started. So Latin was based on the upgraded Greek "version" of the alphabet and not the Phoenician. For example, the phoenician alphabet did not have lowercase letters. The Greeks invented them. Greeks have not invented everything, but they have created and contributed so many many things

[@joedee1863]

@@dieselgeezer18 - if it wasn't for the Greeks most of the ancient knowledge would probably have vanished. Alexander's library was a repository for knowledge of plants, chemistry, mathematics, geography, and physics. The Bible says " the Greeks gave us Logic. In which case no logic or Boolean algebra = NO MODERN COMPUTERS

[@zombiejuggalotus]

Just found your channel and I absolutely love it thank you for the enlightenment

[@38josue91]

I've been saying the same for Latinamerican Spanish. We can drop 7 letters C, H, Q, V, W, X and Z; with the addition of Ç for the /⁠tʃ⁠/ sound (or using C for this sound), and using G only for the /g/ sound. Simplifying spelling and bringing our alphabet down to 21 letters.

[@38josue91]

C: caña = kaña, cena = sena CH: cuchara = kuçara G: enjuague = enjuage, energía = enerjía H: huerto = uerto Ll: llave = yabe Q: queso = keso V: vivir = bibir We don't have words with W. X: experimento = esperimento Z: zapato = sapato

[@historybuff7491]

I think it is interesting how some letters that came from Ancient Egypt, not only mutated in shape, but also changed sounds. For example: the B from Egyptian reed hut has more of a modern "h" sound. The wavy line of M, is almost exactly the Egyptian shape, but theirs usually had 4 peaks and had the sound of our modern letter "n". There are several others.

[@Kumagoro42]

Because the Canaanites didn't care for Egyptian sounds. They had their own language with their own sounds. The point was just to use a system of symbols to represent it in writing.

[@orsivan5731]

As someone who speaks both English and Hebrew, it's interesting to see the transition. Most of the symbol make sense to me because the word in Hebrew is still the same. After all, many words in Hebrew didn't really change since ancient times. The head in "R" for example, probably refers to the word "Rosh" which is.... well... head in hebrew. Same for the D in "Dag" (fish) and many others.

[@truthache]

Search for a channel called Original Hebrew 🤓😉

[@moshe4696]

I think d in Hebrew is for door, delet sounds a lot like daled

[@reginajohnson188]

So do that go the same way if you have a letter 💌 R in your name 📛 Rosh right and so on I have the Hebrew alphabet 🔤 written down

[@Belarithian]

England was invaded by so many different folk (Saxons, Picts, Vandals, Vikings, Normans etc) that its weird it retained any from its Celtic roots (afaik that's the most ancient part there), not to mention the conscious (forced) changes the language had. On the other hand, people native in Hebrew (=jews) did a great effort to preserve the language as part of the cultural identity.

[@bouchmajid7109]

Not true , alpha beta ….. is arabic like any other words you can not understand , exempt history, logo .

[@moesailing6008]

I've only just discovered your channel and it's Brilliant!

[@martinholmes-ue9ko]

Very nice, as usual . Fascinating subject and excellent delivery.

[@yourejustjelley]

Rob, you always amaze me with your research and explanations. Are you a professor ? You should be if not. You are a great teacher. You are where you're supposed to be. Great work, as always!

[@Zerbey]

Your love of languages shines through, always learn something fascinating on this channel.

[@MattakiUtsuro]

5:01 About that Greek letter Ε ε. Its original Ancient name was just εἶ _eî_ (/eː/ or /ei/). From my understanding, its current name ἒ ψιλόν _è psīlón_ (i.e. “simple e”) came about not because the Greeks stripped the letter from its /h/ but because in Middle Ages a need arose to distinguish it from the diphtong ΑΙ αι _ai_ which came to be pronounced as /e/. Thus: *Ε ε* (e), i.e. “simple e” vs *ΑΙ αι* (ai), i.e. “diphthong e”. As an aside, the analogous naming process was applied to the following Greek letters as well due to pronunciation changes: 1. *Υ υ* ὖ _ŷ_ (/yː/) → ὖ ψιλόν _ŷ psīlón_ (i.e. “simple y”) vs *ΟΙ οι* _oi_ (i.e. “diphthong y”), because the latter came to be pronounced as the former (/y/), 2. *Ω ω* ὦ _ô_ (/ɔː/) → ὦ μέγα _ô méga_ (i.e. “big o”) vs *Ο ο* οὖ _oû_ (/oː/ or /ou/) → ὂ μικρόν _ò mikrón_ (i.e. “small o”), because the long vowel /ɔː/ that the letter Ω ω represented became shortened to /o/ &, thus, indistinguishable from the sound that was represented by the letter Ο ο.

[@troelspeterroland6998]

This is my understanding too. These vowel names are Byzantine.

[@pazelpazel1926]

Came here to write this. Very well said 👌

[@pazelpazel1926]

Also, "psilon" literally means fine, small, tenuous, so it distinguishes ε and υ from the chonkier diphthongs αι and οι.

[@MattakiUtsuro]

@@pazelpazel1926 Interesting. Also, according to the Liddell-Scott-Jones Dictionary, ψιλός _psīlós_ was an adjective that was used to describe the unaspirated voiceless stop consonants (litterae tenues) π /p/, κ /k/, & τ /t/ as opposed to the aspirated ones: φ /pʰ/, χ /kʰ/, & θ /tʰ/. It is also in the name ψιλὸν πνεῦμα _psīlòn pneûma_ (the smooth breathing, i.e. the absence of aspiration).

[@InF3XioN]

@@MattakiUtsuro that was my initial thought but what are the "aspired counterparts" of epsilon and ypsilon? Also ypsilon is always aspired at the beginning of the word while epsilon can be either aspired on unaspired. It's a bit confusing.

[@mohammadabdurrahman3282]

Knowledgeable video. Thank you brother for your informative deed.

[@rockhopper_penguin]

This is such a fascinating video. Thank you for all your hard working bring us this video.

[@rachelbroughton6457]

I love this channel! I studied linguistics but so rarely get the chance anymore to talk about these things with other language nerds! My language students are definitely not as excited about the alphabet and linguistics as I am

[@moonloversheila8238]

Fascinating video, Rob. I can’t believe I taught French for years and never wondered about igrec! ☺️ The lost letters video is my favourite too.

[@polyvg]

Way back, being taught the alphabet near the west coast of Scotland, we were taught the 'jai' pronunciation of 'j'. Hence, i, j rhymed perfectly. And left me with lifelong mild confusion about g and j. But that emphasised the similarity - and from where I now am, the likely parallel histories - of the two letters.

[@piktasvaikasvid]

thank you for an interesting video and for a lovely book recommendation!

[@cmhaml]

This is now one of my favorite videos on KZbin. Thank you for your work and humor! 😊

[@toms2931]

Fascinating how we are still effectively using many simplified hieroglyphic characters. Thank you!

[@SonofDale]

Beautifully explained, sir.

[@jessen00001]

Awesome ❤ Thank you Rob.

[@alggazteca]

As always, you make learning lots of fun. Thanks Rob. Keep Robbing words! If you ever make a series on the story of the English language, like MacNeil's, it will be so great. I'll make sure I watch it.

[@gamaltk]

One of your most enjoyable videos! So many details and stories but also really light hearted 😄Do please cover the lower case letters, or even other scripts! (Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac maybe?)

[@MJ-un3xt]

Never saw this guy’s vids before, but this was pretty dang interesting. I feel like I learned something :). Well done and nicely paced.

[@keithaldis8533]

Brilliant! Really enjoyed that!

[@balaam_7087]

This was my absolute favorite episode yet. Whenever I see that little red notification icon for your videos it becomes something of a mini celebration in my mind. Keep up the astoundingly great work, Mr Rob Edit- I wonder if Veritasium knows he should pronounce his channel name as ‘Weritasium’…? 🤔

[@alonsoACR]

About the last part, I got some fun info for you. There are two latin pronunciations today. One called Classical, and one called Ecclesiastical. Ecclesiastical is basically reading Latin as if it was medieval Italian, and is the official of the Catholic Church. The most widely used pronunciation by far as you may guess, is that one. Most Latin learners and speakers use that one and songs are sung and Vatican comms are written with it everyday. So Veritasium with the labiodental is also kind of correct, even if the old Romans wouldn't have pronounced it that way...

[@camillechauve1352]

@@alonsoACR that's really interesting, especially since my teachers used to give me texts with u and not v and i and not j (or the other way round)! We were also taught to pronounce v as u and j and i!

[@alonsoACR]

@@camillechauve1352 Then your teachers preferred Classical pronunciation. Except Classical has more differences than that. And that the U shouldn't have been used at all. Main one is the so called long and short vowels. 5 short and 5 long, for each written vowel. In texts you will often not see them marked differently (if it does it looks like this: Veritāsium) which is endlessly confusing, and makes Ecclesiastical MUCH simpler. Ecclesiastical, like Italian and most other major Romanic languages, has only short 5 vowels, the long versions being dead. Like this: Gāius Ivlivs Caesar vs. Gaius Julius Caesar. Pronunciation-wise, Caesar in Classical is pronounced Kaisar, and in Ecc it's Chesar (ch like in cheese) Hmm maybe your teacher writes it with U to make sure you don't mistake the pronunciation? Because both the U and the J are medieval inventions.

[@pauljsm]

​@Alonso B In the world of choral music, we study [at least] two variants of Latin's pronunciations: Italian style and German style. We use one or the other depending on who the composer was, or whe they were living when the music was composed, or what period/style the piece belongs to... sometimes the choice is rather subjective, to be honest.

[@zacknicley8150]

I enjoyed this video very much. I would love to see something about cursive and other stylizations of our letters. It’s interesting how very different they can look but still be readable.

[@atanacioluna292]

That was super fun, and I finally can understand the weird error that my mother tongue, Spanish, has made since I grew up using English. Doble V, finally makes sense. Rob also makes international finance, and world politic, as simple as ABC.

[@marwaqoura7804]

I am Egyptian ,yes from Egypt 🇪🇬where it all begins 😸..Great video but I would like to point out something about the letter M ,water is called in Arabic مياه Meiah and in Egyptian baby talk مو مو Mo Mo ,still used till today when we talk to babies to refer to water . Speaking of Egypt and Egyptian dialect Arabs and Egyptians call Egypt 'Mother of the World ' أم الدنيا , because every thing begins here ❤🙏🇪🇬