You’ll Never See the Alphabet the Same Way Again

🪓👁️🐍 Axes and eyeballs and snakes. Oh my! Here are 26 stories about the alphabet your teacher never told you. Share in the comments which ones you already knew!
📺 WATCH NEXT:
Where Did Language Come From? 👉🏼 • Where Did Language Com...
⬇️ GET MY FREE STORYLEARNING® KIT:
Discover how to learn any foreign language faster through the power of story with my free StoryLearning® Kit 👉🏼 bit.ly/freeslkit_alphabetstories
✍🏼 ON THE BLOG:
Prefer reading to watching? We’ve got you covered!
Origins of the Alphabet 👉🏼 storylearning.com/blog/origin...
💻 CERTIFICATE OF ONLINE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CEOLT)
Interested in teaching English or another language online? Check out my premier language-teaching course 👉🏼 bit.ly/teachlanguagesonline
📖 LEARN A LANGUAGE THROUGH THE POWER OF STORY:
Stories are the best way I have found to learn ANY language. Forget the boring textbooks and time-wasting apps and learn a language the natural, effective way with one of my story-based courses. 👉🏼 bit.ly/storylearningcourses
🗣 SUPERCHARGE STORIES WITH SPEAKING PRACTICE
Many StoryLearning students have found great success combining story-based learning with 1-on-1 speaking practice. We recommend LanguaTalk for finding talented tutors who can help you become more confident.
Book a free trial with a 5-star tutor here 👉🏼 bit.ly/languatalkyt
📸 FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM:
Get daily language tips, comics, reels, and more on Instagram (@iwillteachyoualanguage) 👉🏼 / iwillteachyoualanguage
⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
0:20 - The Letters
0:22 - A
0:39 - B
0:52 - C
1:07 - D
1:22 - E
1:42 - F
2:24 - G
2:52 - H
3:27 - I
3:45 - J
4:09 - K
4:23 - L
4:41 - M
5:00 - N
5:17 - O
5:38 - P
6:02 - Q
6:26 - R
6:54 - S
7:24 - T
7:39 - U
7:54 - V
8:03 - W
8:19 - X
8:37 - Y
8:47 - Z
📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:
🎬 Video Clips:
• From an Ox to an A | L...
What is a GLOTTAL STOP?
• What is a GLOTTAL STOP?
How to Pronounce Julius Caesar
• How to Pronounce Juliu...
🖼 Images:
“Hiero D36” by Hexifi is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I#/medi...
“Vincenzo Catena Portrait of Gian Giorgio Trissino” by Vincenzo Catena is licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gian_Gi...
“Standing Osiris Edit1” by Jeff Dahl is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris#...

[@storylearning]

Wondering where language came from? 👉🏼kzbin.info/www/bejne/bJjEe4Csh5yVgc0si=Dg1UTIS4SrHNasWC

[@juliannaruffini]

there are a lot of mistakes see comments

[@markmacy6887]

Feels like a lot of 'leaps' to fill in the gaps

[@quantumprocrastination]

If you did this same concept except on the Chinese or Japanese writing systems: 33942 stories in 12297 minutes

[@jmwild22]

Haha!!

[@northstarpokeshipper2148]

5:34 The Omega.

[@jilllee5157]

Fascinating! As an American I have wondered why we say "Zee" when everyone else (speaking English )says "zed". ?

[@Migrant2008]

I wish you had subtitles on your very educative videos 😍. As a Turkish i hardly understand some British accented words 😢

[@lisilonglegs]

I use the auto-generated subtitles and they work well. All the best to you.

[@Migrant2008]

@@lisilonglegs thanks dear 🌼. I also use the atomatic translator , but especially the words that i can't hear clearly are being wrongly typed there as well.

[@quantumprocrastination]

Çok güzel 🇹🇷 🇬🇧 🇺🇸

[@quantumprocrastination]

As someone who used to share an apartment with two Turkish students in my college days, I never really understood how you guys could basically make one super long word that would mean something that would take like 5 words to say in English. That is, until I learned what the word "agglutinative" means.

[@Migrant2008]

@@quantumprocrastination 😅🤩🤣

[@ninabaker2970]

Really interesting! Thank you!

[@isalutfi]

Thank you for this insightful content.

[@storylearning]

Glad you like it!

[@navneetshyam1335]

​@@storylearningThank You for giving us such great information. I really never knew that the letters we use today are older than most languages! Each letter has its own history!

[@kennystrawnmusic]

5:34 Omega

[@Millerdebrasil]

I learn so much with your videos

[@romero522]

Alef = bull Bet = house Gimel = camel Daleth = door Heh = Vav Zayn = weopon Heth = yard Teth = wheel Yod = hand Kaf = palm Lamed = wheep Mem = water Nun = fish Samekh = fish Eyn = eye Peh = mouth Tsadik Quf = the little omhole of the needle Resh = head Shin = tooth Tav = note In hebrew "nun" is still used for saying Octopus = tamnun Synanceia = avnun Squid = Dionun Sea bass = Sfamnun

[@travisjacobson2334]

In Hebrew, camel is “gamal,” and gimel is the letter ג. So, the letter and word are easy to remember: ג for גמל. House is pronounced “bite” or “ba-it,” and the B/V sound is the letter “Beit:” בּ/ב

[@thecfclad]

so it is in fact real that W was formed from merging two Us, that has been a made up thing in my head for long

[@maryjanerx]

Omg i love this!!! Now do cryllic!!

[@bhami]

Yes! I've always thought of Cyrillic as 60% Latin, 20% Greek, and 20% its own thing, with a dash of Hebrew!

[@maryjanerx]

@@bhami right!!!! Ш is the same as the hebrew letter shin!!!

[@adrianblake8876]

​@@bhami There's a family tree of letters: Paleo-Hebrew, aka Phonecian, brought forth to the Greek alphabet and the square script. Greek brought forth to the Latin and Cyrillic alphabet, and the square script brought forth to the Arabic and Syriac alphabet...

[@minirop]

If so many letters flipped are because ancient greek was written in boustrophedon.

[@justinwr092]

Mama says the letter F came from an alligator that got a fig stuck its teeth and got sad.

[@judeampofo]

Greeks and Romans tip everything😂

[@bruh-xn7ci]

Because they write the other way from phoenicians and jews

[@swagilyph]

so I'm pretty sure 4 of those 5 letters that came from the same root are gonna be F V W and U but idk what the last one is.

[@swagilyph]

it ended up being the letter that looked exactly like the symbol you used to show F imagine that lol

[@wheeliebeast7679]

whY? Unless you were being sarcastic

[@swagilyph]

no I genuinely did not think of Y

[@AyaMoonlight1]

Great video as always, just a bit too fast paced. I wanted to stop it several times and think through what I've just learnt.. other than that, thanks 😊

[@foreverlearningfrench]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

[@lisilonglegs]

This is fascinating! (And weird--shoutout to Kronk.) Really fun to see how the letters came about.

[@juliannaruffini]

there are a bunch of mistakes

[@juliannaruffini]

mistake: The egyptian "r" is a mouth never be "p". "p" is a small rectangle

[@juliannaruffini]

"P" comes from the symbol of a house "per"

[@juliannaruffini]

"H" was not a fence it was the symbol of a house "hw.t)

[@jmwild22]

Fun!!

[@element7795]

Amazing, I didn't realize the alphabets of the ancient world were that close to each especially to Egyptian. I guess it all came down to poor handwriting or hand carving.

[@KaiSan3]

I've heard many times that writting was invented only 4 or 5 times, and then other cultures later adapted what their neighbors used to write for their languages... - so hiragana/katakana were created from hanzi simplified overtime; - Mayan, and the Otomi writting adapted by the Aztecs allegedly evolved (with multiple inbetween steps and diversions from each other) from Olmec writting; - hangul was copied from horyig, which was adapted for the Yuan rulers by the tibetans monks, who adapted a couple north-indian scripts to their language, which all evolved from greek letters from the time of Alexander (or before) and it then links to this video 😅 ...etc.

[@docjaramillo]

Omega

[@oravlaful]

i thought the V sound associated with the letter originated in the late latin period

[@juliannaruffini]

"d" cones from the symbol of a hand not fish!

[@OtHaku]

this actually helped me with CYRILIC, for example with letter P, thanks!!!!!!

[@ronrom05able]

A more likely reason why Z is removed is because the sound was lost over time. A process called rhotacism occurred when intervocalic /z/ had shifted to /r/, and thus, it was rendered useless.

[@snaball5598]

hola saludos desde latam

[@fishboyridesagain]

Spanish, French, Polish (¿others?) call the 'y' a 'greek i' (igriega, i-grec, etc.), while Portuguese just straight up calls the 'y' an 'upsilon'. Lots of fingers pointing at the Greeks.

[@juliannaruffini]

"N" comes from "nun" the ancient sea

[@juliannaruffini]

the "r" comes from the symbol of mouth not of the symbol of head!

[@juliannaruffini]

"I" comes from aleph the vulture. The hand is the arabic ع

[@juliannaruffini]

"f" comes from the symbol of a snake not Y!

[@kirilvelinov7774]

The new Phoenician alphabet! a ba ga da ha wa za kha tha ya ka la ma na sa gha pa zha qua ra sha ta Zha is pronounced aspirated TS

[@das224]

If you look at, and write, a lowercase sigma, you can really easily see how that becomes a "S"

[@Notsogoddess]

Q=Que, quien etc

[@judahbenj5246]

🎉🎉🎉

[@ThomasTheThermonuclearBomb]

People who watched jan Misali

[@juliannaruffini]

"L was the leg of Osiris"? There was no "l" in the egyptian alphabet, later it became a lion. There are mistakes

[@maryjanerx]

Could you do a video for each of the letters?

[@arashputata]

Yaay

[@Kevin-ws6bl]

Write world war 2 in simple italian per favore !

[@hilbert2547]

a lot of false information take this video down

[@kirilvelinov7774]

Phoenician alphabet for Japanese a b g d e w z h ch y k j m n s o p ts f r sh t Digraphs EI(i) OV(u)

[@kirilvelinov7774]

Note:the L is pronounced "j" similar to the Argentine double L(sh)

[@kirilvelinov7774]

Q is pronounced "f" because of it's similar shape to Russian Ф(ef or th)

[@pamfeinstein8742]

Omega