The Top 7 Craziest Writing Systems in the World

✍🏼🤯 You might think that Chinese writing looks intimidating, but I found 7 EVEN crazier writing systems. Including one invented by a man who couldn’t even read or write! In no particular order, here are the top 7
most bizarre, beautiful, and unforgettable scripts in the world…
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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
0:15 - #1: Tibetan
1:49 - #2: Mongolian
3:32 - #3: Nǚshū
4:39 - #4: Cherokee
6:19 - #5: Thai
7:28 - #6: Baybayin
9:08 - #7: Voynichese
📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:
🎬 Video Clips:
Tibetan Alphabet Songs
• Tibetan Alphabet Songs
學寫西藏字母 How To Write Tibetan Alphabet
• 學寫西藏字母 How To Write Ti...
The HU - Yuve Yuve Yu (Official Music Video)
• The HU - Yuve Yuve Yu ...
Mongolian writing in a nutshell
• Mongolian writing in a...
Nu Shu: The Secret Written Language of Chinese Women
• Nu Shu: The Secret Wri...
The Cherokee Syllabary
• The Cherokee Syllabary
Thailand rock music - Carabao & thierry.
• Thailand rock music - ...
Tagpuan Covered by Shanaia Gomez
• Tagpuan Covered by Sha...
An Introduction to Baybayin In 2 1/2 Minutes
• An Introduction to Bay...
Writing Baybayin (ᜊᜌ᜔ᜊᜌᜒᜈ᜔)
• Writing Baybayin (ᜊᜌ᜔ᜊ...
The world’s most mysterious book - Stephen Bax
• The world’s most myste...
🖼 Images:
“Thomni-sambhota-thangka-72-for-web-1.jpg” by Sahil Bhopal is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
“Pabonka Hermitage.jpg” by Reurinkjan is licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
“Itchy Feet in Asia: Creative Guesswork” is a comic by Malachi Ray Rempen www.itchyfeetcomic.com/2013/12...
“Mune wall col.jpg” (“Om Mani Padme Hum” inscriptions) by Shakti is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_mani...
“Hunan in China (+all claims hatched).svg” by TUBS is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
“Cherokee Syllabary Chart.png” by Mattie.walkerr is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
“Ram Khamhaeng the Great (I).jpg” by Supanut Arunoprayote is licensed under CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...

[@storylearning]

🇰🇷 Hear the story of the most logical writing system in the world 👉🏼 kzbin.info/www/bejne/bKOscnWBdqpgiZI

[@ttheek]

Can you do a video about "Sinhala" ?

[@Mongolian.Script]

Thank you. I am teaching the second one, the Mongolian script.

[@zaccotter8276]

I thought Georgian would be on this list

[@FrozenMermaid666]

Logic is a very rare quality that only I & my protectors possess, and my protectors are the only kings / princes / lords etc, and very few languages (such as English / Scottish / OId English and most other Germanic languages and certain Latin languages) are beautiful and logically written - misuse of big / royalty terms and compIiments is beyond wrong and soon to be banned!

[@FrozenMermaid666]

While hum’ns are the exact opposite of kings / other big terms.

[@hkrohn]

In Mongolian, "there are 7 vowels and only 5 vowel letters". Wow. But I'll tell you about a crazy language called English, which has 15-20 vowels (depending on the dialect and the analysis) and only 5 (or 6, if you count Y) vowel letters.

[@jmwild22]

If only this video was about English script.

[@Mortablunt]

Yes indeed only five vowel letters and a world record up to 21 vowels depending on dialect. I’m so glad I didn’t have to learn this crazy language at any point or anything.

[@jmwild22]

@@Mortablunt Now just to practice your grammar, right?

[@clovebeans713]

In sanskrit there are 16 vowels and 16 vowel letters.

[@DawnDavidson]

I was thinking exactly the same thing! And how about all those different combinations of consonants that are pronounced completely differently even though they are exactly the same letters? (Though, through, rough, etc.) English is a crazy language for sure!

[@jakesmoller6184]

As fiendishly complex as any of these scripts may appear, it is even more astonishing to know that to a native user, their script appears perfectly comprehensible.

[@YouTubeallowedmynametobestolen]

Yeah, like English. More sounds than letters: 26 letters, but about 44 sounds. So we put two or three letters together to create additional graphemes-for example, 'sh' and 'oo.' (A grapheme is a letter or a letter combination that represents a sound.) That way, although we have 44 sounds, but only 26 individual letters, we actually have over 100 graphemes for writing the sounds. Also, some graphemes can represent more than one sound ('s' as in simple, sugar, and boys; 'a' as in apple, apex, and America; 'ie' as in pie and cookie), and some sounds can be represented by more than one grapheme (for example, /k/ can be spelled with a K as in kitchen, C as in cookie, CK as in duck, or CH as in character). And sometimes a grapheme represents no sound at all. That is, they are "silent" -- B as in comb and dumb and debt; E as in give and have and prerequisite. And yet, as you point out, to a native user, English script appears perfectly comprehensible.

[@bureaffari3694]

@@KZbinallowedmynametobestolen english writing system is kinda stupid when think about it, isn't it?

[@YouTubeallowedmynametobestolen]

@@bureaffari3694 I would agree.

[@LC-sc3en]

@Gary Allen I feel like we can get some small wins with the txt gen tho.

[@keylime6]

@@bureaffari3694 It's because the spoken language has changed in the last 600 years, but the writing system hasn't. It's not just english that has this issue either, french, thai, and many others do too

[@RayQiaoTW]

I feel like much more could have been said about Thai, such as consonant classes and “living” and “dead” syllables. It’s such an interesting system

[@juha-petrityrkko3771]

The Thai tone system can be memorized the same way as the multiplication table. After that it is not overly hard to fetch the right tone from one's memory, at least if full fluency is not yet expected.

[@szilveszterforgo8776]

@@juha-petrityrkko3771 At one time in my life I learned many writing systems for fun. 22 or 23 to be exact. Thai was by far the hardest, most unnecessarily complicated out of them all.

[@Everyonebutmyself]

Thai is actually wild, I lived there for a year as a youth ambassador, and mannn did I ever struggle to learn it.

[@joannawentworth9519]

I'm currently studying thai. I learned the thai abuigida in a month, and it is a fascinating script, as well as beautiful. It's really logical as long as you understand the structure. 😊

[@juha-petrityrkko3771]

@@joannawentworth9519, especially beautiful. I fully agree.

[@juliangoulette7600]

5:17 Cherokee is actually a (nasal) schwa. That use of confused me too at first.

[@BlitzWalkthrough]

Was looking for this comment

[@FeralMina]

very nearly like the first syllable of “uncle”, at least in my American dialect

[@LeReubzRic]

​@@FeralMinathats probably /ʌ̃/

[@FeralMina]

@@LeReubzRic yes, right, if i’m under what you mean. like how Cambridge dictionary has the pronunciation for “uncle” as /ˈʌŋ.kəl/, so the Cherokee /v/ would be similar to just the /ˈʌ/ part of /ˈʌŋ.kəl/. or nasalized schwa, yes? (i don’t know all the technical terms very well, but i can pronounce it just fine.)

[@ItsPForPea]

Note: for Thai, even though there are 44 consonant scripts with just 21 consonant sounds, the number of consonants sounds used to be in the Thai language is never 44. You see, Thai got their scripts from Khom, which got their scripts from Indian via Buddhist monks with their manuscripts. Wanting to be able to perfectly write in Sanskit, Khom took all the Devaganari scripts, changed it a bit over time, and make in their scripts, even though they can't distinguish some sounds from those letters. Then Thai did the same to Khom scripts, they even add new letters for the sounds that wasn't in Sanskit. So that's how they ended up with 44 consonants where 6 of them are just Ts

[@robhogg68]

Many of those "crazy" features are shared by many other writing systems. Arabic script, for instance, has characters which take a different shape depending on their position in the word. If you think about it, though, any cursive writing system has the same feature - in Latin script, letters only tend to be invariant in print (or "printed" handwriting). As for syllabic scripts with intrinsic vowels which are then modified by additional symbols - this is shared by all North Indian writing systems (AFAIK - certainly by the scripts used for Hindi and Gujarati). And when you get to symbols having more than one sound - look no further than English. Any vowel in an unstressed syllable tends to become schwa, ough can be pronounced in at least five different ways, the o in gone and bone are pronounced differently, as are (frequently) the ch in schedule and scheme, th can be voiced (then) or voiceless (thin)... and that's just off the top of my head.

[@sazji]

Your description of Tibetan is true for all the Brahmi scripts, which includes all the Indian scripts, Thai, Lao, Khmer and more. Khmer and Northern Thai script also have subscript forms of all the consonants for when two consonants occur together (when the inherent vowel of the first consonant is not pronounced). For Thai, it’s not so much that Thai lost sounds; it’s that it adopted a Brahmi script with sounds that did not exist in Thai.

[@nlama9663]

Tibetan spelling is challenging mainly because it has remained unchanged since the 8th century. While it used to match the old Tibetan language well, as Tibetan evolved into various dialects, the spelling no longer accurately represents how words are pronounced. Additionally, Tibetan prefers creating loan translations from native words rather than using Sanskrit loan words. For example, འཛིནད་ ('dzind) was probably pronounced something like /ɣd͡zint/ in old Tibetan, but in standard Lhasa Tibetan today, it's pronounced /t͡sĩ˥˩/. Similarly, བརྒྱུད (brgyud) was likely pronounced something like /brɡʲut/ in old Tibetan, but in standard Lhasa Tibetan now, it's pronounced /cyː˩˧˨/.

[@Buckload]

As a guy who learned and now writes Baybayin, I'd say you gave it justice. It's such a beautiful script and very unique and simple, I learned the script like 2 hours but it's kind of hard to read if you are still new. But soon you'll get it with perseverance. I'd say it's easier to learn that Hanggul (maybe). It has only 4 main symbols, each combined to be different symbols with different types of twist's, like the letters A and Ma or Pa and Sa you'll eventually notice they are the same also with the Ha, Ka, and Da but they are different with the same symbols. Thank you for giving it hope and I hope it will be revived like the old days.

[@lisamarydew]

Let's revive it!

[@dayana4654]

I'm interested in it, may you please give me resources on where or how to learn it?

[@Buckload]

It's really easy. I learned it from just remembering the symbol's. As long as you go with the vowel's first then the consonants you'll be fine with it. Then continue with the E/I and O/U Vowel changers or what's called "Kudlits", then finish up the "V'ramas" which are vowel killers, you just use "+" or "x" as silencers for the A in symbols like Ma if you put a V'rama you'll isolate the symbol and just make it M. It's more easier than Hanggul (Korean), There's just only one rule is that to spell it the way it sounds. It's just hard to read for the first few times but once you'll remember the symbols you can read it easily as making scrambled egg. Just don't use the B17 if you want modern stuff, you'll eventually know that if you learn. Thank you for being interested.

[@dayana4654]

@@Buckload I'm intermediate in Korean, been learning for a couple years, and i figured that from the video (i watched a video explaining how the baybayin alphabet works) but thank you for explaining it and writing out such a long message, greatly appreciated! But maybe I'd like to learn more of it, so any recourse for maybe grammar or vocabulary? :)

[@Buckload]

@@dayana4654 I mean the only rule is just to spell it just the way it sounds, I mean of course you have to learn Tagalog (Filipino) for it but other than that it's pretty simple. I mean Tagalog is a very complex language to learn even for me, although I am not Tagalog I am Visayan which is still part of the Philippines which has different languages, it's still fun to learn if you know the language. But to simplify, Tagalog is mostly or majorly a VSO, which if you dont know what it means it means Verb-subject-object word order which is the third most common word structure for types of languages ( I mostly copied this), although I do not know about Tagalog grammar, I do know about it being hard for foreigners to construct. Vocabulary in Tagalog is uncommonly used mostly nowadays we teenagers use Spanish words which if you didn't know 30 to 40% of our language is heavily influenced by Spanish, and commonly us teenagers also use English words too, which I want to distance myself from that. But there are a lot of Tagalog words out there it's just that it's not oftenly used anymore :(

[@cosmicqueso3570]

Cherokee would be a nightmare for most to learn. Aside from the syllabary style of the script, it has a bunch of letters that look almost identical to Latin and Cyrillic script letters, except none of them make the corresponding sound (most make sounds that are completely different to their Latin/Cyrillic counterparts)

[@researcher7578]

And all of these thanks to its creator Sequoia, who created the syllabary without knowing the pronunciation of Latin and Cyrillic letters, but only being inspired by its shapes : )

[@cosmicqueso3570]

@@researcher7578 definitely! It’s one of my personal favorite scripts

[@BabyCal]

it’s a very beautiful script. It’s a shame it isn’t taught in early stages of Cherokee classes in my experience! The similarities to English do make it a bit jarring for sure

[@brianclark4040]

Cherokee script is fairly easy to learn if you already know Cherokee (which I don’t) When I was studying Cherokee the script became super easy once I learned words. But as a syllabary you have to know the word to pronounce words that don’t end in a vowel sound.

[@robhogg68]

The same letters making different sounds has long been a feature in languages using the same script. Not to the same extent, of course, but compare the pronunciation of English and Gaelic ("Shona" vs "Seonaid", for instance).

[@anthrogal78]

A retired professor (in horticulture) in the department I worked for is one of the researchers who worked on identifying the plants in the Voynich manuscript. He and his colleague concluded it’s a 16th century Mexican manuscript. But that’s not as interesting as the other theories on the internet. 😂

[@danymann95]

Yes, it appears to has plants and animals from the Mexican territory, like tuna and armadillos but how… spooky!!

[@Soulskinner]

Except if it's true, then that book teleported to the Old World. Considering that by "official history" of that book consists of it being in that places, almost all the time. And the symbols look quite western and not exotic. But who knows. Almost all the info (like easy to find info) I found "smells" suspicious and it rather looks like hoax, than something actual. UPD: I've googled a bit more too and found idea that these "mysterious plants" are composed from various usual plants. Like leaves from one plant, flower (or it's parts) from another and this kind of stuff.

[@danymann95]

@@Soulskinner idk but it is said that before the final capitulation of Tenochtitlan the city high priests codified the knowledge of their civilization, so it is a possible explanation

[@ScytheriaReborn]

I'm calling that conclusion out as totally erroneous. All of the plants in the manuscript are drawn in a very crude, provincial style with very little attention to scientific accuracy and a great deal of injected fantasy. Of the hundreds of plant images in the manuscript, most cannot be matched to anything in the real world. The few that seem to look like New World plants do not indicate that the New Word is the manuscript's source. Draw enough made-up plants and sooner or later you'll draw one that looks a bit like a sunflower. As a counter example, several of the plant images look like things shown in Terry Gilliam's animations for Monty Python. Can we thus conclude his authorship?

[@thiloreichelt4199]

The parchment was radio carbon dated to 1404 till 1438. If the manuscript was written in the 16th century, all of the parchment was more than a century old. Yes, parchment was recycled, but the whole bunch?

[@alltheworldsastage6308]

I’ve been practicing memorizing how to spell my Thai vocabulary, and as soon as I saw the name of this video, I knew Thai had to be on the list. 😂

[@76rjackson]

Thai is indeed a challenge. Vowels that precede the consonant but are vocalized after it, lots of funky rules like 2 raw ruas (one of the r letters) becomes sara ahh (long A). Good luck.

[@maxpeterson8616]

I remember "deciphering" some Korean script from a menu at a restaurant that was nice enough to have the English translation next to each dish and description. Didn't find out later the origin story. Seemed to be a genius piece of work.

[@asdic888]

Korean script, Hangul, was expressly designed to be easy to master because the Korean king wanted literacy to spread among his people. It does have its shortcomings (no consonant clusters, missing sounds), but it's one of the most well-designed, logically consistent, and linguistically accurate writing systems out there. In many ways it's the opposite of Thai (Korean: difficult language with easy script. Thai: easy language with difficult script) in that the Thai script was deliberately made more decorative to elevate it for royal use and more difficult so the monks and scribes could protect their monopoly on literacy.

[@gettindizzy4782]

this is soooo interesting!!! thank you for making content for us language freaks

[@storylearning]

Pleasure!

[@julbombning4204]

Cool concept! More videos like this explaining how different writing systems works!

[@thekathal]

I'd just like to mention that in Cherokee is pronounced as [ə] or [ə̃]

[@thepotatoman9069]

All the things you described about Tibetan is the same as most North Indian language systems. I am surprised at how similar it is.

[@kumarvikramaditya9636]

It's derived from Brahmi.

[@AbeRegulus]

It's the same with all West Indian, East Indian and South Indian scripts (except Tamil), as all are evolved forms of Brahmi

[@D__Ujjwal]

Because it s derived from brahmni script used in ancient India. Southeast Asian country scripts also derived from brahmni script used in India

[@samuellickiss8463]

I think the complexity of the Tibetan script is often overblown. It functions more or less identically to the myriad Brahmic scripts - it's an abugida with inherent /a/ vowels and you have vowel signs that can change it. The scripts used to write Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, etc. all function similarly, as do many of the scripts of Southeast Asia. From my (admittedly limited) exposure to Tibetan, it is learnable relatively quickly if you already have some experience with Brahmic scripts (which I do). My proposal for replacing it would be Mandombe, used to write Lingala and Kikongo - this is one that looks truly crazy! There are a number of funky scripts from Africa worth looking at.

[@nlama9663]

Tibetan spelling is challenging mainly because it has remained unchanged since the 8th century. While it used to match the old Tibetan language well, as Tibetan evolved into various dialects, the spelling no longer accurately represents how words are pronounced. Additionally, Tibetan prefers creating loan translations from native words rather than using Sanskrit loan words. For example, འཛིནད་ ('dzind) was probably pronounced something like /ɣd͡zint/ in old Tibetan, but in standard Lhasa Tibetan today, it's pronounced /t͡sĩ˥˩/. Similarly, བརྒྱུད (brgyud) was likely pronounced something like /brɡʲut/ in old Tibetan, but in standard Lhasa Tibetan now, it's pronounced /cyː˩˧˨/.

[@ijroderick]

Great video, Olly. Seeing as you mentioned Thai script, any plans to do a video about the language itself as you've done for Korean, Russian et al? Also saw the series about you learning Thai so would be good to hear you speak some in a video again.

[@spanishforkidswithmissjuanita]

Fascinating and very entertaining. Thanks, Olly!

[@dalubwikaan161]

I like the video for today. Thank you so much!

[@De_rekening_a.u.b.]

Interesting stuff man!

[@angyfoxy5845]

i may not learning or understand all those languages, but I simply appreciate the beauty of their writing. Thanks for making an amazing video!

[@Zzoooooop]

Loved to have more videos on tibten and Sanskrit. Both with rich culture and kind of underated. And not a lot of professional videos on them.

[@annuwazdmz1131]

Interestingly, Burmese have the exact same writing system as Tibetan. But we use different symbols though. Vowel "marks" can go behind, over, under, or even in front of the consonant. Sometimes consonants can be stacked on top of each other. And yes including those " special " characters for Sanskrit and Pali which no one remembers.

[@gurrrn1102]

Your writing system is not special, the inherent vowels and vowel marks are common to all brahmi-derived abugidas.

[@D__Ujjwal]

Because it s derived from brahmni script used in ancient India. Southeast Asian country scripts also derived from brahmni script used in India

[@ironheart5830]

Burmese script should be there. :D

[@storylearning]

It’s beautiful

[@ironheart5830]

@@storylearning Yes it is 😊

[@Alex-my4ir]

It would be cool to see you do one of these videos in another one of your languages Olly! Great video!

[@MStonewallC]

Listening to language learning videos but for natives of my target languages is fun because I'm already familiar with the subject lol

[@DENVEROUTDOORMAN]

Nope

[@3_14pie]

I love how you explained what's an abugida using literally the most complex example possible

[@wild_insomnia]

great job Olly

[@tomislavnagy8715]

Thank You Olly for mentioning Tibetan Language and Script! Can You, Please, make a whole Video about Tibetan Language? Thank You!

[@Zeromus725]

Voynichese seems so cool, I love that it's connected to a high fantasy book as well

[@jonrolfson1686]

First assignment in Thailand began in 1971, after a nine-week turbo-Thai course in Hawaii. My next Southeast Asia related assignment involved the study and use of Khmer as well as Thai. Both Thai and Khmer use developed (or derived) Brahmi scripts, adapted to the specific needs and developments of those languages. In the case of Thai many of the seemingly duplicate consonant symbols are used to represent the obligate tones in writing. Duplicate consonant symbols used in Khmer essentially indicate which vowel-shifted pronunciation should be used. Both languages also use certain consonants, in some instances, as indicators that a word was borrowed from one or another prestigious foreign languages.

[@ponta1162]

I love the Georgian writing system, so I'm learning Georgian 😍 მე მიყვარს ქართული დამწერლობის სისტემა❤️

[@MassachusettsTrainVideos1136]

I'm learning Georgian too it's been a few days and I'm still illiterate but I will get better

[@jmwild22]

i'd learn Georgian just for the script, too!

[@robertmoreau8663]

Très interessant! Cool video 😎

[@littledevil8146]

Wow! fascinating

[@katakana1]

2:24 And then we have English with 5 vowel letters and 20 vowel sounds...

[@david_oliveira71]

Baybayin; If anyone's curious, the song /YT video is called: Tagpuan Covered by Shanaia Gomez

[@infinite5795]

Being an Indian, I could relate heavily to the Tibetan, Thai and Filipino scripts, as I myself know 4 Indic scripts, apart from Arabic and Cyrillic. However, Indo-aryan and Dravidian languages haven't changed a lot, we still can pronounce the same sounds and read works 2500-3000 years old because of it. What I feel is that, the problem with Thai and Tibetan is not because of the script, but the fact that the writing systems are based upon Sanskrit orthography, which has many sounds that both these abugidas strive to maintain respectively, but fail since they are from completely different families. The 3 different types of s have meaning in many Indic languages, but not in Thai or Tibetan. On the flipside, our scripts don't have so many vowels as say as Thai, because Sanskrit has only 14 vowels and 2 dipthongs. It's the same thing as Latin script favors Spanish more than say English. Also, the Cherokee script reminds me of Tamil, which doesn't follow Sanskrit orthography in its script, but rather its own. It has fewer sounds like 30 or so but each vowels consonant combo is a separate letter, accounting to 247 letters.

[@D__Ujjwal]

Because it s derived from brahmni script used in ancient India. Southeast Asian country scripts also derived from brahmni script used in India

[@nlama9663]

Tibetan spelling is challenging mainly because it has remained unchanged since the 8th century. While it used to match the old Tibetan language well, as Tibetan evolved into various dialects, the spelling no longer accurately represents how words are pronounced. Additionally, Tibetan prefers creating loan translations from native words rather than using Sanskrit loan words. For example, འཛིནད་ ('dzind) was probably pronounced something like /ɣd͡zint/ in old Tibetan, but in standard Lhasa Tibetan today, it's pronounced /t͡sĩ˥˩/. Similarly, བརྒྱུད (brgyud) was likely pronounced something like /brɡʲut/ in old Tibetan, but in standard Lhasa Tibetan now, it's pronounced /cyː˩˧˨/.

[@dhonchung5056]

As a Native tibetan, whenever people tell like Tibetan is so hard or hardest language to learn. I don't think that's the case rather it is not popular as many other language and few resources. If u learn it i don't think it is that difficult.+(rather a stereotypes)

[@AbeRegulus]

Exactly, if English were not to be popular, people would have called it difficult.

[@soumyabrataroy4274]

Tibetan script and alphabet are almost same as any Indian script. We are connected people for many centuries

[@BJGvideos]

@@AbeRegulus English IS difficult. It being popular doesn't change that and people very much do say that regularly.

[@D__Ujjwal]

Bruh, it is most easiest to learn and more advanced than any script written today same goes for Indian scripts and south east Asian scripts Because it is derived from brahmni script used in ancient India. Southeast Asian country scripts also derived from brahmni script used in India

[@christopherlord3441]

It's a fun presentation, but you missed out the Mayan script, and there are some incredibly complicated variants of Chinese. But you are probably right: Thai gets the cigar as the most impractical of all. Keep up the good work.

[@MDobri-sy1ce]

Around the 10:34 mark with the little sound byte, i was expecting the "More you know!" Logo, to come up but it is probably trade marked.

[@ilyauneroute8944]

Tibetan, Cherokee, Nushu and Babayin are stuningly beautiful writing looks like rune.

[@iksRoald]

Try SignWriting. Writes any sign language. Articels in the Wicipedia, medical lexica in Libras (the Brasilan sign language), stories in Nicaraguan sign language, somthing in Nepalese, in Norwegian, in Auslan (Australian), ASL (for the USA and part of Canada), etc etc

[@ehet8487]

TN: In Baybayin, there are document from I believe in University of Santo Tomas (The Oldest University in Asia) that is written in baybayin which uses colon-like symbol (:) which acts like a syllable repeater for all character with inherent 'A' sound. The double dots were place according to the sound the character has. Example: When writing BABAE (woman) you may write it this way BA:E [sorry I don't have baybayin font] When writing TOTOO (real/true) you may write TO..O (but double the dots or the marking below the character T since thatvs where you put the marking for characters with 'O/U' sound and vice versa with 'E/I' sounds] Ps. Those features of Baybayin is most likely used or introduced later on after the spanish artived in the Philippines and not during pre-colonial Philippines.

[@canismajor8601]

Babae-ᜊᜊᜁ Totoo-ᜆᜓᜆᜓᜂ

[@foogod4237]

Ok, this is completely tangential, but that music from The HU (a Mongolian folk metal band) is truly amazing. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. Everybody really should click the link and go over and watch the full video for themselves (and maybe a few of their others.. they've got a bit of a range, actually).

[@Nilguiri]

That was very interesting. Just one complaint, though: How about leaving the graphics on the screen for more than half a second each! Thanks.

[@kenninast]

I'm kind of flabberghasted that you didn't mention "Quipu", the ancient Inka "script".

[@phileo_ss]

I thought Nushu was interesting as I hear that Japanese _hiragana_ was developed for basically the same reason. Then later men started using it too.

[@anishraja9655]

I must inform you, most Abugidas (language scripts like Tibetan) have actual vowel letters, although only used when a word begins with a vowel. Also, most abugidas have markers that remove a letters inherent vowel, although vary in usage depending on the langauge.

[@hweiktomeyto]

Abugidas are very common in south east asia. Ge'ez is also abugida.

[@benjaminbowdon3505]

The Tibetan writing system you described works the same as Hindi script (devnarangi)...

[@anitathakur9340]

Not only that they look quite similar like ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པདྨེ་ཧཱུྃ ॐमणिपद्मेहुँ

[@AbeRegulus]

Please, there is no such thing as Hindi script with Devanagri in brackets. It's primarily Devanagri and a few languages derived it (Hindi for example)

[@D__Ujjwal]

Because it s derived from brahmni script used in ancient India. Southeast Asian country scripts also derived from brahmni script used in India

[@TheMDJ2000]

Many of the tones in Thai are not indicated by the tone symbols at all, but by the class of consonant (there are three consonant classes) combined with the type of ending: "live" or "dead." And I believe there are 5 tones, not 4. I am finding it extraordinarily difficult. Then there are the different fonts, many of which, to a foreigner, bear little resemblance to the standard fonts.

[@schnauzersareawesome7209]

My name is Lisa and I'm so glad I now don't have to use that chart to figure out how to write my name in Cherokee.

[@user-bi4eo3ys1f]

As native russian speaker I waited the translation of the word "li-sa" from Cherokee. And didn't notice it. In Russian the word "lisá" (лиса) means fox.

[@schnauzersareawesome7209]

@@user-bi4eo3ys1f Oh my! Thanks for the interesting information.

[@rosiefay7283]

1:31 Seeing your video's title, I thought you were going to point out one thing about Tibetan's writing-system which has got gradually crazier: it represents the pronunciation as it was in the 7th century -- and it's changed an awful lot since.

[@datob1489]

მადლობა საინტერესო ინფორმაციისთვის

[@somno6878]

Not only Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian and Nvshu (also a Chinese) scripts from Chinese territory are appealing, but Yi language scripts (very alien-like) and Tangut (Xixia) scripts from China are out of this world as well.

[@sarahgilbert8036]

Runic letters are another system that is "missing" sounds, especially the Younger Futhark

[@katakana1]

5:16 Oh yeah and "v" is a vowel in Cherokee. Pronounced like "uh" but nasal kinda. And you didn't even say why Cherokee seems crazy, which is all the syllables that look like Latin letters and are pronounced completely differently!

[@pilot_bruh576]

Probably the reason why baybayin only has 2 punctuations is that Filipino usually has words to give emotions like: Grabe = Can convey a strong feeling of suprise depending on how you pronounce it Ba = can be used at the end of sentence to ask questions can also be used with grabe to make "Grabe ba?" As a way to sarcastically congratulate someone as a joke

[@irinaspalve8356]

Wow... never heard only about the last one. But this is too bizarre 😁 Nice scripts... I think this theme can be continued. While searching in Wikipedia I once found a script that looked like doctor's handwriting (from my perspective). I still don't know to which language it belongs. Also an old Glagolic script is too different from nowadays Russian script, so it can't be read without learning.

[@lisamarydew]

Maybe old Latin? When the Romans first started writing Latin in cursive, it definitely looked like doctor's handwriting. Very chaotic! (Originally there weren't any rules for handwriting.)

[@equilibrum999]

what about scriot that whasth been written on pillars in Ireland, the Ogham?

[@Cordoba82]

Fantastic series of videos. With that been said, calling someone else writing system "crazy" come across as a wee bit disrespectful.

[@jmwild22]

You're kidding, right?

[@ShubhoBose]

The tibetan features you mentioned are not at all strange for a brahmic or abugida script. What makes it hard or unusual is that it's extremely non phonetic. The devnagari script for Hindi or script for the South Indian Tamil language have these features too.

[@pagophilus]

Re Baybayin, the Baybayin alphabet suits Tagalog, because of the equivalency/substitution of E/I and O/U in the language, but this has then migrated to the way the Roman alphabet is used to write Tagalog, where Filipinos mix up I/E and O/U, particularly those less educated. People's names get misspelled and even mispronounced (example - Bilenda/Belinda). And unless you question them they don't seem to even notice.

[@corinna007]

Was kinda hoping to see Canadian syllabics, like Inuktitut. 😅

[@ratoraj]

You should've included the Ranjana script as well☹️

[@Couryielle]

The reason why e/i and o/u have the same marker in baybayin is because there's no real distinction between them in native Tagalog. You can freely interchange e/i and o/u when speaking any word and it won't change the meaning at all. You may sound weird/like you have a heavy accent but you'd still be perfectly understood, so there was no need to make any differentiation between e/i and o/u

[@davidm5707]

Tibetan is similar to Hebrew with only consonants and understood vowels. Later dots and dashes we're added over and under consonants to codify vowels. Some letters change if there are more lines written above or below, and certain consonants have different shapes as final letters.

[@clovebeans713]

Actually they are different. One is an abjad and other is alphasyllabary/Bramhi/ Abugida script. The video explained it in a weird way but they don't assume vowels in tibetan. The base letters just always contain the soft 'a' vowel, pure consonants are expressed with a vowel marker( Example base letters- क, च ,ट, प, त, य, श and consonants- क्, च् ,ट्, प्, त्, य्, श् in devanagri) Hebrew is an abjad like Arabic. Tibetan language is directly inspired by Sankrit and Pali scripts which are Bramhi scripts. The main difference is in abjad vowel markers are not necessary and inherent to the system, as you mentioned it was later development. Words are written without vowel markers and are perfectly understandable with context. In Bramhi the vowel markers are inherent to the writing system and words don't make sense without them. The crazy features mentioned in video is not unique to tibetan all India scripts (except tamil) have same features including the vertical line full stop. Not surprising considering tibetanian borrowed heavily from sankrit and Pali.

[@damyankuzmic5605]

@Olly Richards, can you investigate Glagolyic letters and Croatian alphabet.

[@cupcakkeisaslayqueen]

I love cherokee and im learning the language

[@londongael414]

Hmm... Not enough letters for all the sounds, a single letter (or group) making lots of different sounds, the same sound written in several different ways, sounds written but not said - remind you of anything? While the script of English is not unusual for European languages, the spelling certainly is! And a look at most YT comment sections (not this one so much! :-) ) will show that even adult native speakers can struggle with it. I'd question whether any of the writing systems in this video are harder to learn than Chinese, but it is great to see and learn a little about these beautiful scripts.

[@CrisTryingToBeProductive]

Learning the Chinese script has been a bliss, at least for me it makes sense the way it works. But also so relaxing to write.

[@lisovyj_diadko]

well, about Thai you're not completely right. the case is there are three levels of letters depending on the tone, which can be changed by adding a tone mark. and this makes Thai more complicated.

[@KlaidosHollande]

8:54 I can't believe that as a Filipino who's mastered how Baybayin works, I've been framed as a VOWEL KILLER😂😂

[@buckwylde7965]

You forgot to mention English! No written language has done more to make a mockery of the alphabetic concept that a symbol stands for a sound than written English. To start, there are just 5 vowels symbols, a,e,i,o,u in English (and sometimes y, but nobody seems to know when the y symbol is to be treated as a vowel) to represent the 19 to 20 vowel sounds in English and any one of the 5 vowels symbols can make any one of the 19 to 20 vowel sounds, or, no sound at all!. And this is just a start, the chaos of written English is endless. Written Thai I have been told might be worst, but I don't know.

[@user-dr3mu9bz4m]

I have made a script too but I haven't named it yet. I use the script to write Turkish

[@kalakritistudios]

The 6th one reminds me of Sanskrit. The comma and full stops. Or the sequence of sounds. And the location and historicity.

[@MrZajebali]

In the end, as a linguist, I haven't seen anything out of ordinary.

[@winstonelston5743]

4:18 "...from top to bottom, right to left..." I get the top to bottom orientation but the positioning of the brush makes it look like she's writing top to bottom left to right.

[@JohnLeePettimoreIII]

5:16 in cherokee, the "v" represents a nasalized "U" sound.

[@senorliamy17]

Horizontal Mongolian looks a bit like Arabic or Persian script

[@YouTubeallowedmynametobestolen]

Speaking of languages that have more sounds than letters, ... English. 26 letters, but about 44 sounds. But that's OK. We just put two or three letters together to create additional graphemes-for example, 'sh' and 'oo.' (A grapheme is a letter or a letter combination that represents a sound.) So although we have 44 sounds, but only 26 individual letters, we actually have over 100 graphemes for writing the sounds. Oh, and some graphemes can represent more than one sound ('s' as in simple, sugar, and boys; 'a' as in apple, apex, and America; 'ie' as in pie and cookie), and some sounds can be represented by more than one grapheme (for example, /k/ can be spelled with a K as in kitchen, C as in cookie, CK as in duck, or CH as in character). And sometimes a grapheme represents no sound at all. That is, they are "silent" -- B as in comb and dumb and debt; E as in give and have and prerequisite. Makes perfect sense, huh?

[@juha-petrityrkko3771]

Tibetan itself does not look too scary. In some senses it could be easier than Thai. To me the most fearsome part of Tibetan is the drifting of pronunciation from the original spelling. Like in French language, you need to know quite a lot about how the language works before you are able to read it aloud correctly.

[@user-ed1mj5zk6f]

Very interesting, the only experience I have with absent vowels is in Hebrew. Some scripts are truly elegant and beautiful. I have thought of inheritance, a few cones, and tablets in different cuneiform scripts. I like very much the script of Georgean, absolutely beautiful.

[@SionTJobbins]

Wot no N'ko?! The cool alphabet invented in 1940s for the Manding-Fula language continuum of West Africa.

[@mongkolniyomrattana8971]

Here's an interesting tidbit: If you can read modern Thai, you'll also be able to decipher writings from 700 years ago, as the script remains unchanged

[@kalakritistudios]

Mangolian seems pretty easy. So did the second last one.

[@UnclePengy]

Baybayin looks like it follows a similar philosophy as Japanese kana systems. Are they in any way related?

[@user-sp4if8vc8t]

Thai consonants have 44. But 2 alphabets're no longer using/obsolete, so 42 consonants're still using. Thai tones have 4 marks, but 5 tone sounds. Bc we count unmark for based tone (flat tone).

[@tru7hhimself]

i came here expecting crazy writing systems, but found a video where 3 of the 7 examples are just brahmic scripts, which are pretty normal if you don't have a very eurocentric world view. in addition to that one example is arguably not a script at all, and also the thai tone marks don't work the way you describe them. overmore some "crazy" features are present in many european languages/scripts as well e.g.sounds being represented by more than one letter. i contend that english script is crazier than any of the examples you give here.

[@giuseppelogiurato5718]

That's funny; the whole time I was watching this, I was thinking "ok, so opposite of Hangul", and then the link at the end 😁... Hangul is really very easy, it's true.

[@yohanan5947]

Babayin, Tibetan, Thai, pretty much like Indian languages. Most Indian languages have multiple forms of s, l and r depending on how much you roll your tongue while sounding the consonant. Plus, they were all nations that historically traded with India.

[@WaMo721]

Hindj is pretty much persian language

[@OkOk-qd2nc]

Mongolian in Mongolia doesn't use their script anymore, now they only use Cyrillic (Slavic script) rather than old Mongolian scripts. Only people of inner mongolia in China retained their old script. It's funny how some Mongolian from Mongolia blame China for not respecting their traditions and cultural genocide when they themselves aren't even capable of protecting their own traditions. If you want to see original mongols go Inner mongolia, or you can visit Mongolia if you want to experience some distorted Russian culture.

[@melissasalasblair5273]

Work, work, work, work 😩😁✍️🐙❣️

[@qwertyTRiG]

Weirder than any of these, and also cooler, is Sutton SignWriting.

[@JimMonsanto]

7:07 "If English had three different Ss . . ."--well, I can't vouch for S, but we have three different letters that all represent the /k/ phoneme: C, K, and Q. As far as the /s/ phoneme is concerned, off the top of my head, I can think of two: S and C (followed by i or e, unless the "ci" is pronounced as SH). I have a feeling that that is what's going on in Thai, as well. A lot of historically different sounds have since merged into one, leaving behind three different letters with which to write them, and the spellings are reflecting historical pronunciations. Edit: spoke too soon. You literally gave this explanation the moment I unpaused it after posting the comment. LOL

[@alephomega955]

Just to let you know, the v in Cherokee is pronounced as /ɛ̃/ (correct me if I’m wronɡ), not /v/. V was historically a vowel at the time the script was made.

[@emperoroak7331]

As an Burmese Tibet and ngusu are very easy for me 😂

[@watchmakerful]

Baybayin vowel marks are strikingly similar to Semitic ones (especially Arabic and Syriac). Are they related or is it just a coincidence?

[@lardgedarkrooster6371]

Kinda both I think. Baybayin, Arabic, and Syriac script are somewhat related, all ultimately coming from the Aramaic script. However, I think maybe the vowel marks being similar might just be a coincidence

[@AutoReport1]

T and d are just unvoiced and voiced versions, even in English we sometimes use them interchangeably. Some other English consonants don't distinguish between voiced and invoiced variants, lots of others are written the same even if different word forms switch between voiced and invoiced.

[@rosiefay7283]

"even in English we sometimes use them interchangeably." Who does that??

[@AutoReport1]

@@rosiefay7283almost everyone. You just might not notice. Often we write d, but say t and vice versa. Sometimes we change the voicing depending on context, but don't change the spelling. Take "swept up". Normally swept had an invoiced /t/, but when followed closely by a vowel is voiced to /d/. Conversely the d is normally voiced in jumped up, jumped over etc. but unvoiced to /t/ in "he jumped". Occasionally devoicing is reflected in spelling (e.g. swept, wept) but not usually. B and P are also voiced and unvoiced allophones. E.g. in "speech" the p is usually voiced to /b/ (and protects the s from voicing to /z/ in the process). Most English consonants have these voiced unvoiced pairs, although some have to share a notation with another phoneme or their unvoiced counterpart (e.g. th). In all these pairs a normally unvoiced phone can be voiced in some circumstances and vice versa. Now I say almost everyone, but non-native English speakers often won't voice a consonant that isn't written as voiced (even if they would in their native tongue), and some American dialects won't either (which can probably be blamed on early non-English speaking migrants in that area).

[@Rouge_Gems]

I really like the Mongolian script.

[@AbeRegulus]

Is the Mongolian script related to the Arabic script in anyway? Because when laid horizontal, it's right to left and also the alphabets have 4 different forms (stand alone, beginning of a word, middle of a word, end of a word). Also it's cursive Also to add, Tibetan doesn't assume the schwa sound, the schwa sound is there by default. It's part of the letter. It's just the vowel modifier changes the schwa sound to another vowel. All Indian scripts work the same way (except some of them)

[@lardgedarkrooster6371]

I think the Mongol script came from an old Uyghur script which came from the Sogdian script which came from the Syriac script which came from the Aramaic script. Arabic also ultimately comes from the Aramaic script by way of the Nabataean script, so they are kinda like cousin scripts

[@beregu]

@@lardgedarkrooster6371 That is right. Mongolians call its script as both Mongolian script and Uyghuric-Mongolian script (recognition of its origin). Uyghurs created their script based on Sogdian.