As a West African, it was fascinating to see the anatomical visualization of the deft needed to enunciate the 'gb' sound. I really can now understand how challenging it would be for a non-native speaker 😂
@TheZenytram3 жыл бұрын
even with that is impossble to do it
@chukstristan36053 жыл бұрын
@@TheZenytram I don't believe so. What works best is probably not to 'think' too much about it and just watch and then imitate those who fluently can. Won't be perfect but definitely passable.
@TheZenytram3 жыл бұрын
like the air dont move for one of them, or it pass in the b part or in the g part
@Kaepsele3373 жыл бұрын
I even have difficulty hearing the difference of that sound and a "normal" b sound. It's quite easy to distinguish sounds in the languages you speak, but it's when it's a sound that doesn't exist in any language that I speak my brain just fits them to the closest sound that I know and I literally hear no difference. I once knew a brazilian girl that could not tell the difference between "R" and "H" in german and that's just wild to me.
@TheZenytram3 жыл бұрын
@@Kaepsele337 brazil has 3 distinct sound for R some times 4, that is equal to the; american R, italian R, french R and german CH.
@Mezelenja3 жыл бұрын
As a West African, I didn't even know Soninke had a written form untill I went to the village my parents grew up in Senegal. It was soo confusing to know how to speak a language, but not read it. Shit broke my brain a lil bit.
@connormurphy6833 жыл бұрын
Did they write it in Latin script?
@cakeisyummy57553 жыл бұрын
@@connormurphy683 Probably not.
@cdsung65273 жыл бұрын
It means you are illiterate in your language
@paranoidhumanoid3 жыл бұрын
ㅅㅗㄴㅣㄴㄲㅐ , ㅅㅐㄴㅐㄱㅏㄹ'
@niyahlang.70873 жыл бұрын
@@cdsung6527 I've noticed that a lot of people are, I have so many friends that can speak their language but not read it.
@rogerwilco23 жыл бұрын
I think I could enjoy an episode on any of these separately.
@torspedia3 жыл бұрын
Yes, maybe it could be a new series?!
@gustavoa.belfiore47013 жыл бұрын
Oh yes that would be brilliant
@ethanb48903 жыл бұрын
@@torspedia I second this
@punishedredruby3 жыл бұрын
Y E S
@maia88233 жыл бұрын
YES
@dionyzus29093 жыл бұрын
When you said the meaning of the acronym "Adlam" ("The letters that protect the people from vanishing"), I got thrilled. What a deep meaning that carries. Language is indeed a way to keep the culture of a people alive.
@paranoidhumanoid3 жыл бұрын
ㅏㄷㄹ'ㅏㅁ
@PC_Simo3 жыл бұрын
@Weasel Yep. Sprach. Also; I think, the phonetic transcription should read: ”ʃpraç”; since, in German, the sibilant [s] becomes post-alveolar [ʃ], before a voiceless plosive, at the start of a word / syllable 🤔. Also; the ”bay” should read: ”bai”; [y], in the IPA, represents the same sound, as the German ”Ü”; *_NOT:_* [j].
@the_jujuman52693 жыл бұрын
I’m actually almost done with a keyboard for Nsibidi and it’s really fun to learn. Nsibidi is precolonial and existed within Nigeria and Cameroon as early as 9 BCE
@Toywins2 жыл бұрын
That's AWESOME!! Have you finished yet?
@roseashkiiii43612 жыл бұрын
Please update me I'm ibibio and I believe ibibio is the language that uses nsibidi.
@cliffordjames44622 жыл бұрын
Does anyone know the writing system for Yoruba?
@iretiflud82512 жыл бұрын
@@cliffordjames4462 Ajami
@idiotuk Жыл бұрын
@@roseashkiiii4361 pls speak it!!! 😭😭😭
@benw99493 жыл бұрын
One of the most interesting things about the start of this, is that a couple of kids, just 10 and 14, would decide to invent a writing system to sound out their language, based on what they knew of another one, but inventing their own original one, not as a secret code, but to write normally, so it's easy for their own people and language. Really great, really smart, and it goes to show that kids/teens can be as smart or smarter than the adults around them, just as much as they might also screw up and lack experience, they can create, invent, and can know and do, without it being a problem that they are "just kids or just teens."
@ladybluelotus3 жыл бұрын
Agreed! What's equally amazing is that the adults respected the teens and saw the usefulness of the writing system enough to allow it to spread rapidly.
@MerlinTheCommenter3 жыл бұрын
@@new-lviv more so they are untainted by the pollution of western media. The more I travel fhe more I noticed that the less English people speak and understand (on a society whole) the less bigotry, biases and elitist behaviors are pervasive in that culture.
@DeclanMBrennan3 жыл бұрын
It is children, due to their plastic brains, that appear to have made almost all of the languages that exist. When a bunch of cultures are thrown together, a messy pidgin evolves. It takes the next generation of children to regularize this into a fully fledged Creol with a consistant grammer and amazingly this happens completely organically.
@Jimjolnir3 жыл бұрын
"without it being a problem that they are "just kids or just teens."" The young-uns need some kind of 'coaching', for sure (well, we all do haha), but I agree, they need not be treated like 'children', but people. I say this because at the age of 35 there are still members of my family that don't take me for an 'adult', and yet make greater mistakes. One thing that comes up often around the fire/meeting place, amongst all age groups, is that no matter how much we learn and progress through life 'you' are always 'you', doesn't matter if you're 9 or 99.
@chrissmith35873 жыл бұрын
@@MerlinTheCommenter that’s pretty bigotted
@puntellipuna10613 жыл бұрын
This title has the same feel as “Why do things keep evolving into crabs?”
@sion83 жыл бұрын
🤣
@axeinrose3 жыл бұрын
why DO things keep envolveing to to CRABS?!?
@sion83 жыл бұрын
@@axeinrose For Crustaceans it seems to be an invaluable shape to allow them to live on land and sea (and eventually just land in more than a handful of case).
@SamAronow3 жыл бұрын
"Crabs keep turning into land animals!"
@seethrough_treeshrew3 жыл бұрын
A fellow PBS Eons subscriber, I see
@asa.pankeiki3 жыл бұрын
I am head over heels for West African writing systems for how inspiring they are at giving languages their own literary “faces.” I hope you’d look into the Cherokee syllabary and other Native American writing systems in the future!
@citrusblast43723 жыл бұрын
I loved learning about the cherokee syllabary
@solar0wind3 жыл бұрын
I read once that the guy inventing the Cherokee writing system kickstarted the development of the other writing systems not only for native Americans, but also for a lot of African languages. I mean it would fit based on the time scale, but I wonder whether that's actually true!
@AaronOfMpls3 жыл бұрын
There's also that family of abugidas that's been used for a bunch of Algonquin, Athabaskan, and Inuit languages in Canada. It's kinda cool how those work. Most syllables in those languages are either consonant-vowel or just a vowel. So each character form represents a syllable's consonant, and which direction it's rotated tells you that syllable's vowel. A diacritic dot marks a long vowel. And a consonant that _ends_ a syllable gets appended as a superscript to the regular CV character. The writing system was devised by missionaries from a mix of Devanagari script and Pittman shorthand. But it took on a life of its own among native communities, and some still use it today. (Though others lost it from 20th Century schools not teaching it.)
@kristenphelps46023 жыл бұрын
Oh I would love to see this
@PC_Simo2 жыл бұрын
@@AaronOfMpls Oh, yes! I would just *_LOVE TO_* see NativLang making a video on the Inuktitut-abugida. Tom Scott already has.
@37wheels3 жыл бұрын
I'm sorry, but are we just going to gloss over the fact that one of the languages appears to rely on *color* to convey information? Can we get a video on THAT beautiful beast please?
@YaAllahswt3 жыл бұрын
Aha, it’s called edo oracle rainbow script. It truly is beautiful and unique :)
@kukifitte73573 жыл бұрын
Me who is colour blind: guess i'll die. Nah but for real, it looks really cool
@DarthCiliatus3 жыл бұрын
Looks cool but would likely be tedious to write in due to having to switch writing implements.
@kakahass88453 жыл бұрын
1000 years in the future "WHY ARE THERE SO MANY IDENTICAL LETTERS?!? WHO DECIDED THIS WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA?"
@1Thunderfire2 жыл бұрын
That makes me think of video games. You know when something is highlighted in red to signify something important or whatever? Sounds really cool.
@vonnedavienwilson81503 жыл бұрын
the way you illustrated falling, rising, low, high by actually tonalizing these words in the way it functions was brilliant. this is such a great video. wow. wow wow. i truly appreciate this.
@asyndeton3 жыл бұрын
MAJOR MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING
@feliperodrigues25723 жыл бұрын
Comments that you can hear
@i_teleported_bread74043 жыл бұрын
@@feliperodrigues2572 Yup.
@pirukiddingme19083 жыл бұрын
Jagwire
@i_teleported_bread74043 жыл бұрын
@@pirukiddingme1908 I think you mean _balam._
@feliperodrigues25723 жыл бұрын
@BEHOLD!! Neither did the ancient greeks back when their alphabet showed up. Or the phoenicians. Os romans, or any of those
@Fede_uyz3 жыл бұрын
History is being written ... Writing being historied? Writing is making history? History making writing? Writing history? History in the writing? Oh well, lets just say this is a very historical moment
@Zeyede_Seyum3 жыл бұрын
*Indeed*
@03.ximipa3ahmadrinofarosmu33 жыл бұрын
History written
@03.ximipa3ahmadrinofarosmu33 жыл бұрын
@@jamesmayle4712 but is it written?
@engineerconagher94663 жыл бұрын
@@03.ximipa3ahmadrinofarosmu3 and is it true?
@03.ximipa3ahmadrinofarosmu33 жыл бұрын
@@engineerconagher9466 idk didn't bother reading it
@HenrikP973 жыл бұрын
I really appreaciate the focus you put on less covered geographic areas, Central Asia, West Africa, the Caucasus and the like. Not that the linguistics of more familiar areas aren't interesting, but it's wonderful to hear stories from elsewhere, to give context and flavour and personality to places and peoples so often glossed over, or bunched together into one, despite massive differences that'd make all of our European world's variety seem insignificantly small.
@IshtarNike3 жыл бұрын
Not to mention the fact that many people think sub Saharan Africans haven't got written languages of their own.
@davidjoelsson49293 жыл бұрын
@@IshtarNike well its true on many places in africa this is why you need to invent scripts
@kindomofghana3 жыл бұрын
@@davidjoelsson4929 Well, a prejudice bigot will always be a prejudice bigot.
@ojberrettaberretta53143 жыл бұрын
@@kindomofghana wow
@ojberrettaberretta53143 жыл бұрын
no reason to put down european variety all exists in its own right none is above the other.
@alexgentry66753 жыл бұрын
An episode on each of these writing systems please! More African writing systems need to be represented to illustrate the diversity and beauty of Africa and to get more people to learn these languages! Thanks so much for what you do!
@chidera57302 жыл бұрын
Yeah!! Not many people seem to be interested
@chidera57302 жыл бұрын
especially west Africa
@d_d65003 жыл бұрын
As a fula i'm so glad that you made this vidéo and make people in another part of the globe interested on our culture NativLang you
@NativLang3 жыл бұрын
Which of these beautiful scripts grab your attention? One interesting note to add: there are many consonant-vowel alphabets here but also syllables, featural signs, logograms...
@abaddon21483 жыл бұрын
this kinda reminds me of other scripts like ogham script even though that one's old. people are picking it up more
@suranumitu77343 жыл бұрын
A funny thing I noticed while you were exlaining the difference between hin-du and hi-ndu: the script kind of looks like a flipped Devanagari, the writing system used for Hindi, with the connecting line at the bottom instead of the top!
@hernandezpachecoguillermo35513 жыл бұрын
Hey NativeLang, hello there! I had heard before about Vai script, and was pretty mesmerized about its history: it was Momolu Duwualu Bukele; a Liberian linguist, who created the syllabary inspired by the ancient Vai ideographic symbols. Greetings from Mexico!
@Mousey101013 жыл бұрын
Yeah, I wanna know more about that colorful script that was shown!! I have no idea what script that is!
@NativLang3 жыл бұрын
@@Mousey10101 The "Rainbow Oracle Script"... and what a name!
@klml38823 жыл бұрын
Thank you for shedding the light on the most misunderstood cultures in the world
@firstname43373 жыл бұрын
LOL, we all understand it
@H-Vox3 жыл бұрын
@@firstname4337 Tell me more
@peskypigeonx3 жыл бұрын
@@H-Vox they once said: “they need to get it together and stop the tribal mentality” so I don’t think they’re saying this in good light
@borginburkes18192 жыл бұрын
@@firstname4337 he’s a racist.
@reinhardheinzwarfelr82152 жыл бұрын
Misunderstood? Underepresented would be better. You cant understand something you dont know
@afinoxi3 жыл бұрын
Back when I was little when I used to keep a journal , I learned how to read and write in Cyrillic so that nobody other than me could read it lmao , I imagine a lot of scripts are born for reasons like that
@penfelyn3 жыл бұрын
андерстендебал
@winkleperiwinkle8083 жыл бұрын
i did that too, but for my final exams and to write notes on my dictionary (the only object we could use). i ended up not needing the notes, but i felt like a secret agent
@nikitahichoii4823 жыл бұрын
Lol, when I was younger I learned to write in cyrilic and adapted it to spanish (my mother tongue), eventually, adapting writing scripts to my own language has become my hobby, I have cyrilic, greek, glagolitic, arabic, hebrew, and I tried hindi and tibetan but they are somewhat difficult
@dcraexon3 жыл бұрын
some kind of power or emotional connection is in the different scripts
@heidih30483 жыл бұрын
I made up my own alphabet characters and memorized them for that purpose.
@rivengle3 жыл бұрын
There's something so beautiful about a writing system fitted exactly for the language it represents.
@himesilva2 жыл бұрын
Polish and Czech should learn from West Africa 😂
@Memezuii2 жыл бұрын
@@himesilva And english
@himesilva2 жыл бұрын
@@Memezuii I think the Latin alphabet is fine for English, however we do really need to decide on one way for spelling sounds (-ough, -oe, -ew, -oo, etc.) instead of the mish-mash of French, Latin, Dutch, Celtic, Spanish, Greek, etc. that we have now.
@Memezuii2 жыл бұрын
@@himesilva Well yes, but actually no. "th" did not mean /ð/ / /θ/. It meant /tʰ/ in other languages. þ & ð were better letters as they could separate the voice and voiceless. Old English did not, it just said that any þ's or ð's at the beginning or end of a word were voiceless, and only voiceless in the middle if it was doubled up, but that was 1000 years ago, that's *Old* English. We can make so that þ is /θ/ & ð as /ð/. Maybe not supplant the latin alphabet entirely, maybe just add some diacritics that make sense & remove a lot of historical spelling
@MikeslyMontague2 жыл бұрын
Yoruba written with Latin characters is borderline unreadable. I need to see it in its own script that doesn't give me eye strain.
@gab.lab.martins3 жыл бұрын
I just want to say, this is BY FAR the best language channel on youtube.
@SnarkNSass3 жыл бұрын
A concept that hadn't occurred to me. That scripts were still being invented. Amazing.✌🏻
@iaw74063 жыл бұрын
Ive made my own. I use it for writing passwords. It can be used for multiple languages although im only fluent in english.
@someguy44393 жыл бұрын
@@iaw7406 is your name written in that script?
@iaw74063 жыл бұрын
@@someguy4439 lol no
@Tomas-ml9nv3 жыл бұрын
@@iaw7406 what is it then ?
@SnarkNSass3 жыл бұрын
@@iaw7406 yeah. I have a file labelled Secret Codes... But it isn't meant for a spoken real language script. I guess what hadn't occurred to me was that there were languages that didn't have a script. Secret codes are fun!😁
@AvrahamYairStern3 жыл бұрын
I've been on a NativLang binge lately, just watched the full Thoth's Pill documentary yesterday (finally), amazingly done! I'm glad you've uploaded again.
@feliperodrigues25723 жыл бұрын
He always posts! It just takes a month or two between videos (to which I am very grateful as the quality is always top tier). My favorite channel* ever!
@AvrahamYairStern3 жыл бұрын
@@feliperodrigues2572 I know he always posts, it just takes ages, I agree, the quality is better. Well my favorite canal is the Suez Canal but sure.
@feliperodrigues25723 жыл бұрын
@@AvrahamYairStern just noticed my typo! 😅😅😅 My keyboard corrected channel to portuguese "canal" and I didn't notice
@AvrahamYairStern3 жыл бұрын
@@feliperodrigues2572 haha, sorry I had to take that opportunity.
@feliperodrigues25723 жыл бұрын
@@AvrahamYairStern well played! It took me a minute to understand 😅
@rasmusvanwerkhoven19623 жыл бұрын
This is a MAJOR MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING
@takashi.mizuiro3 жыл бұрын
yessssssssssss
@_Astrogirl_3 жыл бұрын
@@takashi.mizuiro hi takashi sensei lololol
@takashi.mizuiro3 жыл бұрын
Amelia dude what?
@fxonevr3 жыл бұрын
100%
@_Astrogirl_3 жыл бұрын
@@takashi.mizuiro your username says takashi sensei
@scottlewis16393 жыл бұрын
I fully believe that this is the best channel on KZbin. Growing up in a monolingual English speaking community these kinds of things are criminally under reported on, it wasn't until university linguistics that I found my passion for language and your channel has been a big part of that
@mattiaskristiansen88932 жыл бұрын
When you said that most people can't name that many scripts outside africa (0:10), i took it as a challenge. I counted to 27 different writing systems outside of africa from memory. I love your videos btw.
@szilveszterforgo87763 жыл бұрын
Writing system is my favorite topic in linguistics. I've been requesting a video on it for so long and we finally got it. Can't wait for it!
@JakubWojciechowski9333 жыл бұрын
As a great fan of cultures and folklore, I'm so glad to see that there are yet places where individual cultures flourish and not everything will be sacrificed for globalisation. Keep it up guys, the world needs you to express yourself!
@Trader_Spero3 жыл бұрын
Not only is this a revolutionary moment in the written language and preservation of history, but this a beautiful treasure trove of inspiration for conlang. Thanks for spreading the word of this historical moment mate! :)
@AvrahamYairStern3 жыл бұрын
MAJOR MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING.
@jfrv22442 жыл бұрын
No. not really
@mcoates36493 жыл бұрын
BRO this is SO COOL. I've always been interested in script-making as an extension of linguistics, so I'm definitely going to have to research this more.
@paetonlaur3655Ай бұрын
I love it when languages invent their own writing systems and I wish more could do that; it gives a language a unique character that you don't normally find anywhere else. Thank you so much for educating us on such an interesting topic!
@formidablefoe57973 жыл бұрын
You should talk about african pre-colonial writing systems.
@wordart_guian3 жыл бұрын
so far I know about ethiopic, coptic/nubian, tifinagh, and I think there are some undeciphered ones too
@ffghjj99963 жыл бұрын
ethiopic? you mean amharic? there were fewer pre colonial writing systems though because arabic and the roman alphabet were more convenient to adopt - same reason why there aren't many European writing systems and there's only about two. as far as we know, a lot of pre colonial cultures had different ways of recording knowledge than writing. unless there was a lot of written action going on in the south that I don't know about
@wordart_guian3 жыл бұрын
@@ffghjj9996 amharic is the language, and it's not the one the ethiopic script was created for (that would be ge'ez, hence the script also being called ge'ez script)
@dianek80893 жыл бұрын
THIS!!!
@dekenlst3 жыл бұрын
Sub Saharan Africa didn't have any
@Sthuthukile3 жыл бұрын
This is incredible. I'm thinking of how much African history has been distorted or lost because it was never written down.
@bloom4096 Жыл бұрын
A lot was written down, but destroyed by those European criminials during colonization.
@froglifes6829 Жыл бұрын
@@bloom4096 Nice propaganda
@Odumase Жыл бұрын
@@froglifes6829 it’s true you bigot
@condeuiosandilixtos78583 жыл бұрын
I had no idea this has been an ongoing thing for decades. And yet I feel so proud of the speakers who come up with the new scripts! Fascinating and admirable!
@wasabista16133 жыл бұрын
I had no idea this was going on. I was aware of the Amharic script of Ethiopia but that's it. Very enlightening.
@ndebe3 жыл бұрын
Yayyyy, thank you for featuring Ndebe script for Igbo (also works for Yoruba) !!!!
@sion83 жыл бұрын
(4:00) That colorful writing is very unexpected! I have thought about such things before, but at the same time it also feels like something sci-fi writers would do to have a very alien script, yet reality will always be stranger than fiction.
@Ledabot3 жыл бұрын
The writing with the coloured letters looks interesting. Surprised you didn't mention something that quite literally stands out so much
@heidih30483 жыл бұрын
Yes, it seems really interesting, but also inconvenient for everyday use for anyone, regardless of culture, as multiple colored pens, pencils, or paints are not easily available at all times, in all situations.
@colireg3 жыл бұрын
@@heidih3048 also they're not suitable for colour blind people
@heidih30483 жыл бұрын
@@colireg yes, good point
@anonymooseanonymouse63713 жыл бұрын
You could solve both of those problems if you used a system of pencil shading
@moondust23653 жыл бұрын
@@anonymooseanonymouse6371 True. So instead of just colors, you could use shades. Let's say they use tones. Black is for the main lines. Dark gray/red is for low tones. Mid-gray/blue is for falling tones. Light gray/green is for rising tones. White/yellow is for high tones.
@itstadiwa2843 жыл бұрын
I actually invented my own writing system that I use for my language (Shona🇿🇼🇿🇼) 🤣🤣 I have many of them. I run them by my brother to see if he thinks they look "african" and if he agrees then I use it. It started with conlangs for my novel, but then I realised I wanna take notes about other stuff👀👀 without raising eyebrows so I was I made one. I have Alphabetic, Abugidas, Abjads (arabic), and featural (Korean type - written in blocks).
@yveltalsea3 жыл бұрын
that is so awesome, i wish i could do that too >
@peterduck12043 жыл бұрын
That’s a great sign for a writer. J.r.r. Tolkien was famous for writing elvish and other such languages
@eusoualenda75063 жыл бұрын
Me too, I created a syllabic writing system
@imhummingbird80433 жыл бұрын
Any progress so far with your novel? would be delighted to read it!
@lusomnthali75343 жыл бұрын
This is fascinating. Keep going! You may be the start of a proper Shona writing system!
@Devinci2973 жыл бұрын
I'm from West Africa and I also created my own writing system last year.
@oz_jones2 жыл бұрын
Even if it's for a conlang, it's commendable. I have been trying to do so for how many years but I haven't really put REALLY any effort to it, so... there's that.
@alram81433 жыл бұрын
I keep coming for the way you tell such humane stories involving languages, thank you for sharing.
@lotgc3 жыл бұрын
You should do a video on how letters and writing systems are transcribed into computers. It seems to me you can basically find any letter you want. Even with Chinese you can find any of tens of thousands of characters, so how is it that they were programmed into a computer?
@sion83 жыл бұрын
*+*
@columbus8myhw3 жыл бұрын
The Unicode Consortium
@aoelp3 жыл бұрын
Probably with Chinese they are mostly just vector graphics whose radical elements can either be squished to fit in the context of a complicated character or in edge-cases are individually completely redrawn. Either way since you cannot have that many fonts with most non-alphabetic scripts (even Arabic is limited in that regard) standard Chinese may not even take much more storage space than all common Latin fonts if not less. The fact that most non-middle Eastern scripts are written left-to-right might also help. As for ancient Chinese cursive or Mongolian there is no extensive support for top-to-bottom scripts in unicode even though some characters can be quite tall trough diacritics or by themselves like ﷻ.
@ClifffSVK3 жыл бұрын
*Hardware level* (you can skip this) I'm not going to explain how electrical circuits and SSD/HDD storages work in full detail, but when a computer is on, there's electric current that's flowing through all the components of the computer. Computer components consist of many "logic gates", which manipulate the electric flow. There's a certain voltage on the output, which represents information. This information is either TRUE (e.g. high voltage) or FALSE (e.g. low voltage). When you save a text document on your hard drive, it is stored in multiple "cells", each cell containing either TRUE or FALSE information. In terms of math, you can interpret this information as a number: TRUE as 1, FALSE as 0. *Binary* (you can skip this one too) We usually work with base-10 positional numeral system. That means we have 10 symbols (0 to 9) to represent numbers. We use 10 unique symbols for the first 10 numbers (starting from 0): 0, 1, 2, 3... And when the number is higher than the last symbol we have (9), we simply put the second symbol (1) to the second position and start the first position all over again: 10, 11, 12, 13... But having only 2 possible values to represent information, we don't need 10 symbols, but just 2. So in the "binary" system, we use base-2 positional numeral system. It goes: 0, 1. That's it. These ones and zeros are called binary digits (a.k.a. bits). *Data* While the hardware only "sees" one of two possible values, software can "see" much more. How does it do it? By combining these TRUE/FALSE informations (or bits) in groups. These groups are called bytes. A byte is a sequence of 8 bits. That means you have 8 available positions and when you start counting in binary, you go: 0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110... until you get to the highest number, 11111111, which is number 255 in decimal (base-10). So with 1 byte you can have 256 unique combinations that can represent 256 unique values. *Data encoding* 256 is enough high number to represent letters/characters of the Latin alphabet (uppercase and lowercase), digits from 0 to 9, some symbols and some control characters (e.g. newline character that lets us have multiple lines in our text document). In order to have your system read the text file from your hard drive correctly, it has to follow some standard which tells the software what character each byte represents. One of these standards is ASCII. Earlier ASCII used 7 bits (128 unique combinations, which was still enough) to represent characters. It was before the standardization of the length of 1 byte being 8 bits. Later on, another standard called Extended ASCII used 8 bits to represent characters. It included some letters with diacritics, so multiple European languages could be written using this encoding. When you save a text document to your hard drive using the ASCII encoding, each character takes 1 byte of memory. But ASCII wasn't enough. Computers started being used all over the world and people wanted to be able to write in their own languages on them. Computer engineers, programmers and institutions from around the world started developing many new standards. But there was another problem. What if you wanted to write in multiple languages in one text document? A new standard was needed, which would encode multiple languages at once. *Universal encoding* Unicode was a new standard aiming to encode as many languages (or writing systems) as possible. The current capacity of the Unicode table is more than 1 million characters, while only about 150 000 characters are actually defined/assigned. There are multiple encodings which follow the Unicode standard, the most popular being UTF-8. In order to be able to represent thousands or even millions of different characters, UTF-8 uses combinations of bytes to represent characters. It can use 1 or a combination of up to 4 bytes to encode characters and can possibly encode up to around 2 million characters (twice the size of the Unicode table). The most used languages/writing systems are located at the beginning of the table and can be represented with less bytes. When you save a text document to your hard drive using the UTF-8 encoding, each character takes 1 to 4 bytes of memory. Unicode also assigns emoji characters to the table and there's more and more of them every year. But not all of them are encoded as separate characters. Many of them (such as country flags or all those faces with different skin color) are achieved by combining multiple emoji characters together. *Fonts* Fonts are files containing information about shapes of letters, their sizes, ligatures, kerning, a bunch of tables with additional information, etc. A character in a font file is called glyph. A font creator is hypothetically able to create glyphs for all Unicode code points, including all writing systems and all Chinese characters. Sometimes, when font creators create a new writing system, like some sort of an alien language for a movie or a video game, they assign the glyphs to Latin Unicode code points, so you're able to write this script using English keyboard. When you open your text document in a text editor, basically what happens is: 1. a sequence of bits are read from the hard drive; 2. they're grouped into bytes; 3. bytes are converted to characters based on the encoding used (ASCII, UTF-8, etc.); 4. a font rendering software reads a font file; 5. the font rendering software takes the text and retrieves respective glyphs from the font file according to the characters in the text, performs additional tasks if needed (e.g. anti-aliasing) and renders the result; 6. the result is printed out on the screen.
@MattMcIrvin3 жыл бұрын
That topic is a world unto itself! The encodings alone were the outcome of many years of evolution and debate. I remember the days when most computers you could buy in the West could only display a simple Latin character set that was usually some idiosyncratic variant of ASCII. Just getting some diacritical marks in was a major advance.
@oliveranderson72643 жыл бұрын
Your focus on African languages these last two videos is appreciated !
@AaronOfMpls3 жыл бұрын
Indeed, I like how these videos feature languages from less familiar parts of the world. And @Oliver Anderson, is that the Kurtzgesagt duck in your avie? ☺
@charliespinoza19663 жыл бұрын
The variety of human speech and creativity will never cease to amaze and thrill me.
@Sirenensang3 жыл бұрын
This is absolutely beautiful and says so much about the beauty and richness in africa. Thanks so much for covering this!
@buddyadams47813 жыл бұрын
The first constructed script I ever heard about that was designed to solve these problems: Cherokee. Then I learned about Korean. These are beautiful. Time to get busy Unicode people.
@challalla3 жыл бұрын
All these scripts are already encoded in Unicode, by the way. But they could do with more font choices, so I would say get busy typeface designers.
@possiblyrei3 жыл бұрын
Yeah i'm always like, Why can't English be like Korean?
@buddyadams47813 жыл бұрын
@@challalla I'm glad to hear that.
@buddyadams47813 жыл бұрын
@@possiblyrei When I become king of the world, I will mandate that all written languages be written in (expanded) Hangul.
@possiblyrei3 жыл бұрын
@@buddyadams4781 And I will be here to help (except french, its pretty fine and would lose a lot if it was written in hangeul)
@Clockehwork3 жыл бұрын
Hope we do get to hear more of those stories you teased. Especially the Rainbow Oracle Script's, you can't have something so distinct in the background and not even mention it!
@ynntari27753 жыл бұрын
If English and French managed to have a writing form, any language can.
@thorodinson66492 жыл бұрын
Such an unenlightened opinion
@MiguelDLewis2 жыл бұрын
English and French use the Latin script of their Roman colonizers.
@bensy17042 жыл бұрын
English has a better script(Shavian) English isn't a an overly difficult language to write down we just try to mash a script that dosent work for it (the Latin script)
@yourowndealer2 жыл бұрын
English spelling has nothing to do with it's writting system. Tibetan and Thai also have non-phonetic spelling even tho they don't use Latin script. Languages like English, Thai, Tibetan have etymological spelling and haven't been reformed for a long time.
@yourowndealer2 жыл бұрын
English used to be phonetic. English later went through phonetic changes but English never changed its writing to match modern spelling and thus modern English spelling reflects pronounciation from hundreds of years ago.
@asox52293 жыл бұрын
Finally someone sheds light on Adlan! It was such a cool new language script, and I'm glad someone finally talked about it.
@storytime-c1p Жыл бұрын
had an interaction with a friends wife from Albania, we on the other hand are both from Ghana, and that was the first time I realized people have a hard time pronouncing most of our basic sounds. I guess we never thought too hard about it. It took her a long while to master just 4 the most frequently used consonant combinations in our native languages. And Albanian in turn took me off guard lol. It was a fun exchange though.
@TheEnergeticPanda3 жыл бұрын
I'm learning Chinese (even moved to Taiwan to help) and there are times, so so so many times, when I just want to give up and quit. Your videos help rekindle my love of languages and the challenge that is Chinese. So keep it up!
@zimriel2 жыл бұрын
Which Chinese? Mandarin or Min / Taiwanese?
@jumpvelocity39537 ай бұрын
@@zimrielyou mean Taiwanese Hokkien? Min is a huge branch and possibly the oldest branch of Chinese. Taiwanese Hokkien is probably not even the only Min variety spoken in Taiwan.
@ramik813 жыл бұрын
As an Armenian, I understand a need for a separate script. Մենք էլ ունենք մեր է։
@zimriel2 жыл бұрын
yes the Caucasus came up with some fascinating non-Greek / non-Aramaic scripts. Also Georgian and the criminally-underrated Udi "caucasian-albanian".
@maxwiencek Жыл бұрын
@@zimriel What are you talking about? The general consensus is that Armenian is modelled after the Greek alphabet, supplemented with letters from a different source or sources for Armenian sounds not found in Greek.
@thibio_x Жыл бұрын
i use to learn ur script back then along with korean, greek, cyrillic, and baybayin (ph ancient script) when i was 13
@ramik81 Жыл бұрын
@@maxwiencek oh, really? Then try to get a Greek speaker to see if he can recognize any of the letters. They won’t, not a single one. I love how full of themselves western scientists get when dealing with civilizations they’ve deemed not worth a damn. 🙄
@maxwiencek Жыл бұрын
@@ramik81 There are many calligraphic hands in Latin scripts, especially old ones, that a contemporary reader would never be able to read as they are so different from what we know as Latin letters. Moreover, Armenian alphabet is MODELLED AFTER and not BORROWED FROM. Just like Latin and cyrylic alphabets come from Greek, Greek comes from Phoenician, Phoenician comes from Egyptian... Hebrew and Arabic scripts also are derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
@romajimamulo3 жыл бұрын
N'Ko is my favorite looking script of the lot, I'm a sucker for scripts made up of elementary geometric shapes
@paranoidhumanoid3 жыл бұрын
ㄴ'ㄲㅗ
@YaAllahswt3 жыл бұрын
It’s not “elementary geometric shapes” it’s beyond your understanding.
@gkky-xx4mc2 жыл бұрын
@@YaAllahswt I don't think they meant it in a bad way, "elementary geometric shapes" have a beautiful minimalist design and looks very modern, science fiction-like. It's also easier to learn to read and write. Korean writing is also geometric shapes like boxes and circles, but have hundreds of years of history and are very easy to learn, N'Ko is the same.
@sequillawilliams880911 ай бұрын
I have been married to a South African for 12 years now and I have never been able to effectively communicate how to say our last name but the mB sound depicted here makes perfect sense I never realized what my mouth was doing when I say it having it depicted here is extremely helpful
@supahfly_uk Жыл бұрын
It's interesting that writing was invented in Africa and it still continues to innovate new ones, fascinating. The first known language ever was a proto-language on the African continent, and the first known proto-writing system was created in Nigeria.
@redacted4618 ай бұрын
Lmao you mean Ethiopia?
@ehet84873 жыл бұрын
I myself crafted my own writing system for my Diary, because even before I am fascinated with different writing system, I was wondering why we filipinos do not use our own writing system like what our ASEAN brothers do and so I created one for my personal use...as you could say it is more like for my personal and aesthetic of my diary....I called it "Likhamai" from filipino words "Likha" means creation and "Kamay" which means "Hand". It is based from Philippine Baybayin Script which is a member of the Brahmic script family. But unlike baybayin, this script is not Abugida but an Alphabet. Recently I created its cursive style.
@razakza2 жыл бұрын
Please post some examples. I would be very interested to see it. (I'm Malay speaking)
@ndubuisiezeoye20992 жыл бұрын
The Nsịbịdị script used to be the writing system of Igbo language but was not popularized,it was mainly used by scholars and elites until Latin script came and took over the language.
@windsurfer88242 жыл бұрын
Not only Igbo and Igbo adapted it from the calabar people groups, it was a writing script of calabar peoples all the way to ethnicities of Cameroon. It's not an Igbo script, it's shared by several ethnicities, it's wrong to claim what you didn't originate.
@udyfrost6380 Жыл бұрын
@@windsurfer8824 It's an Igbo script, same way Kanji is a Japanese script. he never claimed that Igbo invented it. Only said it was the writing system of the Igbo language which is true. And also, Calabar people didn't invent the script, it's believed to be Ejagham that invented it. Will you then say it's not a Calabar script? It just sounds like you want to be a contrarian against Igbos.
@dablaccseaproductions5279 Жыл бұрын
@@udyfrost6380 I noticed a lot of people like to throw shade on the igbos whenever its said that they used Nsibidi.
@theanglophilegamer50022 жыл бұрын
0:14 I decided to accept that challenge and I have indeed, named 26 scripts outside Africa. Although, I really just did it for fun. 1. Latin 2. Cyrillic 3. Greek 4. Pahawh Hmong 5. Hiragana 6. Katakana 7. Hanzi 8. Hangeul 9. Arabic 10. Hebrew 11. Bengali 12. Devanagari 13. Burmese 14. Cherokee 15. Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics 16. Thai 17. Lao 18. Khmer 19. Marathi 20. Oriya 21. Gujarati 22. Georgian 23. Armenian 24. Tibetan 25. Ol Chiki 26. Malayalam
@tonai2 жыл бұрын
Here's my challenge 1 Latin 2 Greek 3 Cyrillic 4 Sinhala 5 Hindi 6 Thai 7 Burmese 8 Chinese traditional 9 Chinese simplified 10 Hiragana 11 Katakana 12 Kanji 13 Hanzi 14 Hangeul 15 Tibetan 16 Armenian 17 Georgian 18 Arabic 19 Cherokee 20 Sanskrit 21 Tamil? 22 Bengali 23 Old English (not in use) 24 Khmer 25 Hebrew 26 Phoenician (not in use)
@BeneathTheBrightSky Жыл бұрын
Yeah I did this too, and it was really hard not to pull EVERYTHING from India.
I misremembered and did outside of Europe and Africa and didn't mention Latin since I had also assumed it wasn't ok . Misremembering made this challenge a lot harder than it needed to be . Anyways, 1 . Kana 2 . Hangeul 3 . Chinese characters 4 . Thai script 5 . Lao script 6 . Khmer script 7 . Mongolian script / Manchu ? 8 . Tibetan script 9 . Burmese script 10 . Javanese 11 . Lontara 12 . Sundanese 13 . Maldivian script 14 . Odia script 15 . Bengali script 16 . Devanagari 17 . Gurmukhi 18 . Tamil script 19 . Arabic script 20 . Cherokee syllabary 21 . Canadian indigenous syllabary 22 . Maya glyphs 23 . Ba Shu script 24 . Rongorongo script 25 . Assamese script 26 . Sindhi script 27 . Malayalam script 😊
@KateGladstone2 ай бұрын
This is one of the best of your language, videos, which are always highly informative and fascinating! I wanted to thank you, particularly for your handwriting in the examples, which is always both clear and graceful.
@JonathanSharman3 жыл бұрын
I can't imagine how awesome it would feel to author a new script that fills a real need and gains wide usage in your community.
@dionyzus29093 жыл бұрын
The person who said that sentence "African voices are like those of the birds - impossible to transcribe" didn't think about it properly. Because if we wanted to, we COULD even transcribe the singing of birds. It's not impossible at all! Now I'm just thinking someone should do that, create a Bird writing system, just for fun.
@crazydragy42333 жыл бұрын
I'm not too sure about English but even it has some basic animal expressions which are based on sounds being transcribed so yeah.... I speak a language that has plenty of bird songs 'written down', not just lone sounds.
@cymtastique3 жыл бұрын
People can and do transcribe birdsong, the tones of other animals, random city noise and anything that can produce sound basically. They usually use regular music notation for things like that though. It's pretty cool.
@aoelp3 жыл бұрын
@@cymtastique Exactly. Since most animals don't 'talk' by themselves in the human sense, but rather shout, bark or sing a band notation with all usual musical elements like drumset, regular tones, tremolo and more are probably enough for >90% of animal sounds at least as we hear them.
@FlockOfHawks3 жыл бұрын
"someone should" is so much easier than "here is my suggestion how to"
@mwanikimwaniki68012 жыл бұрын
@@crazydragy4233 Here in East Africa we have tribes that can actually speak to the birds so that the birds can show them where honey can be found in exchange for a piece of the honey comb... Interesting relationship really.
@WerazotheLankster3 жыл бұрын
I'm loving all the videos on African languages and this is definitely the best one
@greenhawk68393 жыл бұрын
This was fascinating, I never thought about the connection between West African linguistics features and the new writing systems that have emerged there before. Also the musical elements from Thoth's pill take me back to when I first came across this channel. Mmm, nostalgia!
@david_oliveira712 жыл бұрын
Almost 1 million subs - impressive! Hope to see and watch new videos from you soon again!!
@getrichquicc3 жыл бұрын
I thought humanity was done creating writing systems, it's so cool that this place just pumps them out on a regular basis.
@k.c11263 жыл бұрын
Thank you. This was remarkably illuminating. It never occurred to me that West Africans are creating and revising their own unique scripts for the languages they speak. There is a perception that only European and middle eastern scripts are available. I also understand more clearly now why Europeans who went to Africa were led to force their languages on the people they met. It would have been impossible for the vast majority of those who went to Africa from Europe to even conceptualize the complexity of these languages, much less learn them. And that is putting aside the traditional European bias toward their own cultural superiority.
@user-gq5zi6fp5p3 жыл бұрын
It's so fascinating to see writing systems develop despite absolute dominance of latin script (Maybe I'm a bit exaggerating, but you get the point)
@thewordwithperd15633 жыл бұрын
I think latins pretty boring at this point, little over saturated. came up with my own writing system for my comic books just cause i think it’s time for a change ya know
@crazydragy42333 жыл бұрын
I agree, though I still vehemently believe that the actual practicality of these things takes first place. There's only so much you can do to the wheel to 'spice it up' before its functionality starts plummeting.
@fenrirr223 жыл бұрын
In Africa Arabic script is just as or even more dominant as Latin.
@greatman58852 жыл бұрын
@@fenrirr22 only in north africa
@ojofrank93942 ай бұрын
@@greatman5885it’s pretty popular in west Africa or was popular
@krimsworld3 жыл бұрын
"African voices are like those of the birds - impossible to transcribe." *Olivier Messiaen has entered the chat* [edit: thanks for the love yall!]
@MichaelObed3 жыл бұрын
I giggled
@tjulers3 жыл бұрын
Yo what’s your favorite Messiaen piece?
@spiritualneutralist25973 жыл бұрын
Didn't expect to see a music connection here
@Ollebolle1123 жыл бұрын
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
@dosha_anand3 жыл бұрын
I hope that journalist found a big pile of sheet music at his doorstep the next morning.
@Maodifi3 жыл бұрын
Yay! I'm so happy to see any coverage of my people's script (Vai)!
@citizencoy4393 Жыл бұрын
The intelligence this shows is just amazing! West Africans are producing writing systems the way others produce slang! Simply amazing!
@roadrunnercrazy3 жыл бұрын
This is fascinating! Thank you so much! More African content would be wonderful as it is so often neglected in other contexts.
@J.o.s.h.u.a.3 жыл бұрын
If you're interested in making more videos on the topic, I can suggest you to make some research on Tenevil's writing system for the Chukchi language. It never caught off, as it was used only between him and his family, but it's linguistically important because it has been created in complete isolation without any outside influence from other scripts.
@Lordpeyre3 жыл бұрын
I must say it's refreshing to hear someone say long and short vowels to actually MEAN long and short vowels, not hard and soft like what we have in English.
@omp1993 жыл бұрын
What do you mean? The concepts of "hardness" and "softness" are applicable to materials and are meaningless in the context of phonemes. The difference between the vowels in "cut" and "cart", or "sod" and "sword", is mostly a distinction of length. There might be, to some extent, a distinction in quality, too, but that extent would depend on your accent, I suppose. There is certainly no distinction in terms that could be measured using the Mohs scale.
@omp1993 жыл бұрын
@@EnigmaticLucas I'm British.
@omp1993 жыл бұрын
@@EnigmaticLucas The original comment didn't specify "rhotic dialects of English". It just said "English".
@Snaake423 жыл бұрын
Look up Finnish and Estonian. ;)
@jumpvelocity39537 ай бұрын
@@omp199google is free. Hard and soft vowels exist as a reference to something. It isn’t an academic term, but it can be as well defined as any other.
@fmbmnvzjnvrjz3927 Жыл бұрын
These are some of the most beautiful scripts I’ve ever seen!
@Catlily5 Жыл бұрын
I love learning about different scripts and how they fit their languages. This is really interesting!
@juliocjacobo3 жыл бұрын
These two brothers Abdoulaye and Ibrahim are like modern Cyril and Methodius. Very interesting video, I had no idea of the existence of so many, and some of them recent, writing system in western Africa.
@crystalp72423 жыл бұрын
If I remember correctly, in “Things Fall Apart”, Chinua Achebe (who was Igbo himself) wrote the name of his people as “Ibo”. It always amazes me how much language and writing are continuously evolving.
@natasharules7703 жыл бұрын
Uhm, Ibo is the name of the language, Igbo is the name of the tribe to whom the language belongs.
@princenathan59873 жыл бұрын
@@natasharules770 wrong. Both people and the language is Igbo. Chinua Achebe used a 'dotted b' in Ibo which is same sound as the "gb" in Igbo.
@natasharules7703 жыл бұрын
@@princenathan5987 no! That was Chinua's choice (which I don't even remember seeing) in reality it is Igbo and Ibo respectively. And I'm right bow realising that Igbo is the language and Ibo the people. I know because my mom learnt Igbo at school and can speak it fluently.
@princenathan59873 жыл бұрын
@@natasharules770 I'm Igbo so I think I should be the one telling you how we're addressed. To us Igbos Ibo doesn't make sense . Both the language and the people is Igbo
@natasharules7703 жыл бұрын
@@princenathan5987 so according to Google, Ibo and Igbo are synonymous
@LtNduati3 жыл бұрын
My dad is Kenyan (Kikuyu tribe). My first name is Andrew, the millisecond you mentioned "Nd" the lesson was over. Thank you, and it's not as hard as it looks to say, considering a lot of European languages have "cz" "čić" and don't even get me started with my second language's most difficult feature for native English speakers trying to speak German the dreaded "ö"
@wordart_guian3 жыл бұрын
cz is just /tʃ/
@KateeAngel3 жыл бұрын
Oh and Welsh "LL" is also very unusual, I think I cannot pronounce it right. Polish is full of sounds and words hard for even other Slavic speakers too...
@seneca9833 жыл бұрын
@@KateeAngel Is that [ɬ] so hard (or unusual)? To me, the sound itself feels easy though I've not tried to learn any language that uses it. I've also had a coworker with lisp who pronounced S as [ɬ] (instead of [s]).
@crazydragy42333 жыл бұрын
Honestly from what I can gauge it's all about what you were born into. Exactly why we ought to drop all our preconceived notions of what language should be like and logic when learning a new, esp if it's very different, language.
@FluxTrax3 жыл бұрын
@@KateeAngel you also find it in Norwegian (Trøndersk) and Jamtlandic, but we don't really have a good way of writing it. One example is "tathjlat" or the place name "Kvisslabakken" where you don't hear any S sounds. Also the word/prefix "Litj-" (little)
@56independent3 жыл бұрын
As a programmer with a passion for linguistics, thank God for Unicode!
@kstoeb3 жыл бұрын
This video not only widened my knowledge but my education (German: Bildung). Thank you very much for showing me something I had not the slightest idea of - and sich is so important.
@SpeakWritePlayinEnglish3 жыл бұрын
It's fascinating to see how languages evolve daily.
@brandonhadeed41973 жыл бұрын
I’m anxiously waiting for Unicode to encode Ditema tsa Dinoko, I’d love to be able to type it Also, 2:31 - a Lebanese journalist speaking with a French accent is too perfect
@sion83 жыл бұрын
I thought that was weird.
@mahalisyarifuddin3 жыл бұрын
Oh the script is very interesting one! Even though the best we can do is to treat the script as other LTR scripts we know and love.
@akay_g93 жыл бұрын
What is Ditema tsa Dinoko?
@akay_g93 жыл бұрын
@@mahalisyarifuddin what're LTR scripts?
@sion83 жыл бұрын
@@akay_g9 As it turns out… the colorful writing system! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditema_tsa_Dinoko
@hyperactivehyena3 жыл бұрын
Ok, but can I get an entire episode on that language that seems to use color for some of it's encoding because.... Yes?
@elianasteele5533 жыл бұрын
same. can someone find the name of the langauge? I want to read about it.
@odysseus2313 жыл бұрын
@@elianasteele553 In another comment feed Nativlang called it the "Rainbow Oracle script" I hope that'll allow you to look further into it 😉
@jersey2823 жыл бұрын
@@odysseus231 I also found it mentioned as Benin-Edo Script. I googled West African script colors and searched googled images.
@ynntari27753 жыл бұрын
I was thinking about that. And how unnecessarily difficult it would be to write and erase physical text with it. Do you need to carry all colours of pencils and keep switching between them in order to write? And how would that work in computer fonts?
@hyperactivehyena3 жыл бұрын
@@ynntari2775 They probably use paints or some other medium to write it in- not every language is written on paper with a stylus, and thus not every one is designed to be easy that way! That said- I can imagine this language might be ceremonial or religious to mitigate it...
@elgoog-the-third3 жыл бұрын
I love this channel. I love the wonder, the details, and the optimism. And the nice upbeat intro/outro music ^^ It's somewhat escapist for me to watch videos like this and learn. It allows me to discover new things and flee the dull daily routine full of having to see all the hatred, conflict, and other meaningless you-name-it going on... As I write, it is 3:30am and I should definitely get some sleep before work.
@nawarelsabaa3 жыл бұрын
This is fascinating! Amazing video, as usual! Just one minor note: at 2:25 the Lebanese journalist is called Kamel Mrowwa كامل مروّة with a Shadda on the waw, not Marwa.
@suranumitu77343 жыл бұрын
I'm so early, I feel like Sumerian cuneiform wow
@joatanpereira42723 жыл бұрын
LMAO, that's a good one
@-roejogan-3 жыл бұрын
lol you're a square
@czas43 жыл бұрын
6:28 "Nmgba" is "No" in Igbo I guess😁 I'm from Yakurr, (we speak Lokaa) a tribe in Nigeria. We also have pre-nasalised consonants gb, kp, ng, mb, nd, mg, nn and nm. I remember the first time I noticed people from other parts of the world couldn't pronounced "gb" and "kp" when I was a kid, it felt strange 😅. I love your videos NativLang 👍🏾
@ninsuhnrey2 жыл бұрын
Do you know that it never occurred to me that mba should actually be spelt (or even pronounced) mgba? But in this moment I just realized that my part of the country, we pronounce gb stronger than your side. Your gb is straight up like our b. Spent my whole life saying mm-bah, rather than mm'gbah. Is well. 😌
@cheruvskiyanawanti1120 Жыл бұрын
For the word, no, the word is mba, not mgba... Although in ancient Ìgbò, the b in mba came from ɓ, which then broke down to b and w. This is why no is mba in some dialects and ụwa/awa in some others
@politicalreport1693 жыл бұрын
الأعداد : 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Actually that is how the number in arabic were written originally from right to left like the arabic script, also the ancient way of saying a number would start from the smallest number which some writers still do today.. For example : 1891 : we say " one and ninety and eight hundred and Thousand" واحد و تسعون و ثمانمئة و ألف 1891 - - - - >
@tttyuhbbb98233 жыл бұрын
From right to left!...
@yourowndealer2 жыл бұрын
Wait that does makes sense from an Arabic point of view and thx for a new info.
@krupam03 жыл бұрын
Honestly, as long as they're not trying to adapt English or French spelling into their language, I can respect it.
@AaronOfMpls3 жыл бұрын
Hehe, as a native English speaker, that was one thing I liked about learning German: practically all of the spelling made sense!
@Serenity_yt3 жыл бұрын
Yes thankfully at least most of the modern spelling with exceptions for anglizismen and french loanwords. Thanks to Rechtschreibreformen ^^
@zakazany19453 жыл бұрын
English spelling is a nightmare for someone that have as a first language portuguese that although kinda complex and confusing, at least makes sense. English doesn't make sense at all for me.
@ynntari27753 жыл бұрын
English doesn't make sense for anybody
@hildervitor3 жыл бұрын
@@zakazany1945 In Portuguese it is clear what is the stressed syllable an that is really nice (for instance, in English, how do we know if we should pronounce DEvelopment, deVElopment, deveLOpment, developMENt?). But Portuguese also has some problems, though. For example, there are less letters for the vowels than the actual number of vowels, so the same letter, like e or o, have different sounds depending on the word, like the imperative mood of the verb "meter", that is "meta", which is pronounced with a "closed e" while "meta" (goal) is pronounced with an "open e".
@NihouNi3 жыл бұрын
Thanks for such an informative video. I'd never have known about this fascinating subject. Really glad people are keeping their languages alive.
@jhosua93853 жыл бұрын
I love learning new languages, so this channel is really interesting for me. Thanks for creating this channel
@naomiulmer59292 жыл бұрын
My fiance is Nigerian, Idoma tribe, thank you for this great information. I am a historian and also got an anthropology degree in college with some light linguistics along the way. Always wish I got more, so excited to find more related to my new family! 🥰📚🇳🇬
@zweispurmopped Жыл бұрын
I guess this, too, is a story of Africa finding self confidence, getting a means to really represent its own sounds of language in writing.
@redhidinghood93373 жыл бұрын
This vid was super cool. Would love to see a whole video about one of these languages where u go more in depth since they're so different compared to european or even asian languages
@Guthorm Жыл бұрын
I love your animations & explanations, and particularly loved this one as it made me discover an unknown world, such cultures so rich of colors & sounds... so far from what I see/listen everyday, is just wonderful! Thanks a lot!
@B_B_3 жыл бұрын
i'm always so excited to see another video from you. seeing these different languages is inspiring in a way. humanity and the way they communicate with each other is fascinating
@TheCutL3 жыл бұрын
Fula speakers: "The difference between 'hindu' and 'hindu' is impossible to write in the Latin alphabet." Tilde: "Am I a f'ing joke to you?"
@omp1993 жыл бұрын
Assuming that the illustrations in this video were correct, it turned out that the amazingly unique feature of this new writing system that enabled the distinction between the two different words "hindu" and "hindu" was... a small vertical line suspended above the gap between two consecutive letters. In essence, a simple apostrophe. Interestingly, an apostrophe is often used in romaji transcriptions of Japanese to distinguish syllable-final (moraic) "n" from syllable-initial "n". This is not exactly the same thing, but it's another example of the humble apostrophe being used in conjunction with the Latin alphabet to disambiguate words in languages for which the Latin alphabet is almost, but not entirely, suitable.
@kudraabdulaziz30963 жыл бұрын
👊😂 nice one
@espanadorada79623 жыл бұрын
Yeah I think the solution of adding an apostrophe between the syllables would work just fine with Latin script honestly... I mean Vietnamese uses the Latin script with *heavy* modifications, so you can definitely adapt it
@columbus8myhw3 жыл бұрын
Yeah, not the best example. But at least it's standardized.
@pauljs753 жыл бұрын
Obviously the accent marks and diacritics that can modify the Latin alphabet weren't good enough for them.
@danpeterson89573 жыл бұрын
it is impossible to listen to you and not share your excitement and wonder. Well done and thank you
@DTux52493 жыл бұрын
Last I was this early, I learned that it wasn't a lisp I was hearing when I attended the tale of Thoth & Thamus
@dlwatib3 жыл бұрын
Nothing remarkable when told in Castilian Spanish.
@narapo19113 жыл бұрын
What a beautiful presentation on these fascinating scripts!
@rayres10743 жыл бұрын
Also, can we appreciate NativLang's care for thorough sourcing?