• BarqsHasBite@lemmy.caEnglish
      25·
      6 months ago

      Personally I always thought it was easier to have the line on the left side and then the different stuff on the right side. Probably from being right handed.

      Eg: B D E H K L M N P R

      Those all have a line on the left and the right side differs

      • veroxiiEnglish
        13·
        6 months ago

        Not sure if true but I did hear somewhere that a big part of the Roman changes were to make carving letters into stone tablets and buildings easier.

        It certainly explains using more straight lines in eg M and N. But maybe the flip also makes it easier to carve if you’re chiseling right handed? I’m imagining how I’d chisel a K.

  • beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    50·
    6 months ago

    Fun fact, in the Arabic alphabet it starts out Alif and Ba just like alpha and beta here, and then veers way away from this chart into its own awesomely weird territory (thought German was “guttural”? try this nonvowel nonconsonant so far back in the throat you need consent and a physician’s referral) but JUST when you think you’ve lost your way, RIGHT the alphabet nears its end, you stop and stare because right there are four letters, in this same exact order, so familiar it might be a song you learned as a child: the letters K L M N.

    The Phoencians took this invention to other places too, and this cluster of familiarity crystallised in the Arabic alphabet in the same order. Almost like a gene we could point to that says we had a common ancestor centuries ago, we were once so close that we learned the same thing from the same people.

    • Belgdore@lemm.eeEnglish
      121·
      6 months ago

      “Almost like a gene we could point to that says we had a common ancestor centuries ago, we were once so close that we learned the same thing from the same people.“

      Cultural genes are called memes. It’s kind of unfortunate that we usually only think of memes as jokes.

  • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    371·
    6 months ago

    This chart does show different stages of alphabet in the lineage of the Modern Latin Alphabet. But these changes happened due to parallel interactions with other languages and alphabets not shown, so it is a little obscuring to call it an ‘evolution’. Probably being overly pedantic but that’s kind of the realm of linguistics.

    Pretty cool nonetheless.

    • Cort@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      6 months ago

      I was a little disappointed they didn’t show letters that were removed from the modern Latin alphabet but existed in the 2000 years since Rome, like thorn.

  • onnekas@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    30·
    6 months ago

    How did ‘I’ evolve into ‘Z’ while ‘Z’ evolved into ‘I’? Seems like a good ol’ switcheroo.

  • Gork@lemm.eeEnglish
    20·
    6 months ago

    I wonder what caused the alphabet to essentially get mirror flipped from archaic Latin to Roman.

    • RustyShackleford@literature.cafeEnglish
      27·
      6 months ago

      If by “ancient Latin alphabet” you mean the alphabet as depicted in charts like this you’re talking about the Archaic alphabet, not the alphabet the Romans used for Classical Latin. The Romans after the Archaic Period used the same alphabet as we do (with minor additions depending on our precise European language), at least in inscriptions–Roman cursive is very different in form. The charts you’re looking at are very misleading, in that Latin was written in the Archaic Period either right to left or boustrephedon, alternating direction with each line. But these are only the very earliest Latin inscriptions. By the time Latin really starts to be used regularly as a written language it is being written left to right, with the letters oriented to suit.

    • SpeakinTelnet@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      131·
      6 months ago

      At one point during the flip every letter were written sideways which gave us the infamous archaic roman phrase “IIII IIII IIII”

    • telllos@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      It was a change of management, and as the new manager had nothing to bring to the table. This is how he left it’s legacy.

  • Hubi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    6 months ago

    The step from Proto-Sinaitic to Phoenician is like the 2015-2020 era when companies simplified their logos to an extreme degree.

    • Alto@kbin.social
      8·
      6 months ago

      I have absolutely zero expertise in the field, but every time you see something like that in history, I always wonder if it was primarily spurred on by a change in writing medium. E.g. paper vs tablet.

  • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    6 months ago

    All this talk of archaic to Roman and no talk of how serifs are being done dirty.

    Serif bias aside, awesome.

    • beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      Serifs are by products of the technology used to write them (stone, ink, etc) & are merely the on and off ramps to get to the real meat of it, & they are zero more.

      Might even go so far to say they’re a waste of pixels and therefore energy. Fight me 😜

        • beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          11·
          6 months ago

          I doubt that*. Serifs just add pixels to the labor of recognition. Serif fonts can’t reduce as small as the sans serifs, making them bad for things like iPhones 🤷‍♂️

          *maybe I’d believe a decent study if you’ve got a decent source (stat sig N, clear funding source, etc)

  • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.mlEnglish
    8·
    6 months ago

    I think it’s a miracle that people 2000 years ago were using the same alphabet as us. I guess it just goes to show how important the longevity of recorded information is.