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The Romans really turned around that archaic Latin.
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
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.
I can only think that writing on parchment was more common.
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.
“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.
Kind of ironic that you’re complaining about the evolution of language on a post about the evolution of language.
It’s sad to lose a word without which we only have metaphors to describe the concept it represents.
Just go the SCP route and call them Memetic elements or some shit. Same route just modified for clarification.
Idk. Definitions change. Like, literally
I’ll take my alphabet with a side of entropy, thanks
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.
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.
So Z became I, and I became Z? Weird.
I don’t know about you being a Z, but I always fancied the idea U and I.
…meh I dunno, there’s got to be some clever wordplay in there somewhere. Anyone more intelligent want to chip in?
…is this loss?
Such tender words.
First thing I noticed too. Odd how something like that happens. Reminds me of the Jim Gaffigan male seahorse joke.
Thirdly here. I’ve seen this posted many times, but this time that stuck out.
I and Z switching seems quite odd, moreso then any other switch.
How did ‘I’ evolve into ‘Z’ while ‘Z’ evolved into ‘I’? Seems like a good ol’ switcheroo.
I wonder what caused the alphabet to essentially get mirror flipped from archaic Latin to Roman.
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.
Yeah I wasn’t really sure how knowledgeable Matt Baker from usefulcharts is in ancient languages. Until I see actual sources I’m treating this chart as nothing more than guess work.
Skepticism is always a safe bet lol.
He discusses most of that in his video - https://youtu.be/3kGuN8WIGNc
At one point during the flip every letter were written sideways which gave us the infamous archaic roman phrase “IIII IIII IIII”
One dyslexic roman emperor is my guess. I have no evidence to base this on.
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.
Don’t you mean righted his legacy?
⨂︎ and ⌽︎ not getting the love they deserve.
Ф is getting enough love in Cyrillic languages.
And obviously In Greek as well although lowercase is slightly different I think (φ in Greek).
To be fair, lowercase ф is also sightly different.
Also math
They can never have enough symbols in math…
The step from Proto-Sinaitic to Phoenician is like the 2015-2020 era when companies simplified their logos to an extreme degree.
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.
The funny thing is went from tablet, to paper, to tablet.
Yes, but only after electromagnetism had been tamed like fire was!
Have we really tamed it, or is it just being nice because we feed it?
It would have been cool if it included the modern Greek and Cyrillic alphabets as well
Never change, T
Pour one out for my bois:
- PlayStation accept + cancel combo
- electric pole
- the actual M
- tree
⍼
All this talk of archaic to Roman and no talk of how serifs are being done dirty.
Serif bias aside, awesome.
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 😜
Serifs enhance readability.
*mic drop*
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)
Is “L” drunk or something?
I wonder what the next stage is going to look like, if changed at all in the future?
❤️💀😭🔥🫶✅✨😊😂🫡🙂🥰🙏👍😍👀🫠🫂🤓🎉🗿
Fuck… Hahahaha
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.
