November 24, 2024
The Alphabet Explained: The Origin of Every Letter

Suppose again, if you’re going to, to the cli­mac­tic scenes of Indi­ana Jones and the Remaining Cru­sade, which occur within the concealed­den tem­ple that con­tains the Holy Grail. His father hav­ing been shot via the das­tard­ly Nazi-sym­pa­thiz­ing immor­tal­i­ty-seek­er Wal­ter Dono­van, Indy has no selection however to retrieve the leg­endary cup to use its reput­ed heal­ing pow­ers. This involves go­ing thru 3 useless­ly cham­bers, considered one of which has a flooring cov­ered in stones, each and every one categorised with a let­ter of the alpha­wager. The way in which thru, accord­ing to Jones père’s analysis, is the identify of God. But if Indy steps on “J” for Jeho­vah, it crum­bles away, and he close to­ly plunges into the enor­mous pit under.

After all, true lovers could have already quot­ed the rel­e­vant line: “However within the Latin alpha­wager, Jeho­va starts with an I!” The ones people who first watched the film as youngsters — and, for that mat­ter, many people who first watched it as adults — sim­ply took that reality as giv­en. But when we watch the Rob­Phrases video above, we will be able to learn the way and when that “I” turned into a “J”.

To the traditional Romans, explains host Rob Watts, those let­ters have been one and the similar, serv­ing each vow­el and con­so­nant responsibility rely­ing at the con­textual content (as in “Iulius” Cae­sar). Either one of them date again to a “relatively extra com­pli­cat­ed char­ac­ter” that appears like a foul­ly con­tort­ed F, and which orig­i­nat­ed as a percent­togram rep­re­despatched­ing a human hand and fore­arm.

The let­ter J simplest emerged lat­er, “when scribes need­ed to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between those two usages.” (As we’ve noticed, it additionally introduced the descen­dants of the Knights Tem­plar a solution to trick inter­lop­ers of their cav­erns.) Thru­out the process the video, Watts cov­ers this and oth­er curi­ous steps within the evo­lu­tion of the alpha­wager we use to jot down Eng­lish and plenty of oth­er lan­guages nowadays. Those professional­duced such fea­tures because the plur­al of knife and wolf being knives and wolves, the appear­ing tremendous­fluity of Q, and — for an Eng­lish­guy like Watts, an unig­nor­in a position sub­ject — the transat­lantic “zed”/“zee” divid­ing line. Examination­ined shut­ly, the types of our let­ters tells a mil­len­nia-span­ning sto­ry whose forged contains Egyp­tians, Phoeni­cians, Canaan­ites, Etr­uscans, Greeks, Romans, and oth­ers but even so. And because the expe­ri­ence of Indi­ana Jones illus­trates, you nev­er know while you’ll want its classes.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of the Alpha­wager: A Col­or­ful Float­chart, Cov­er­ing 3,800 Years, Takes You From Historical Egypt to Nowadays

How Writ­ing Has Unfold Around the Global, from 3000 BC to This 12 months: An Ani­mat­ed Map

The Writ­ing Sys­tems of the Global Defined, from the Latin Alpha­wager to the Abugi­das of India

How you can Write in Cuneiform, the Outdated­est Writ­ing Sys­tem within the Global: A Brief, Attraction­ing Intro­duc­tion

The Outdated­est Recognized Sen­tence Writ­ten in an Alpha­wager Has Been Discovered on a Head-Lice Comb (Cir­ca 1700 BC)

Based totally in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and extensive­casts on towns, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks come with the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Towns and the e book The State­much less Town: a Stroll thru Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­e book.


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