Today I’m going to show you how the alphabet
has evolved over the last 4000 years, from
its earliest forms to the modern Latin script
- which is the alphabet that is used today
to write English and many other languages.
I’ll be using my recently updated “Evolution
of the Alphabet” chart, which is available
as a poster from my website UsefulCharts.com.
I’ll be starting by giving you a general
overview of the various stages that the alphabet
has gone through and then I’ll be taking
a look at several of the individual letters,
one by one.
Intro
So, the first thing you need to know is that
not all writing systems are alphabets. In
a previous video, which I’ll link to in
the description, I talked about five main
types of writing systems. Of these five types,
the earliest one to develop was the logosyllabary.
A good example of a logosyllabary is Ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphs. In most cases, a hieroglyphic
symbol did not represent a single sound, like
in an alphabet. Instead, it represented an
entire word or syllable.
But at some point, approximately 4000 years
ago, someone in Egypt had the idea to use
hieroglyphs in a new way. They devised a system
by which there was just one symbol for every
one phonetic sound. By doing so, they were
able to reduce the total number of symbols
needed for writing from several hundred to
just 20 or 30.
So, for example, this crude drawing of a house
shown from above, like a floor plan, came
to represent something like the sound “b”
and this fish came to represent something
like the sound “d”. So it was in this
way that the alphabet was born. The name given
to this first version is “Proto-Sai-nee-it-ic”.
It gets its name from the Sai-nai peninsula,
which connects Egypt to what was once the
Land of Canaan. It was here that the first
inscriptions made using this script were found,
although examples have since been found in
both Egypt and the Southern Levant as well.
Because of this, there’s some debate over
whether the invention of the alphabet took
place in Egypt or Canaan.
However, what we do know is that it was in
Canaan that the idea of using an alphabetic
form of writing really took hold, because
by the year 1000 BCE and in the centuries
that followed it, we have lots of examples
of a stylized version of the script being
used throughout the Levant, both by the Phoenicians
and by the Ancient Israelites.
Generally, this version of the alphabet is
called Phoenician, although when found at
Ancient Israelite sites, it is called Paleo-Hebrew.
But basically, they’re the same. Note that
I’ve shown the more familiar square Hebrew
letters below, for reference and so that we
have names that we can use for these early
symbols, like alef, bet, and gimel. It’s
interesting to note that the earliest portions
of the Hebrew Bible would have been written
in this ancient script, not the square letters
used by Jews today. Those developed several
hundred years later.
But on this chart, we are concerned with the
evolution of the Latin script, so instead
of tracing the development of these early
letters into later Middle Eastern scripts
like Hebrew and Arabic, we are now going to
turn our attention to the Greeks.
I’ve labeled this third line Archaic Greek
in order to distinguish it from the more familiar
classical Greek letters which are still used
today. However, I’ve shown the modern ones
below for reference so that, once again, we
have names that we can use for each letter.
I also want to point out that there was never
a single Archaic Greek alphabet. There were
actually many different versions with slight
variations that were used throughout the Greek-speaking
world. So what you see here is a bit of a
combined representation.
The important thing I want to point out at
this stage is that the sound value of several
letters changed significantly. Prior to the
Greeks, the alphabet was strictly a consonant
alphabet, also known as an abjad. This means
that there were no symbols that stood for
vowels. But the Greeks changed this. There
were several Phoenician letters that they
did not have a use for, such as the alef and
he. So they instead repurposed those symbols
to stand in for vowel sounds. So “alef”
became alpha, which is an A sound, and “he”
became epsilon, which is an E sound. But the
shapes of these letters basically stayed the
same. So keep in mind, that this entire chart
is focused on the evolution on the letter
shapes, even though those letters were often
pronounced differently at different times
and places.
I’ll also point out that it is from the
first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha
and beta, that we get the word alphabet.
Okay, so the next stage is Old Italic. Again,
there was no single Old Italic alphabet, Instead,
there were many different versions, of which
the most important was perhaps the Etruscan
alphabet. But what I’ve shown here is kind
of an amalgam of the different Old Italic
scripts.
The most important thing to point out at the
Old Italic stage is that several letters were
dropped. This is because there were some sounds
that Greek speakers made that Latin speakers
did not. So, for example, the Greek letter
Theta was not needed for ancient Latin so
the ancient Latins simply dropped it from
the alphabet. I’ll talk about some of the
other changes in a bit but for now, take note
that the actual letter shapes didn’t really
change much between these two stages. And
many of the shapes are actually quite recognizable,
even in these archaic forms.
It was during the period of the Roman Empire
that the Latin alphabet reached the form that
we know today, although at this point, only
the capital letters existed. It’s important
to note that the ancient Romans did not distinguish
between an uppercase and a lowercase. It’s
also important to note that they did not have
26 letters, like we do today. They had only
23. Missing were J, U and W. So, during the
lifetime of Julius Caesar, his name would
have been written like this: IVLIVS
I’ll say more about J and U in a moment.
But the biggest question that most people
have at this point on the chart is: Why did
some of the letters flip? Well, originally,
many of the letters, like B or K, could be
written either way. This was because, originally,
the Greeks and Romans wrote both left to right
as well as right to left and the direction
of certain letters depended on the direction
of the writing. But eventually, writing left
to right became standard, perhaps because
most people are right-handed and therefore
less smudging takes place when you write from
left to right. Of course, when it comes to
alphabets like Hebrew and Arabic, they are
written in the opposite direction: right to
left.
Now, at the same time that the familiar Roman
square capitals were being carved into stone,
everyday writing, among those who were literate,
was actually taking place in a slightly different
script, known as cursive. The word cursive
coming from the Latin root for “running”
or doing something quickly. So, originally,
Roman Cursive looked something like this – sort
of a sloppy version of the capitals. But eventually
it evolved into what became known as New Cursive.
So by the time that the Western Roman Empire
fell, the emperors would have been writing
out their various decrees using letters like
these ones. You can see that many of them
look quite similar to the lower case letters
that we use today.
Of course, when the Western Empire fell in
476, much of Europe experienced a so-called
“dark age” during which time there was
far less writing going on. However, one of
the places where a lot of writing did continue
was in the Christian monasteries over in Ireland.
There, a script developed known as Insular,
which also ended up being adopted by the Anglo-Saxons
over on the island of Great Britain. Therefore,
this style of writing is also sometimes called
Old English.
A little while later, over on the continent,
a slightly different style of lettering developed
called Carolingian. This version of the alphabet
emerged during the reign of Charlemagne and
by the year 1000, it had become standard throughout
most of Europe. But, remember, the printing
press hadn’t yet been invented so all books
were written by hand, which obviously took
a long time.
So, as literacy grew and the demand for books
increased, scribes eventually developed a
script which they could write more quickly.
This style was known as Blackletter, or Gothic
and it was the dominant style up until the
time that Gutenberg developed his famous printing
press in the 1400s. At that point, the letter
shapes quickly started to look like the lowercase
letters we see in serif fonts today and were
combined with the old Roman capitals, which
were used at the start of sentences, in order
to increase readability.
So, now that we’ve done that overview, let’s
go back and talk about some of the individual
letters. In English, the first three letters
of the alphabet are ABC. But in the Hebrew
& Greek alphabets, which are older, the first
three letters are the equivalent of ABG, the
third letter in both cases being a “G”
sound. What happened is this. Sometime during
the period of the Roman Republic, the third
letter of the alphabet started playing double
duty and was used for both a “g” sound
and a “k” sound. This led the Romans to
make a major change to the alphabet. They
kept the third letter where it was but dedicated
it to the “k” sound and they created a
new letter, which looked very similar, and
placed it as the seventh letter. This new
letter, which was basically just a “C”
with an extra line, became “G” and was
dedicated to the “g” sound.
But there was a problem. By this point, the
order of the alphabet had become standard
and each letter was associated with a number.
So, when the Romans placed the letter “G”
in the number 7 spot, they had to move the
letter that had previously been at the number
7 spot. That letter was the letter Z (also
known as Zed). The Romans didn’t use that
letter very much so they simply moved it all
the way to the end. Which is why the alphabet
today ends with the letter Z.
One of the most important letters in the alphabet,
in terms of its evolution, is the sixth letter,
which today is our letter F. That’s because
there are 5 letters in our alphabet today
that all trace their origin to this one letter.
Originally, it was depicted as a walking stick
or staff and was probably pronounced something
like “W”. In Hebrew, it is known as “vav”.
But when the Greeks adopted the alphabet from
the Phoenicians, they split this one letter
into two. They called the original letter
“digamma” because, for them, it looked
similar to gamma but had an extra line. Hence,
it was a double gamma or “digamma”. It
was eventually dropped from the Greek alphabet
but it stayed on in the Latin alphabet and
became our letter F.
But the Greeks also added a slightly different
version of the digamma to the end of their
alphabet and called in “upsilon”. Remember
that the Greeks added vowels to the alphabet
and this letter was one of their vowels, something
close to what we call the vowel U.
However, in the Latin version of the alphabet,
this letter was split into V and Y and the
letter V ended up playing several roles at
once. Sometimes it was a vowel, like in Julius
(IVLIVS) but sometimes it was a consonant
like in the word VALENS, which means strong.
Eventually, the letter came to look like our
U but it continued to do the work of both
U and V, as well as sometimes W, all the way
up until the invention of the printing press.
At that point, it was split into U and V and
then eventually a “double U” was added
as well, which strangely actually often looks
more like a “double V”.
The other letter that we have today that wasn’t
in the original Latin alphabet is the letter
J. Throughout most of history, the letter
J was just a fancy version of the letter I,
used whenever it came at the beginning of
a word. But eventually, in many languages,
it evolved as a unique sound and therefore
the “fancy I” was eventually added to
the alphabet as the letter “J”.
Let’s now take a look at some of the letters
that used to be in the alphabet but are no
longer around. As I mentioned earlier, the
Romans dropped a lot of Greek letters because
they simply didn’t need them. These included
theta and sai but also a letter called san
that the Greeks ended up dropping as well.
I should also point out that the Greeks added
several new letters that never made their
way into the Latin alphabet. These include
phi, psi, and omega (which was based on the
letter O) and also sampi, which the Greeks
dropped as well.
The only Greek-created letter that did make
it into the Latin alphabet is the letter kai,
which we call X.
Finally, I want to point out two medieval
letters that, once upon a time, were used
to write English, but are no longer a part
of our modern alphabet. Anyone who has studied
a bit of Old English is likely familiar with
these. They are thorn and wynn, and in both
cases, their letter shape was adopted from
runic letters as opposed to directly from
Latin. Thorn was a “th” sound and the
wynn was a “w” sound. But, like I say,
these two letters were eventually dropped,
although thorn still in Iceland today.
So that was a look at how the alphabet has
changed over the centuries. Like I say, if
you would like to buy a copy of the chart
as a poster, you can head over to my website
UsefulCharts.com or simply follow the link
on the screen now, or in the description.
Thanks for watching.
