Information Is BeautifulEvolution of the Alphabet via https://usefulcharts.com/
Marc Robinson-Rechavi@infobeautiful *The* alphabet? This should be a tree, leading to many different modern alphabets.
🔶Mark Nicoll 3.5%🏴🇬🇧🇪🇺🇺🇳@marcrr @infobeautiful
I'm fairly sure it's reasonable for the creator to assume most readers will understand that that sentence is talking about the alphabet in which it is written.
I'm fairly sure it's reasonable for the creator to assume most readers will understand that that sentence is talking about the alphabet in which it is written.
jah
alapite@marcrr @infobeautiful Yes, at the very least the Hebrew, Modern Greek, Arabic and Cyrillic scripts should have been included, to make it clear just how many cultures and civilisations have been impacted by this.
Bert Koorengevel@alapite @marcrr @infobeautiful
As much as I'd like to see them all charted out (especially modern greek & cyrillian next to latin) I doubt that will result in a clear picture.
I fear it's too much information.
ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)@infobeautiful I love this series from NativLang on the history of writing:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc4s09N3L2h3HtaAYVqOVKGt2h6wRasw2
Thoth's Pill: an Animated History of Writing
Gergovie
David LaFontaine@infobeautiful this just makes me wonder what kind of vocal sounds attached to the symbol for the eyeball or for the circle with the X through it?
The character that is at the end of ancient Greek string looks a little bit like the character for an F in Cyrillic
Travis F W@dave me too. Hard to know what speech sounded like 200 years ago, let alone 2-4000. But yeah the X circumscribed by O character has me curious. I scrolled through Unicode for a bit and found ᳁ in the "Sudanese supplement" though it could've been one of the characters my fonts don't render.
Friedrich Hartmann@travisfw @dave that’s just Theta Θ. «The form of Ζ generally had a straight stem () in all local alphabets in the archaic period. Θ was mostly crossed ( or ). Ξ typically had a vertical stem (), and Φ was most often . Υ and Ψ had frequent variants where the strokes branched out from the bottom of the character, resulting in and respectively.» See Glyph shape section for images of the letters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_Greek_alphabets#Glyph_shapes
@friedrich @dave would you terribly mind posting a screen cap of your post? This is what it looks like to me. Several characters are just not showing.
@travisfw @dave That why I linked the source. It’s in the Glyph Section and renders fine there (It’s Images not Unicode chars, so they won’t copy). Dunno while mobile wikipedia has a hard time following section links in url hash. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_Greek_alphabets#Glyph_shapes
R@infobeautiful I like how “T” is like:“fine, ok, I’ll change …” *slow-motion walks*
ronny@infobeautiful #ansible is there!
Piranhallama@infobeautiful I can't work out if I'm happy about I and z swapping over as though they were accomplices in deception or upset there it breaks continuity. I really need an adult in situations like this.
κρ🦥μγ@infobeautiful Z O V ✌️
Corn Sledgefield@infobeautiful little guy, little guy, little guy, little guy, little guy (Eeeeeee!)
thejikz@infobeautiful this would now explain why:
there is no F in "way".
Even if there kinda used to be.
:P
there is no F in "way".
Even if there kinda used to be.
:P
Zoidberg For President@infobeautiful This seems suspiciously stupid...
Patrick Wyatt@infobeautiful And I thought my handwriting was bad!
I guess generations of all our family members handwriting made it easier to change the alphabet than stick with what they had
J. Russell@infobeautiful this reminds me of this NOVA episode: https://www.pbs.org/video/a-to-z-the-first-alphabet-yakgdt/
They show the same progression from hieroglyphics => Phoenician => Greek => Latin. I found the episode very enlightening. I never knew the thread ran back further than Hebrew/Phoenician writing.
GLC@infobeautiful
For a moment that looked wrong, till I noticed the horizontal dotted lines and color coding.
I like the G. The Romans got their alphabet via the Etruscans who decided the C and K were the same sound, and then "had to" add a line to recover the G. Which they put where the Z was since they didn't want a Z. Until they started borrowing Greek words, and - oops - no place for a Z, what to do? Oh, it will go at the end.
Madness.
ErgonWolf@infobeautiful Entire regions of the planet that aren't Latinate are staring at this post askance and also weeping a little bit.
Jordan “Yordan” Wight@infobeautiful Damn, looks like my initials didn’t even exist back then.
Kevin RussellEvolution of an alphabet.
Derick Rethans@infobeautiful It'd been my banner photo for ages!
leyrer
Anroth Elf@infobeautiful Clearly, Y fucks.
Jeff Olson@briankrebs I really liked the video that goes with that chart as well: https://youtu.be/3kGuN8WIGNc?si=HnH_WVztzyAFCbWJ
Zeborah@infobeautiful The number of letters the Romans literally turned back to front! I'm guessing that happened at some time writing implements were changing to make the new way easier.
Terry@infobeautiful Kinda interesting that a lot of the letters seemed to "flip" direction. I wonder if it's because that when they were writing on stone they chiseled from right to left? I've read that's the reason a lot of old languages are/were written from right to left as well.
korin 🔜 kodi@terry_fox @infobeautiful that is indeed why. it was boustrophedon which meant it flipped and alternated writing direction on the next line of text
Silas@infobeautiful Summary, a lot of things evolve towards puritanism. They become a lot less beautiful while gaining usefulness.
Anachron 
@infobeautiful wait, I turned to Z and Z turned to I? What's this magic.
Moose Jolly Holcomb@infobeautiful I like how the original version of B looks kinda like the check engine light.
Mel@infobeautiful Being back the lost letters
John Sandwolf@infobeautiful Interesting.
Razu Razu@infobeautiful I remember staring at this (and the extednded version) of the graph for hours while studying latin orthography as a hobby. The part of my brain that handles the latin script is now mush, completely broken; I do not regret it.