Evolution of the English Alphabet | Hacker News Reader

Evolution of the English Alphabet

usefulcharts.com

145 pointssohkamyung53 comments

This may be a (passable) evolution of the Latin alphabet, but it is not the English evolution. Missing are runes, and the lost letters eth, thorn, and yogh, which were still in use alongside the Latin alphabet as late as the 16th century.

The author addresses this very point, highlighting that the chart is simplified from a more detailed work.

They're not lost. Eth and Thorn are still in use in Icelandic.

This may seem like a silly question, but does anyone know why the alphabet seems to flip from 500 bce (ancient Latin) to 1 ce (Roman)?

Same question came up on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/8am0si/e...

> Linguist here! In those ancient languages, there was no standard writing direction or standardized spelling conventions. In fact the Greeks often wrote in either direction alternating in a method called "boustrophedon" which means "ox-turning." You get to the end of the line and then write backwards to the other side of the page; it's actually much better for reading.

Answer by sandscript

"boustrophedon" sounds extremely useful. Too bad that practice didn't remain. I always find my eyes loose track of where the next row starts, especially with small text and/or wide screens/paper.

The fastest way to go rasterize fixed sized tiles on LRB was boustrophedon—only requires ~9 registers, and takes 3c per 16 samples, amortized.

LRB?

Larrabee; an old Intel part.

I made a browser plugin that uses color gradients to help with this precise problem: http://www.beelinereader.com/individual. I had no idea how widespread this problem was until I posted a Show HN and my website grinded to a halt.

It turns out line tracking is an issue for readers with dyslexia, various visual problems, and ADHD.

When you hand write you need to switch hands on the reverse line. It's quite difficult to teach people to be ambidextrous.

I used to take notes that way in college sometimes (i.e. more that once, but not for anything very important). It felt almost natural to mirror the letters while also writing right-to-left.

Couldn't find any information on this. The historical answer may be something simple and silly, but I'd like to think it's to do with the fact that our brain is not initially wired to distinguish straight images from mirrored ones. We acquire this ability at some stage as we learn to write (children may at some point confuse the letters and draw them mirrored).

So maybe back when literacy was so low and scripts were used only occasionally, to most literate people it didn't matter which way you drew each letter, until someone decided to canonicalize it. I suppose the choice was arbitrary.

If you use pen and ink, then the current left to right writing of the latin alphabet is very convenient for right handed people.

It doesn't explain though how ꓭ became B.

I can imagine a person writing a B using their right hand moving left to right. To me (maybe in hindsight and biased) it seems more natural to write B that way. But there may be cultures who write B but write right to left or both ways boustrophedonically "as the ox plows" like ancient Greeks did.

My reasoning is once the vertical line part is drawn it would be awkward to go backward for the two bumps. Especially if using ink not chilling it into stone. You would end up smearing the ink.

But even with stone or ink you'd have more room on the right for spacing between the previous and next letter.

It seems very subjective. There are letters where you start with the curve and end with the straight line, like lower case d. So for the mirrored B there's nothing wrong with starting with Ɛ and adding the straight line afterwards.

So still, the final choice seems pretty arbitrary to me.

We are used to things the way they are today and the way they are taught in school. Before the "standartization" of the alphabet, it did not matter whether letters were rotated or reflected; for example, originally the letter A was written upside down (with the bull's horns pointing upwards). Even the ordering of letters in the alphabet was not seen as essential; it was introduced first as a handicap for easy learning, and then, in some languages such as Greek letters started being used as numbers.

This is untrue. I use a fountain pen in my right hand for both English (LTR) and Hebrew (RTL) writing. Even with slow-drying ink, smudging or dirtying my hand is not an issue in either language. My two oldest daughters also use a fountain pen (one left handed, one right handed) with no issue.

I'm left-handed and grew up writing English. Except in the cases that I take special care to hold my hand somewhat awkwardly off the page, virtually everything I've ever written has some amount of smudging. I have vivid memories of my graphite-coated hand in primary school. In addition, it's harder to see the flow of the word; your hand covers up everything but the last letter or two.

It's clearly something that impacts different people in different ways.

Interesting, thank you for the counterpoint.

My sister instead of her hand turns the page nearly 90° counter clockwise. She writes "upwards". I always thought that was pretty neat.

I am guessing, but originally there wasn't a defined writing direction, ancient latin texts are left-to-right, right-to-left and boustrophoedic (continuous left-right-left line).

Possibly the letter direction followed the word direction, and when left-right was established so were letters?

The author addresses it right there on the page:

As for why so many of the letters flipped, it's because they used to be written in both directions. But with the introduction of ink, left to right eventually became standard (less smudging if you're right-handed).

Am I misremembering, but I thought in Jared Diamond's GGS, the claim was made (and fairly well substantiated IIRC) that although writing was invented independently in several places around the planet, the (concept of an) alphabet was only invented once, and basically was propagated outwards.

It's an appealing idea, not least because it seems so bizarre.

It makes sense as far as I am concerned. Asian languages’ “alphabets” are a testament to this.

Korean has an alphabet in the sense that we mean. 40 characters, each corresponding to a particular phoneme. You can learn to sound out written Korean in as little as a day of study.

It was created in the 15th century though, and the creators surely knew of other alphabets.

I think in the sense of characters representing consonants and vowels specifically, but there are several phonetic alphabets — Japanese and Korean off the top of my head.

The Japanese and Koreans didn't independently invent the idea of a phonetic writing system, though. They knew about Sanskrit, Mongolian script, etc.

I think you mean "syllabic".

Korean is almost phonetic but it's very recent (1443-1444) and it's influenced by the Latin alphabet family (should I call it Phoenician). It's not a direct copy, but it's not an independent invention.

The Japanese language is mostly logographic, but they have two second class syllabic alternatives for students, kids and weird words. They have no traditional phonetic system.

If I can add a personal anecdote, I speak Spanish that is a very regular phonetic language like German. When my daughter was learning to read we have to teach her all the combinations of each consonant, for example "ma, me, mi, mo, mu" and then "la, le, li, lo, lu", and then ... after a few letter we imagined that she would pick the regularity and then with a single example like "ba" she would complete the sequence but no, we had to tell her the whole sequence "ba, be, bi, bo, bu".

This is similar to the system used in schools, so I guess it's necessary to hear all the syllabic combinations in spite when you are grow up you my think they are easy to interpolate.

And remember that Spanish is like German, you have a straightforward relation between the written form and how you say it. [There are minor pronunciation details, as in any language, for example we sometimes drop some unnecessary letters.]

>you have a straightforward relation between the written form and how you say it

This is one of the things I love about Spanish. I've heard people say that English is easier to read than Spanish. I don't know what those people are smoking, but I think it would be too strong for me ;-) Seriously, how would anyone know how to pronounce words like "enough" without hearing them first?

Well, that's easy; "enough" rhymes with trough, through, cough, although, and through. ;)

When I lived in Germany so many people asked me what the secret was to English pronunciation. How could you tell from the spelling how a word is pronounced? I told them to do what I was taught to do when I come across an unfamiliar word - check a dictionary. They were hoping for a different answer.

(It's also the answer to "yes/no" questions. Answer in a sentence, don't just say "yes" or "no". There's rules about how English speakers use them "yes" and "no" and when we use full sentences, but if you're asking me, the answer is just "always say 'i do' or 'she won't' or whatever", because it's 100% guaranteed to be clear and unambiguous. It's also easier to remember in the heat of the moment despite the complexity. If you want to be really good, you can practise "no, I don't", but leave "yes, I do".)

I think Spanish is actually a bit more predictable than German. The umulaut can denote a few different versions of vowel sounds, so, as an amateur learner of German, I sometimes have to guess as to which vowel sound I use.

I've dabbled in Japanese, German, and Spanish. All of these languages are easier to pronounce than English - and English is the only language I'm fluent in!

FWIW, in French the name of the letter "y" is "i grec", or "Greek i".

Similar in Polish, but for some reason, in Slavic languages from the Balkans it is "Ipsilon".

In English at least, the corresponding Greek letter is normally spelled "upsilon", which is obviously similar. The "psilon" in both "upsilon" and "epsilon" meant somethign like "simple" in Greek. So these letters were the "simple u" and "simple e". (Similarly with "omicron" and "omega", you can probably guess what size of "o" those were. :) Not sure if there are other cool facts about the Greek letters, for example those ending with "eta".

The pronunciation of the Greek name of the letter changed to “ipsilon” recently, less than a thousand years ago; perhaps the Balkan languages adopted the name after that. The original pronunciation was “hupsilon”, but that has been obsolete for over 2500 years. In between, it was pronounced in an in-between way involving the phoneme [y], which doesn't exist in English or Latin.

Same in Italian, we call it "I greca".

I'd love to know the story behind "I" and "Z" swapping places.

It's not an I. You can actually see the evolution of the "real" I right there on the chart.

What about diacritics used in English, aren't they part of the "English alphabet" too?

The New Yorker is (in)famous for coöperate, naïve, reëlect, etc.

Some people spell French loan words the French way, e.g. café, resumé, etc.

French/German/Spanish/etc proper names commonly keep their diacritics in English texts. Many people see Gödel as more correct (even in English) than Goedel.

In New Zealand English, Māori loan words commonly keep the macron. Certainly if you look at New Zealand government web sites you will see that happening.

But if English contains just as many diacritics as French/German/Māori/etc (albeit with rarer and less consistent usage) is there really a distinct "English alphabet"? Or just one Latin alphabet shared by many languages? (I know the page author attempts to address this objection, but I'm not satisfied with the response.)

What happened to þ?

We don’th Know.

It entered the alphabet from runes and then exited the alphabet with the invention of printing, because there weren't typefaces for it. So it appeared and disappeared between the last two stages in the graphic.

From the article

"Fyi, the above chart was actually just a simplified promo for a much larger chart - a Writing Systems of the World poster. So, if you're concerned about the fact that thorn, wynn, or any other letters are missing, rest assured that they were indeed included on the main chart."

This is super cool, but I wish there were more explanations about what happened!

It's interesting how the Q gets turned upside down and rounded out.

Would be cooler if it took it all the way back through Hieratic and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

That’s the reason why their is no “proper” English; English is constantly evolving.

Interesting that the ancient alphabet starts off as "A B C D E F Z H"

Yes, and they made a mistake in it. Z and Y don't come from the Latin forms. The letters entirely died off and they reborrowed them from the contemporary Greek forms.

TLDR: https://i.imgur.com/4WtybUs.gif

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