The Alphabet Defined: The Origin of Each Letter

Assume again, if you’ll, to the cli­mac­tic scenes of Indi­ana Jones and the Final Cru­sade, which happen within the hid­den tem­ple that con­tains the Holy Grail. His father hav­ing been shot by the das­tard­ly Nazi-sym­pa­thiz­ing immor­tal­i­ty-seek­er Wal­ter Dono­van, Indy has no selection however to retrieve the leg­endary cup to utilize its reput­ed heal­ing pow­ers. This entails go­ing by three useless­ly cham­bers, one in every of which has a ground cov­ered in stones, every one labeled with a let­ter of the alpha­wager. The best way by, accord­ing to Jones père’s analysis, is the title of God. However when Indy steps on “J” for Jeho­vah, it crum­bles away, and he close to­ly plunges into the enor­mous pit under.

After all, true followers may have already quot­ed the rel­e­vant line: “However within the Latin alpha­wager, Jeho­va begins with an I!” These of us who first watched the film as youngsters — and, for that mat­ter, many people who first watched it as adults — sim­ply took that truth as giv­en. But when we watch the Rob­Phrases video above, we will learn the way and when that “I” turned a “J”.

To the traditional Romans, explains host Rob Watts, these let­ters have been one and the identical, serv­ing each vow­el and con­so­nant obligation rely­ing on the con­textual content (as in “Iulius” Cae­sar). Each of them date again to a “moderately extra com­pli­cat­ed char­ac­ter” that appears like a foul­ly con­tort­ed F, and which orig­i­nat­ed as a pic­togram rep­re­despatched­ing a human hand and fore­arm.

The let­ter J solely emerged lat­er, “when scribes need­ed to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between these two usages.” (As we’ve seen, it additionally supplied the descen­dants of the Knights Tem­plar a option to trick inter­lop­ers of their cav­erns.) By way of­out the course of the video, Watts cov­ers this and oth­er curi­ous steps within the evo­lu­tion of the alpha­wager we use to write down Eng­lish and lots of oth­er lan­guages in the present day. These professional­duced such fea­tures because the plur­al of knife and wolf being knives and wolves, the appear­ing tremendous­fluity of Q, and — for an Eng­lish­man like Watts, an unig­nor­ready 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 apart from. And because the expe­ri­ence of Indi­ana Jones illus­trates, you nev­er know once you’ll want its classes.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of the Alpha­wager: A Col­or­ful Circulation­chart, Cov­er­ing 3,800 Years, Takes You From Historical Egypt to At present

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

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

Methods to Write in Cuneiform, the Outdated­est Writ­ing Sys­tem within the World: A Brief, Appeal­ing Intro­duc­tion

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

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­ebook.