Why West Africa keeps inventing writing systems
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- These dozens of modern African scripts are adding a brand new chapter to the history of writing!
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~ Briefly ~
Meet Adlam, N'ko, Vai and over twenty more scripts that capture West African linguistic features and give new visual representation to native West African tongues.
Topics covered:
- backstories of Adlam and N'ko
- list of many other scripts
- examples of African scripts beyond West Africa
- prenasalized stops like ᵐb
- labiovelars like g͡b
- vowel length in Fula
- length and tone in N'ko
- nasalization as an areal feature
- older visual codes like N'sibidi and Adinkra
- sociolinguistics of script creation
See the sources doc below for much more information.
~ Credits ~
Art, narration, animation and four pieces of music by Josh from NativLang
Sources for claims made, plus credits for music, fonts, sfx:
docs.google.com/document/d/1v...
~ Music ~
Please see my doc above for full credits. Public domain credits:
Teko, song of nostalgia, traditional music of Burkina Faso, Tuasgo & Gouama accompanied by Kondé:
gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt...
Creative Commons credits:
Monkoto by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
Thinking Music by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
Kumasi Groove by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
Silver Flame by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
Infados by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
As a West African, it was fascinating to see the anatomical visualization of the deft needed to enunciate the 'gb' sound. I really can now understand how challenging it would be for a non-native speaker 😂
even with that is impossble to do it
@@TheZenytram I don't believe so. What works best is probably not to 'think' too much about it and just watch and then imitate those who fluently can. Won't be perfect but definitely passable.
like the air dont move for one of them, or it pass in the b part or in the g part
I even have difficulty hearing the difference of that sound and a "normal" b sound. It's quite easy to distinguish sounds in the languages you speak, but it's when it's a sound that doesn't exist in any language that I speak my brain just fits them to the closest sound that I know and I literally hear no difference. I once knew a brazilian girl that could not tell the difference between "R" and "H" in german and that's just wild to me.
@@Kaepsele337 brazil has 3 distinct sound for R some times 4, that is equal to the; american R, italian R, french R and german CH.
This title has the same feel as “Why do things keep evolving into crabs?”
🤣
why DO things keep envolveing to to CRABS?!?
@@axeinrose
For Crustaceans it seems to be an invaluable shape to allow them to live on land and sea (and eventually just land in more than a handful of case).
"Crabs keep turning into land animals!"
A fellow PBS Eons subscriber, I see
As a West African, I didn't even know Soninke had a written form untill I went to the village my parents grew up in Senegal. It was soo confusing to know how to speak a language, but not read it. Shit broke my brain a lil bit.
Did they write it in Latin script?
@@connormurphy683 Probably not.
It means you are illiterate in your language
ㅅㅗㄴㅣㄴㄲㅐ , ㅅㅐㄴㅐㄱㅏㄹ'
@@cdsung6527 I've noticed that a lot of people are, I have so many friends that can speak their language but not read it.
I'm sorry, but are we just going to gloss over the fact that one of the languages appears to rely on *color* to convey information? Can we get a video on THAT beautiful beast please?
Aha, it’s called edo oracle rainbow script. It truly is beautiful and unique :)
Me who is colour blind: guess i'll die.
Nah but for real, it looks really cool
Looks cool but would likely be tedious to write in due to having to switch writing implements.
1000 years in the future "WHY ARE THERE SO MANY IDENTICAL LETTERS?!? WHO DECIDED THIS WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA?"
That makes me think of video games. You know when something is highlighted in red to signify something important or whatever? Sounds really cool.
I think I could enjoy an episode on any of these separately.
Yes, maybe it could be a new series?!
Oh yes that would be brilliant
@@torspedia I second this
Y E S
YES
MAJOR MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING
Comments that you can hear
@@feliperodrigues2572 Yup.
Jagwire
@@pirukiddingme1908 I think you mean _balam._
@BEHOLD!! Neither did the ancient greeks back when their alphabet showed up. Or the phoenicians. Os romans, or any of those
When you said the meaning of the acronym "Adlam" ("The letters that protect the people from vanishing"), I got thrilled. What a deep meaning that carries. Language is indeed a way to keep the culture of a people alive.
ㅏㄷㄹ'ㅏㅁ
@Weasel Yep. Sprach. Also; I think, the phonetic transcription should read: ”ʃpraç”; since, in German, the sibilant [s] becomes post-alveolar [ʃ], before a voiceless plosive, at the start of a word / syllable 🤔. Also; the ”bay” should read: ”bai”; [y], in the IPA, represents the same sound, as the German ”Ü”; *_NOT:_* [j].
I’m actually almost done with a keyboard for Nsibidi and it’s really fun to learn. Nsibidi is precolonial and existed within Nigeria and Cameroon as early as 9 BCE
That's AWESOME!! Have you finished yet?
Please update me I'm ibibio and I believe ibibio is the language that uses nsibidi.
Does anyone know the writing system for Yoruba?
@@cliffordjames4462 Ajami
@@roseashkiiii4361 pls speak it!!! 😭😭😭
One of the most interesting things about the start of this, is that a couple of kids, just 10 and 14, would decide to invent a writing system to sound out their language, based on what they knew of another one, but inventing their own original one, not as a secret code, but to write normally, so it's easy for their own people and language. Really great, really smart, and it goes to show that kids/teens can be as smart or smarter than the adults around them, just as much as they might also screw up and lack experience, they can create, invent, and can know and do, without it being a problem that they are "just kids or just teens."
Agreed! What's equally amazing is that the adults respected the teens and saw the usefulness of the writing system enough to allow it to spread rapidly.
@@new-lviv more so they are untainted by the pollution of western media. The more I travel fhe more I noticed that the less English people speak and understand (on a society whole) the less bigotry, biases and elitist behaviors are pervasive in that culture.
It is children, due to their plastic brains, that appear to have made almost all of the languages that exist. When a bunch of cultures are thrown together, a messy pidgin evolves. It takes the next generation of children to regularize this into a fully fledged Creol with a consistant grammer and amazingly this happens completely organically.
"without it being a problem that they are "just kids or just teens.""
The young-uns need some kind of 'coaching', for sure (well, we all do haha), but I agree, they need not be treated like 'children', but people. I say this because at the age of 35 there are still members of my family that don't take me for an 'adult', and yet make greater mistakes. One thing that comes up often around the fire/meeting place, amongst all age groups, is that no matter how much we learn and progress through life 'you' are always 'you', doesn't matter if you're 9 or 99.
@@MerlinTheCommenter that’s pretty bigotted
History is being written ...
Writing being historied?
Writing is making history?
History making writing?
Writing history?
History in the writing?
Oh well, lets just say this is a very historical moment
*Indeed*
History written
@@jamesmayle4712 but is it written?
@@03.ximipa3ahmadrinofarosmu3 and is it true?
@@engineerconagher9466 idk didn't bother reading it
I actually invented my own writing system that I use for my language (Shona🇿🇼🇿🇼) 🤣🤣 I have many of them. I run them by my brother to see if he thinks they look "african" and if he agrees then I use it. It started with conlangs for my novel, but then I realised I wanna take notes about other stuff👀👀 without raising eyebrows so I was I made one. I have Alphabetic, Abugidas, Abjads (arabic), and featural (Korean type - written in blocks).
that is so awesome, i wish i could do that too >
That’s a great sign for a writer. J.r.r. Tolkien was famous for writing elvish and other such languages
Me too, I created a syllabic writing system
Any progress so far with your novel? would be delighted to read it!
This is fascinating. Keep going! You may be the start of a proper Shona writing system!
An episode on each of these writing systems please! More African writing systems need to be represented to illustrate the diversity and beauty of Africa and to get more people to learn these languages! Thanks so much for what you do!
Yeah!! Not many people seem to be interested
especially west Africa
I am head over heels for West African writing systems for how inspiring they are at giving languages their own literary “faces.” I hope you’d look into the Cherokee syllabary and other Native American writing systems in the future!
I loved learning about the cherokee syllabary
I read once that the guy inventing the Cherokee writing system kickstarted the development of the other writing systems not only for native Americans, but also for a lot of African languages. I mean it would fit based on the time scale, but I wonder whether that's actually true!
There's also that family of abugidas that's been used for a bunch of Algonquin, Athabaskan, and Inuit languages in Canada.
It's kinda cool how those work. Most syllables in those languages are either consonant-vowel or just a vowel. So each character form represents a syllable's consonant, and which direction it's rotated tells you that syllable's vowel. A diacritic dot marks a long vowel. And a consonant that _ends_ a syllable gets appended as a superscript to the regular CV character.
The writing system was devised by missionaries from a mix of Devanagari script and Pittman shorthand. But it took on a life of its own among native communities, and some still use it today. (Though others lost it from 20th Century schools not teaching it.)
Oh I would love to see this
@@AaronOfMpls Oh, yes! I would just *_LOVE TO_* see NativLang making a video on the Inuktitut-abugida. Tom Scott already has.
I really appreaciate the focus you put on less covered geographic areas, Central Asia, West Africa, the Caucasus and the like. Not that the linguistics of more familiar areas aren't interesting, but it's wonderful to hear stories from elsewhere, to give context and flavour and personality to places and peoples so often glossed over, or bunched together into one, despite massive differences that'd make all of our European world's variety seem insignificantly small.
Not to mention the fact that many people think sub Saharan Africans haven't got written languages of their own.
@@IshtarNike well its true on many places in africa this is why you need to invent scripts
@@davidjoelsson4929 Well, a prejudice bigot will always be a prejudice bigot.
@@kindomofghana wow
no reason to put down european variety all exists in its own right none is above the other.
There's something so beautiful about a writing system fitted exactly for the language it represents.
Polish and Czech should learn from West Africa 😂
@@himesilva And english
@@MemezuiiSangkanskje I think the Latin alphabet is fine for English, however we do really need to decide on one way for spelling sounds (-ough, -oe, -ew, -oo, etc.) instead of the mish-mash of French, Latin, Dutch, Celtic, Spanish, Greek, etc. that we have now.
@@himesilva Well yes, but actually no.
"th" did not mean /ð/ / /θ/. It meant /tʰ/ in other languages. þ & ð were better letters as they could separate the voice and voiceless.
Old English did not, it just said that any þ's or ð's at the beginning or end of a word were voiceless, and only voiceless in the middle if it was doubled up, but that was 1000 years ago, that's *Old* English. We can make so that þ is /θ/ & ð as /ð/. Maybe not supplant the latin alphabet entirely, maybe just add some diacritics that make sense & remove a lot of historical spelling
Yoruba written with Latin characters is borderline unreadable. I need to see it in its own script that doesn't give me eye strain.
The person who said that sentence "African voices are like those of the birds - impossible to transcribe" didn't think about it properly. Because if we wanted to, we COULD even transcribe the singing of birds. It's not impossible at all!
Now I'm just thinking someone should do that, create a Bird writing system, just for fun.
I'm not too sure about English but even it has some basic animal expressions which are based on sounds being transcribed so yeah.... I speak a language that has plenty of bird songs 'written down', not just lone sounds.
People can and do transcribe birdsong, the tones of other animals, random city noise and anything that can produce sound basically. They usually use regular music notation for things like that though.
It's pretty cool.
@@cymtastique Exactly. Since most animals don't 'talk' by themselves in the human sense, but rather shout, bark or sing a band notation with all usual musical elements like drumset, regular tones, tremolo and more are probably enough for >90% of animal sounds at least as we hear them.
"someone should" is so much easier than "here is my suggestion how to"
@@crazydragy4233 Here in East Africa we have tribes that can actually speak to the birds so that the birds can show them where honey can be found in exchange for a piece of the honey comb... Interesting relationship really.
Back when I was little when I used to keep a journal , I learned how to read and write in Cyrillic so that nobody other than me could read it lmao , I imagine a lot of scripts are born for reasons like that
андерстендебал
i did that too, but for my final exams and to write notes on my dictionary (the only object we could use). i ended up not needing the notes, but i felt like a secret agent
Lol, when I was younger I learned to write in cyrilic and adapted it to spanish (my mother tongue), eventually, adapting writing scripts to my own language has become my hobby, I have cyrilic, greek, glagolitic, arabic, hebrew, and I tried hindi and tibetan but they are somewhat difficult
some kind of power or emotional connection is in the different scripts
I made up my own alphabet characters and memorized them for that purpose.
A concept that hadn't occurred to me. That scripts were still being invented. Amazing.✌🏻
Ive made my own. I use it for writing passwords. It can be used for multiple languages although im only fluent in english.
@@iaw7406 is your name written in that script?
@@someguy4439 lol no
@@iaw7406 what is it then ?
@@iaw7406 yeah. I have a file labelled Secret Codes... But it isn't meant for a spoken real language script. I guess what hadn't occurred to me was that there were languages that didn't have a script.
Secret codes are fun!😁
As an Armenian, I understand a need for a separate script.
Մենք էլ ունենք մեր է։
yes the Caucasus came up with some fascinating non-Greek / non-Aramaic scripts. Also Georgian and the criminally-underrated Udi "caucasian-albanian".
@@zimriel What are you talking about? The general consensus is that Armenian is modelled after the Greek alphabet, supplemented with letters from a different source or sources for Armenian sounds not found in Greek.
i use to learn ur script back then along with korean, greek, cyrillic, and baybayin (ph ancient script) when i was 13
@@maxwiencek oh, really? Then try to get a Greek speaker to see if he can recognize any of the letters.
They won’t, not a single one.
I love how full of themselves western scientists get when dealing with civilizations they’ve deemed not worth a damn.
🙄
@@ramik81 There are many calligraphic hands in Latin scripts, especially old ones, that a contemporary reader would never be able to read as they are so different from what we know as Latin letters. Moreover, Armenian alphabet is MODELLED AFTER and not BORROWED FROM. Just like Latin and cyrylic alphabets come from Greek, Greek comes from Phoenician, Phoenician comes from Egyptian... Hebrew and Arabic scripts also are derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
6:28 "Nmgba" is "No" in Igbo I guess😁
I'm from Yakurr, (we speak Lokaa) a tribe in Nigeria. We also have pre-nasalised consonants gb, kp, ng, mb, nd, mg, nn and nm.
I remember the first time I noticed people from other parts of the world couldn't pronounced "gb" and "kp" when I was a kid, it felt strange 😅.
I love your videos NativLang 👍🏾
Do you know that it never occurred to me that mba should actually be spelt (or even pronounced) mgba? But in this moment I just realized that my part of the country, we pronounce gb stronger than your side. Your gb is straight up like our b. Spent my whole life saying mm-bah, rather than mm'gbah. Is well. 😌
For the word, no, the word is mba, not mgba... Although in ancient Ìgbò, the b in mba came from ɓ, which then broke down to b and w. This is why no is mba in some dialects and ụwa/awa in some others
Thank you for shedding the light on the most misunderstood cultures in the world
LOL, we all understand it
@@firstname4337 Tell me more
@@H-Vox they once said: “they need to get it together and stop the tribal mentality” so I don’t think they’re saying this in good light
@@firstname4337 he’s a racist.
Misunderstood?
Underepresented would be better. You cant understand something you dont know
Which of these beautiful scripts grab your attention? One interesting note to add: there are many consonant-vowel alphabets here but also syllables, featural signs, logograms...
this kinda reminds me of other scripts like ogham script even though that one's old. people are picking it up more
A funny thing I noticed while you were exlaining the difference between hin-du and hi-ndu: the script kind of looks like a flipped Devanagari, the writing system used for Hindi, with the connecting line at the bottom instead of the top!
Hey NativeLang, hello there! I had heard before about Vai script, and was pretty mesmerized about its history: it was Momolu Duwualu Bukele; a Liberian linguist, who created the syllabary inspired by the ancient Vai ideographic symbols. Greetings from Mexico!
Yeah, I wanna know more about that colorful script that was shown!! I have no idea what script that is!
@@Mousey10101 The "Rainbow Oracle Script"... and what a name!
I'm learning Chinese (even moved to Taiwan to help) and there are times, so so so many times, when I just want to give up and quit. Your videos help rekindle my love of languages and the challenge that is Chinese. So keep it up!
Which Chinese? Mandarin or Min / Taiwanese?
@@zimrielyou mean Taiwanese Hokkien? Min is a huge branch and possibly the oldest branch of Chinese. Taiwanese Hokkien is probably not even the only Min variety spoken in Taiwan.
The Nsịbịdị script used to be the writing system of Igbo language but was not popularized,it was mainly used by scholars and elites until Latin script came and took over the language.
Not only Igbo and Igbo adapted it from the calabar people groups, it was a writing script of calabar peoples all the way to ethnicities of Cameroon. It's not an Igbo script, it's shared by several ethnicities, it's wrong to claim what you didn't originate.
@@windsurfer8824 It's an Igbo script, same way Kanji is a Japanese script. he never claimed that Igbo invented it. Only said it was the writing system of the Igbo language which is true.
And also, Calabar people didn't invent the script, it's believed to be Ejagham that invented it. Will you then say it's not a Calabar script?
It just sounds like you want to be a contrarian against Igbos.
@@udyfrost6380 I noticed a lot of people like to throw shade on the igbos whenever its said that they used Nsibidi.
You should talk about african pre-colonial writing systems.
so far I know about ethiopic, coptic/nubian, tifinagh, and I think there are some undeciphered ones too
ethiopic? you mean amharic?
there were fewer pre colonial writing systems though because arabic and the roman alphabet were more convenient to adopt - same reason why there aren't many European writing systems and there's only about two. as far as we know, a lot of pre colonial cultures had different ways of recording knowledge than writing. unless there was a lot of written action going on in the south that I don't know about
@@ffghjj9996 amharic is the language, and it's not the one the ethiopic script was created for (that would be ge'ez, hence the script also being called ge'ez script)
THIS!!!
Sub Saharan Africa didn't have any
I'm so early, I feel like Sumerian cuneiform wow
LMAO, that's a good one
lol you're a square
the way you illustrated falling, rising, low, high by actually tonalizing these words in the way it functions was brilliant. this is such a great video. wow. wow wow. i truly appreciate this.
If English and French managed to have a writing form, any language can.
Such an unenlightened opinion
English and French use the Latin script of their Roman colonizers.
English has a better script(Shavian) English isn't a an overly difficult language to write down we just try to mash a script that dosent work for it (the Latin script)
English spelling has nothing to do with it's writting system.
Tibetan and Thai also have non-phonetic spelling even tho they don't use Latin script.
Languages like English, Thai, Tibetan have etymological spelling and haven't been reformed for a long time.
English used to be phonetic.
English later went through phonetic changes but English never changed its writing to match modern spelling and thus modern English spelling reflects pronounciation from hundreds of years ago.
N'Ko is my favorite looking script of the lot, I'm a sucker for scripts made up of elementary geometric shapes
ㄴ'ㄲㅗ
It’s not “elementary geometric shapes” it’s beyond your understanding.
@@YaAllahswt I don't think they meant it in a bad way, "elementary geometric shapes" have a beautiful minimalist design and looks very modern, science fiction-like. It's also easier to learn to read and write. Korean writing is also geometric shapes like boxes and circles, but have hundreds of years of history and are very easy to learn, N'Ko is the same.
This is a MAJOR MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING
yessssssssssss
@@takashi.mizuiro hi takashi sensei lololol
Amelia dude what?
100%
@@takashi.mizuiro your username says takashi sensei
Yayyyy, thank you for featuring Ndebe script for Igbo (also works for Yoruba) !!!!
Me, trying to imitate the phonems of these languages: *dying noises*
And I thought pronouncing chinese had been difficult.
Everybody gangsta till they find out Vietnamese has insane tones like Chinese *and* the kp sound at the end of words
Ok, but can I get an entire episode on that language that seems to use color for some of it's encoding because.... Yes?
same. can someone find the name of the langauge? I want to read about it.
@@elianasteele553 In another comment feed Nativlang called it the "Rainbow Oracle script"
I hope that'll allow you to look further into it 😉
@@odysseus231 I also found it mentioned as Benin-Edo Script. I googled West African script colors and searched googled images.
I was thinking about that. And how unnecessarily difficult it would be to write and erase physical text with it. Do you need to carry all colours of pencils and keep switching between them in order to write? And how would that work in computer fonts?
@@ynntari2775 They probably use paints or some other medium to write it in- not every language is written on paper with a stylus, and thus not every one is designed to be easy that way! That said- I can imagine this language might be ceremonial or religious to mitigate it...
You should do a video on how letters and writing systems are transcribed into computers. It seems to me you can basically find any letter you want. Even with Chinese you can find any of tens of thousands of characters, so how is it that they were programmed into a computer?
*+*
The Unicode Consortium
Probably with Chinese they are mostly just vector graphics whose radical elements can either be squished to fit in the context of a complicated character or in edge-cases are individually completely redrawn. Either way since you cannot have that many fonts with most non-alphabetic scripts (even Arabic is limited in that regard) standard Chinese may not even take much more storage space than all common Latin fonts if not less. The fact that most non-middle Eastern scripts are written left-to-right might also help.
As for ancient Chinese cursive or Mongolian there is no extensive support for top-to-bottom scripts in unicode even though some characters can be quite tall trough diacritics or by themselves like ﷻ.
*Hardware level* (you can skip this)
I'm not going to explain how electrical circuits and SSD/HDD storages work in full detail, but when a computer is on, there's electric current that's flowing through all the components of the computer. Computer components consist of many "logic gates", which manipulate the electric flow. There's a certain voltage on the output, which represents information. This information is either TRUE (e.g. high voltage) or FALSE (e.g. low voltage). When you save a text document on your hard drive, it is stored in multiple "cells", each cell containing either TRUE or FALSE information. In terms of math, you can interpret this information as a number: TRUE as 1, FALSE as 0.
*Binary* (you can skip this one too)
We usually work with base-10 positional numeral system. That means we have 10 symbols (0 to 9) to represent numbers. We use 10 unique symbols for the first 10 numbers (starting from 0): 0, 1, 2, 3... And when the number is higher than the last symbol we have (9), we simply put the second symbol (1) to the second position and start the first position all over again: 10, 11, 12, 13...
But having only 2 possible values to represent information, we don't need 10 symbols, but just 2. So in the "binary" system, we use base-2 positional numeral system. It goes: 0, 1. That's it. These ones and zeros are called binary digits (a.k.a. bits).
*Data*
While the hardware only "sees" one of two possible values, software can "see" much more. How does it do it? By combining these TRUE/FALSE informations (or bits) in groups. These groups are called bytes. A byte is a sequence of 8 bits. That means you have 8 available positions and when you start counting in binary, you go: 0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110... until you get to the highest number, 11111111, which is number 255 in decimal (base-10). So with 1 byte you can have 256 unique combinations that can represent 256 unique values.
*Data encoding*
256 is enough high number to represent letters/characters of the Latin alphabet (uppercase and lowercase), digits from 0 to 9, some symbols and some control characters (e.g. newline character that lets us have multiple lines in our text document). In order to have your system read the text file from your hard drive correctly, it has to follow some standard which tells the software what character each byte represents. One of these standards is ASCII. Earlier ASCII used 7 bits (128 unique combinations, which was still enough) to represent characters. It was before the standardization of the length of 1 byte being 8 bits. Later on, another standard called Extended ASCII used 8 bits to represent characters. It included some letters with diacritics, so multiple European languages could be written using this encoding. When you save a text document to your hard drive using the ASCII encoding, each character takes 1 byte of memory.
But ASCII wasn't enough. Computers started being used all over the world and people wanted to be able to write in their own languages on them. Computer engineers, programmers and institutions from around the world started developing many new standards. But there was another problem. What if you wanted to write in multiple languages in one text document? A new standard was needed, which would encode multiple languages at once.
*Universal encoding*
Unicode was a new standard aiming to encode as many languages (or writing systems) as possible. The current capacity of the Unicode table is more than 1 million characters, while only about 150 000 characters are actually defined/assigned. There are multiple encodings which follow the Unicode standard, the most popular being UTF-8. In order to be able to represent thousands or even millions of different characters, UTF-8 uses combinations of bytes to represent characters. It can use 1 or a combination of up to 4 bytes to encode characters and can possibly encode up to around 2 million characters (twice the size of the Unicode table). The most used languages/writing systems are located at the beginning of the table and can be represented with less bytes. When you save a text document to your hard drive using the UTF-8 encoding, each character takes 1 to 4 bytes of memory.
Unicode also assigns emoji characters to the table and there's more and more of them every year. But not all of them are encoded as separate characters. Many of them (such as country flags or all those faces with different skin color) are achieved by combining multiple emoji characters together.
*Fonts*
Fonts are files containing information about shapes of letters, their sizes, ligatures, kerning, a bunch of tables with additional information, etc. A character in a font file is called glyph. A font creator is hypothetically able to create glyphs for all Unicode code points, including all writing systems and all Chinese characters. Sometimes, when font creators create a new writing system, like some sort of an alien language for a movie or a video game, they assign the glyphs to Latin Unicode code points, so you're able to write this script using English keyboard.
When you open your text document in a text editor, basically what happens is: 1. a sequence of bits are read from the hard drive; 2. they're grouped into bytes; 3. bytes are converted to characters based on the encoding used (ASCII, UTF-8, etc.); 4. a font rendering software reads a font file; 5. the font rendering software takes the text and retrieves respective glyphs from the font file according to the characters in the text, performs additional tasks if needed (e.g. anti-aliasing) and renders the result; 6. the result is printed out on the screen.
That topic is a world unto itself! The encodings alone were the outcome of many years of evolution and debate. I remember the days when most computers you could buy in the West could only display a simple Latin character set that was usually some idiosyncratic variant of ASCII. Just getting some diacritical marks in was a major advance.
had an interaction with a friends wife from Albania, we on the other hand are both from Ghana, and that was the first time I realized people have a hard time pronouncing most of our basic sounds. I guess we never thought too hard about it. It took her a long while to master just 4 the most frequently used consonant combinations in our native languages. And Albanian in turn took me off guard lol. It was a fun exchange though.
I must say it's refreshing to hear someone say long and short vowels to actually MEAN long and short vowels, not hard and soft like what we have in English.
What do you mean? The concepts of "hardness" and "softness" are applicable to materials and are meaningless in the context of phonemes. The difference between the vowels in "cut" and "cart", or "sod" and "sword", is mostly a distinction of length. There might be, to some extent, a distinction in quality, too, but that extent would depend on your accent, I suppose. There is certainly no distinction in terms that could be measured using the Mohs scale.
@@EnigmaticLucas I'm British.
@@EnigmaticLucas The original comment didn't specify "rhotic dialects of English". It just said "English".
Look up Finnish and Estonian. ;)
@@omp199google is free. Hard and soft vowels exist as a reference to something. It isn’t an academic term, but it can be as well defined as any other.
The writing with the coloured letters looks interesting. Surprised you didn't mention something that quite literally stands out so much
Yes, it seems really interesting, but also inconvenient for everyday use for anyone, regardless of culture, as multiple colored pens, pencils, or paints are not easily available at all times, in all situations.
@@heidih3048 also they're not suitable for colour blind people
@@colireg yes, good point
You could solve both of those problems if you used a system of pencil shading
@@anonymooseanonymouse6371 True. So instead of just colors, you could use shades. Let's say they use tones. Black is for the main lines. Dark gray/red is for low tones. Mid-gray/blue is for falling tones. Light gray/green is for rising tones. White/yellow is for high tones.
I've been on a NativLang binge lately, just watched the full Thoth's Pill documentary yesterday (finally), amazingly done! I'm glad you've uploaded again.
He always posts! It just takes a month or two between videos (to which I am very grateful as the quality is always top tier). My favorite channel* ever!
@@feliperodrigues2572 I know he always posts, it just takes ages, I agree, the quality is better. Well my favorite canal is the Suez Canal but sure.
@@AvrahamYairStern just noticed my typo! 😅😅😅 My keyboard corrected channel to portuguese "canal" and I didn't notice
@@feliperodrigues2572 haha, sorry I had to take that opportunity.
@@AvrahamYairStern well played! It took me a minute to understand 😅
I'm from West Africa and I also created my own writing system last year.
Even if it's for a conlang, it's commendable. I have been trying to do so for how many years but I haven't really put REALLY any effort to it, so... there's that.
As a fula i'm so glad that you made this vidéo and make people in another part of the globe interested on our culture
NativLang you
Not only is this a revolutionary moment in the written language and preservation of history, but this a beautiful treasure trove of inspiration for conlang. Thanks for spreading the word of this historical moment mate! :)
MAJOR MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING.
No. not really
I just want to say, this is BY FAR the best language channel on youtube.
This is absolutely beautiful and says so much about the beauty and richness in africa.
Thanks so much for covering this!
I keep coming for the way you tell such humane stories involving languages, thank you for sharing.
The first constructed script I ever heard about that was designed to solve these problems: Cherokee. Then I learned about Korean. These are beautiful. Time to get busy Unicode people.
All these scripts are already encoded in Unicode, by the way. But they could do with more font choices, so I would say get busy typeface designers.
Yeah i'm always like, Why can't English be like Korean?
@@challalla I'm glad to hear that.
@@possiblyrei When I become king of the world, I will mandate that all written languages be written in (expanded) Hangul.
@@buddyadams4781 And I will be here to help (except french, its pretty fine and would lose a lot if it was written in hangeul)
BRO this is SO COOL. I've always been interested in script-making as an extension of linguistics, so I'm definitely going to have to research this more.
These two brothers Abdoulaye and Ibrahim are like modern Cyril and Methodius. Very interesting video, I had no idea of the existence of so many, and some of them recent, writing system in western Africa.
"African voices are like those of the birds - impossible to transcribe."
*Olivier Messiaen has entered the chat*
[edit: thanks for the love yall!]
I giggled
Yo what’s your favorite Messiaen piece?
Didn't expect to see a music connection here
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
I hope that journalist found a big pile of sheet music at his doorstep the next morning.
My dad is Kenyan (Kikuyu tribe). My first name is Andrew, the millisecond you mentioned "Nd" the lesson was over.
Thank you, and it's not as hard as it looks to say, considering a lot of European languages have "cz" "čić" and don't even get me started with my second language's most difficult feature for native English speakers trying to speak German the dreaded "ö"
cz is just /tʃ/
Oh and Welsh "LL" is also very unusual, I think I cannot pronounce it right. Polish is full of sounds and words hard for even other Slavic speakers too...
@@KateeAngel Is that [ɬ] so hard (or unusual)? To me, the sound itself feels easy though I've not tried to learn any language that uses it. I've also had a coworker with lisp who pronounced S as [ɬ] (instead of [s]).
Honestly from what I can gauge it's all about what you were born into. Exactly why we ought to drop all our preconceived notions of what language should be like and logic when learning a new, esp if it's very different, language.
@@KateeAngel you also find it in Norwegian (Trøndersk) and Jamtlandic, but we don't really have a good way of writing it. One example is "tathjlat" or the place name "Kvisslabakken" where you don't hear any S sounds. Also the word/prefix "Litj-" (little)
I myself crafted my own writing system for my Diary, because even before I am fascinated with different writing system, I was wondering why we filipinos do not use our own writing system like what our ASEAN brothers do and so I created one for my personal use...as you could say it is more like for my personal and aesthetic of my diary....I called it "Likhamai" from filipino words "Likha" means creation and "Kamay" which means "Hand". It is based from Philippine Baybayin Script which is a member of the Brahmic script family. But unlike baybayin, this script is not Abugida but an Alphabet. Recently I created its cursive style.
Please post some examples. I would be very interested to see it. (I'm Malay speaking)
When European languages have an unusual sound not covered by Latin, they just add some new symbols to the Latin alphabet instead of making a new one
Or a diacritic or two ... though I feel Vietnamese has gone a bit overboard.
imo Latin is pretty good at representing just about any language...except maybe Vietnamese...
@@MrCrashDavi As fun it is to hate on the nonexistence of pronunciation rules in English, It's kinda moot to argue that there is a "proper" way of representing phonemes, with all the languages having their own distinct quirks, unless you want us all to write in phonetic symbols like we're in a dictionary
@@MrCrashDavi Most languages using Latin use it *way* better than English, we're an outlier.
@@MrCrashDavi >actively colonizing
ooooh sorry i thought you were for real didn't notice you're joking haha got me good
Writing system is my favorite topic in linguistics. I've been requesting a video on it for so long and we finally got it. Can't wait for it!
Fula speakers: "The difference between 'hindu' and 'hindu' is impossible to write in the Latin alphabet."
Tilde: "Am I a f'ing joke to you?"
Assuming that the illustrations in this video were correct, it turned out that the amazingly unique feature of this new writing system that enabled the distinction between the two different words "hindu" and "hindu" was... a small vertical line suspended above the gap between two consecutive letters. In essence, a simple apostrophe.
Interestingly, an apostrophe is often used in romaji transcriptions of Japanese to distinguish syllable-final (moraic) "n" from syllable-initial "n". This is not exactly the same thing, but it's another example of the humble apostrophe being used in conjunction with the Latin alphabet to disambiguate words in languages for which the Latin alphabet is almost, but not entirely, suitable.
👊😂 nice one
Yeah I think the solution of adding an apostrophe between the syllables would work just fine with Latin script honestly... I mean Vietnamese uses the Latin script with *heavy* modifications, so you can definitely adapt it
Yeah, not the best example. But at least it's standardized.
Obviously the accent marks and diacritics that can modify the Latin alphabet weren't good enough for them.
I had no idea this has been an ongoing thing for decades. And yet I feel so proud of the speakers who come up with the new scripts! Fascinating and admirable!
Almost 1 million subs - impressive!
Hope to see and watch new videos from you soon again!!
Hope we do get to hear more of those stories you teased. Especially the Rainbow Oracle Script's, you can't have something so distinct in the background and not even mention it!
Thanks for including the source doc, such as fonts, music, other credits, background info, in the description doubly-doo.
if it weren't for this comment , i'd probably never noticed that highly impressive West Africa Scripts document - holy moly : Nativ sure loves to document his videos !!!
This is incredible. I'm thinking of how much African history has been distorted or lost because it was never written down.
A lot was written down, but destroyed by those European criminials during colonization.
@@bloom4096 Nice propaganda
@@froglifes6829 it’s true you bigot
This was fascinating, I never thought about the connection between West African linguistics features and the new writing systems that have emerged there before. Also the musical elements from Thoth's pill take me back to when I first came across this channel. Mmm, nostalgia!
(4:00) That colorful writing is very unexpected! I have thought about such things before, but at the same time it also feels like something sci-fi writers would do to have a very alien script, yet reality will always be stranger than fiction.
It's so fascinating to see writing systems develop despite absolute dominance of latin script (Maybe I'm a bit exaggerating, but you get the point)
I think latins pretty boring at this point, little over saturated. came up with my own writing system for my comic books just cause i think it’s time for a change ya know
I agree, though I still vehemently believe that the actual practicality of these things takes first place. There's only so much you can do to the wheel to 'spice it up' before its functionality starts plummeting.
In Africa Arabic script is just as or even more dominant as Latin.
@@fenrirr22 only in north africa
i'm always so excited to see another video from you. seeing these different languages is inspiring in a way. humanity and the way they communicate with each other is fascinating
I love this video and the information you’ve shared about the development of these writing systems. I always appreciate how well made these videos are. Thank you for this and all the before and afters.
0:14 I decided to accept that challenge and I have indeed, named 26 scripts outside Africa. Although, I really just did it for fun.
1. Latin
2. Cyrillic
3. Greek
4. Pahawh Hmong
5. Hiragana
6. Katakana
7. Hanzi
8. Hangeul
9. Arabic
10. Hebrew
11. Bengali
12. Devanagari
13. Burmese
14. Cherokee
15. Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics
16. Thai
17. Lao
18. Khmer
19. Marathi
20. Oriya
21. Gujarati
22. Georgian
23. Armenian
24. Tibetan
25. Ol Chiki
26. Malayalam
Here's my challenge
1 Latin
2 Greek
3 Cyrillic
4 Sinhala
5 Hindi
6 Thai
7 Burmese
8 Chinese traditional
9 Chinese simplified
10 Hiragana
11 Katakana
12 Kanji
13 Hanzi
14 Hangeul
15 Tibetan
16 Armenian
17 Georgian
18 Arabic
19 Cherokee
20 Sanskrit
21 Tamil?
22 Bengali
23 Old English (not in use)
24 Khmer
25 Hebrew
26 Phoenician (not in use)
Yeah I did this too, and it was really hard not to pull EVERYTHING from India.
1. Latin
2. Greek
3. Baybayin
4. Kulitan
5. Jawi
6. Kawi
7. Hanzi
8. Katakana
9. Hiragana
10. Kanji
11. Hentaigana (yes, this is a thing)
12. Buhid
13. Hangul
14. Hanja
15. Hanunoo
16. Tagbanwa
17. Uyghur
18. Aramaic
19. Brahmi
20. Chữ Nôm
21. Cherokee
22. Burmese
23. Lao
24. Thai
25. Karen
26. Balinese
1 Latin
2 Cyrillic
3 Greek
4 Glagolitic
5 Etruscan
6 Runic
7 Ogham
8 Orkhon
9 Lydian
10 Georgian
11 Armenian
12 Anbur
13 Arabic
14 Syriac
16 Hebrew
17 Cuneiform
18 Devnagari
19 Tibetan
20 Burmese
21 Sinhala
22 Thai
23 Bengal
24 Indus
25 Khmer
26 Lao
27 Malay
28 Hanzi
29 Hangul
30 Hiragana
31 Katakana
32 Kanji
33 Mongol
34 Canadian
35 Cherokee
36 Osage
37 Mayan
38 Nahuatl
39 Rapa Nui
I misremembered and did outside of Europe and Africa and didn't mention Latin since I had also assumed it wasn't ok .
Misremembering made this challenge a lot harder than it needed to be . Anyways,
1 . Kana
2 . Hangeul
3 . Chinese characters
4 . Thai script
5 . Lao script
6 . Khmer script
7 . Mongolian script / Manchu ?
8 . Tibetan script
9 . Burmese script
10 . Javanese
11 . Lontara
12 . Sundanese
13 . Maldivian script
14 . Odia script
15 . Bengali script
16 . Devanagari
17 . Gurmukhi
18 . Tamil script
19 . Arabic script
20 . Cherokee syllabary
21 . Canadian indigenous syllabary
22 . Maya glyphs
23 . Ba Shu script
24 . Rongorongo script
25 . Assamese script
26 . Sindhi script
27 . Malayalam script
😊
If you're interested in making more videos on the topic, I can suggest you to make some research on Tenevil's writing system for the Chukchi language. It never caught off, as it was used only between him and his family, but it's linguistically important because it has been created in complete isolation without any outside influence from other scripts.
What a beautiful presentation on these fascinating scripts!
I fully believe that this is the best channel on CZcams. Growing up in a monolingual English speaking community these kinds of things are criminally under reported on, it wasn't until university linguistics that I found my passion for language and your channel has been a big part of that
This is fascinating! Thank you so much! More African content would be wonderful as it is so often neglected in other contexts.
I’m anxiously waiting for Unicode to encode Ditema tsa Dinoko, I’d love to be able to type it
Also, 2:31 - a Lebanese journalist speaking with a French accent is too perfect
I thought that was weird.
Oh the script is very interesting one! Even though the best we can do is to treat the script as other LTR scripts we know and love.
What is Ditema tsa Dinoko?
@@mahalisyarifuddin what're LTR scripts?
@@akay_g9
As it turns out… the colorful writing system!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditema_tsa_Dinoko
Yay! I'm so happy to see any coverage of my people's script (Vai)!
Thanks for such an informative video. I'd never have known about this fascinating subject. Really glad people are keeping their languages alive.
As a great fan of cultures and folklore, I'm so glad to see that there are yet places where individual cultures flourish and not everything will be sacrificed for globalisation. Keep it up guys, the world needs you to express yourself!
And here I am, just glad you mentioned Guaraní c: 🇵🇾
Me too !! :D 🇵🇾🧉
*+*
Frenchie fries
I'm Brazilian and that mention made me smile! 😁
I love your animations & explanations, and particularly loved this one as it made me discover an unknown world, such cultures so rich of colors & sounds... so far from what I see/listen everyday, is just wonderful! Thanks a lot!
I love this channel. I love the wonder, the details, and the optimism. And the nice upbeat intro/outro music ^^ It's somewhat escapist for me to watch videos like this and learn. It allows me to discover new things and flee the dull daily routine full of having to see all the hatred, conflict, and other meaningless you-name-it going on... As I write, it is 3:30am and I should definitely get some sleep before work.
I’ve looked at the Wikipedia article on the phonology of !Xóõ, a Khoisan language, and am extremely curious how a writing system made for such a language would work.
IPA (which is really a form of Latin).
For example:
qa̰a ǃaǀi ʼaʰn̩ Boroǁxao ʼaʰn̩ uʰasa ǃaʰeʰ oi ʼǂŋa̰an isu ǃaʰeʰ ku ǀa̰alute tu ǀŋəu ǀuǂŋumate ci dao tsʰoe ku. uʰǁei ǂŋʉm ka ba ʼǂŋɜʰn̩te ǃgõ ǃgʉʼma i ǀŋe ǂa̰asa i ǃʉbekuǂŋʉm ci ǁuʘa te ǀi ce ce ǃŋəu tsʰoe biǂŋu ǀʔa ǀa i ǁʰoa ba ǀgʉma ǁŋute. uʰǁei ǂgʉm sa ce te buǁei ba ǂʔɜnʼse ǀa qaisa i ǂgõʰõʰ ce tʉ̰ʉm̩ kã ǀʰũ ceǀe beŋkele ǀi ei ʼǂŋa̰an ce. xabeka ǃaǀi ǁʉ̰ʉn̩ i tẽʼẽ eʰǂʼãõku ci dza̰ai ce ʘaɟe i kaneka ǃaʰeʰ ku ǀa̰alute te iʼe ʘaɟe eʰka̰ ba ʼao ʼahn̩ i ba sa tsʼɜnci ǁuʘa ʔiqatʲe Boroǁxao ǂgʉm ce xabeka ǂa̰asa ǁʉ̰ʉn i tẽʼẽ n̩ʼn̩ ce ǃxa̰a kuǂŋʉmʼu n̩ʼn̩ ǀgʉma tʰani. iʰǁei ka ba qatʲi ǁuʘa iǀŋe ǃŋa̰a ta ǁalika isa ǂgõʰõʰ ka tʰani kã ǀʰũ ci ʔǂŋa̰an̩ i ǂgõʰõʰ kã ʼãnsa iʼe iǁhoa ci dza̰ai. Boroǁxao ʘʰaite ǂa̰asa itẽʼẽ ǀe ǁʰoa ǁgoe ba kaneci ʼǃaʰeʰ eʰ ka ci dza̰ai; ǀe kã ǀʰũ kun̩ ce ǂabe be ǂgõʰõʰ ce ǀa ʼãnsa i ǁʰoa ǃaʰeʰ cɜn. ǂa̰asa seʼeɲa qaɲa ǀŋuǁeiǂŋum i ǃʉbeku sa ǃaʰeʰ. eʰʼe na te ba ǀŋa ǃŋa̰a ce; ǁʰoa kuǁei n̩a. tu ka ǂxõĩsa ku; isa ci ǁuʘa ce ǃŋəutsʰoe.
Source:
archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/Language/NMN/nmn.html
on the bottom where it says "story"
These languages full of clicks are so interesting to me.
!Xóõ language is a !Ui-Taa language, there is no such thing as "Khoisan", and that term should be avoided because it's racist. Thank you
GwazaJuse !Ui-Taa isn't a synonym for it, it's a subgroup.
I thought linguists stopped using the term because they realized it was multiple families rather than a single family, not because it was derogatory…
Your focus on African languages these last two videos is appreciated !
Indeed, I like how these videos feature languages from less familiar parts of the world.
And @Oliver Anderson, is that the Kurtzgesagt duck in your avie? ☺
Very informative and very well done. Thanks for sharing this (and your respect for diverse languages) with the world.
I love learning about different scripts and how they fit their languages. This is really interesting!
When you said that most people can't name that many scripts outside africa (0:10), i took it as a challenge. I counted to 27 different writing systems outside of africa from memory. I love your videos btw.
I had no idea this was going on. I was aware of the Amharic script of Ethiopia but that's it. Very enlightening.
Wonderful! I haven’t found a channel that stimulates the brain this great in awhile.
I guess this, too, is a story of Africa finding self confidence, getting a means to really represent its own sounds of language in writing.
Oh imagine a script where color is significant! Then weep for the colorblind.
This is fascinating! Amazing video, as usual!
Just one minor note: at 2:25 the Lebanese journalist is called Kamel Mrowwa كامل مروّة with a Shadda on the waw, not Marwa.
It's fascinating to see how languages evolve daily.
This vid was super cool. Would love to see a whole video about one of these languages where u go more in depth since they're so different compared to european or even asian languages
that's so inspiring, thank you!
Amazing video - congratulations! I hope you do more on African writing.
it is impossible to listen to you and not share your excitement and wonder. Well done and thank you
My fiance is Nigerian, Idoma tribe, thank you for this great information. I am a historian and also got an anthropology degree in college with some light linguistics along the way. Always wish I got more, so excited to find more related to my new family! 🥰📚🇳🇬
This was a beautiful video. I'm glad I stumbled in to it.
thank you for the perfect captions.
الأعداد : 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Actually that is how the number in arabic were written originally from right to left like the arabic script, also the ancient way of saying a number would start from the smallest number which some writers still do today.. For example :
1891 : we say " one and ninety and eight hundred and Thousand"
واحد و تسعون و ثمانمئة و ألف 1891 - - - - >
From right to left!...
Wait that does makes sense from an Arabic point of view and thx for a new info.
Thank you.
This was remarkably illuminating. It never occurred to me that West Africans are creating and revising their own unique scripts for the languages they speak. There is a perception that only European and middle eastern scripts are available.
I also understand more clearly now why Europeans who went to Africa were led to force their languages on the people they met. It would have been impossible for the vast majority of those who went to Africa from Europe to even conceptualize the complexity of these languages, much less learn them. And that is putting aside the traditional European bias toward their own cultural superiority.
I'm loving all the videos on African languages and this is definitely the best one
Very interesting, informative and well made. Instant sub
These are some of the most beautiful scripts I’ve ever seen!
West Africa and several parts around Africa has always get writing system, but it was used for secret society and initiation, not allow everyone to use as usual as other continent, the same context as Soudan abandoned their native writings to adopt arabic languages and writing, the native writings was treated as paganism and evil by alien religions. It was even forbidden to give their ancestors spiritual name to a new born.
Mr beat and natlang upoloading .it is heaven