Here's an Arabic example ; اللغة العربية » اللُّغَةُ العَرَبِيَّةُ Both are read the same and have the same meaning, same goes with Hebrew , and I find it really useful actually it's not hard at all when you're used to it, we as natives are able to distinguish between different words without knowing the vouls, here's another example : كتب This is written without vouls at all and it can mean 3 things : • كَتَبَ wrote (he) • كُتِبَ written • كُتُبْ books But we can differentiate between these meaning from the context which the word came in :)
i can read arabic because i went to an islamic school for reading Quran but i cant read modern day arabic as i am extremely reliant on the vowels in it
I think you guys forgot about that semetic languages use triconsonantal roots and word class templates. therefore it's a whole lot easier to remember which vowels to use.
In episode #7 we mention the Phoenician alphabet was being "tested in easy waters". This feature of Egyptian and Semitic was precisely what we had in mind. It's still a problem, which is why even Semitic scripts kept inventing and reinventing vowels to make things easier on the reader!
Part of the classic templates however do include matres lectionis, which predate the Greek usage of these matres lectionis as vowels. Really, these two videos should be swapped with a reference not to Greeks inventing vowels, but rather adapting matres lecitonis to include short vowels and not just long ones.
arabic was written without dots until the spread of islam were we added them for forigners to help read the quraan , an arab can still read without dots as long as the handwriting is good
no one reads Arabic without dots now a days but that doesnt mean he cant , as long as the script is neat and the reader is adequately literate , i am not generalizing of course but it is easy especially if you read alot and have a big glossary in your mind , words become easily distinguishable even without dots then .
Is it harder to read Hebrew? No. When you see the word "surrounding", you pretty much instantly know how to pronounce it, because you're familiar with it. You don't read it letter-by-letter like a child, but as a WHOLE instead. You also know that "choir" is kwa-yer even though it seems more like cho-yir. Reading Hebrew text (as an adult) is the same. In fact, when the text is dotted, my eyes see the dots as strains... a visual burden. I do not pause to interpret them. they just make the text messy!
@أَحْمَد alphabet is how you pronance in Hebrew both starting letters א - alph ב - Beit and we dont say all 4 starting letters only those two. when you combine them you have alphabet or alphbet that's how we say it. that's it. no need to over complete things. and א ב ג ד are four letters, when we describe the alphbeit we use only two.
@أَحْمَد in Hebrew aleph is one letter, אל"ף and Beit is another one, בי"ת that's their name, that why we call the the alphbeit though its more common to do a push between like "the alph beit" and for us you wrote 4 letters in abjad you actually wrote too much thats "aleph Beit gimal dalet" we dont say all that only the two starting words that's it.
I think this is the first time "Major Moments in the History of Writing!" has been worked well into the sentence, at least in a long time. "What's that? It's a major moments in the history of writing." Stinking plurals. Anyway, good video series. I like the Arabic system, since it has an obvious way to write quickly, but also a way to write more meticulously, that every reader *should* understand (I messed up my vowels every sentence I ever read aloud, I'm sure).
+Mark Hutchens Thanks! I think we saw Major Moments coming this time and were syntactically prepared. :D When Arabic and Syriac were new to me, the scripts seemed odd. The different letter forms, reversed writing direction, strange vowel marks... but now I'd agree with you!
What you failed to mention is that both Hebrew and Arabic are relying on "formulae" to make most of their words, thus making the reading and learning much easier even without putting dots and lines all over.
I'm saying it's easier, not necessarily easy. I studied Arabic for a few years but I unfortunately don't remember anything nowadays. I am a native Hebrew speaker though.
It's not only about vowels in Arabic. What mentioned in this video is true for vowels in Arabic. But, Arabic writing system has also evolve to add dots above and below the same letter shape to distinguish between different consonants. Initially, Arab we're able to read undotted text without any issue, but with spread of Islam ready started to become difficult to be read by non-arabic Muslims. So dots and other concepts mentioned in this video were created.
@@yosephberhunegn7490 You're right about them referring to Ge'ez, that's my mistake. With the sentence you said earlier, Ethiopic is another word for Ge'ez, but not Ethiopian. The word they chose to use for the video was Ethiopian not Ethiopic. A very tiny mistake but it matters because it can make people who don't know about Ethiopia or the languages there believe that people from Ethiopia speak Ethiopian (which is not true).
When I was learning Hebrew, the books had dots for vowels but the Torah scroll doesn’t. Once I started to prepare for my bat mitzvah, I learned how to read (or even chant) without those dots. Some letters may have the dot even without vowel dots to tell the difference between consonants themselves. ש can be both “s” and “sh” depending on whether the dot above is on the left or right respectively. ב can be “b” or “v” with or without the dot in the space, פ can be “p” or “f,” כ can be “c” like in cake or “ch” a throaty sound in “challah” (meaning bread). All are dependent on the dot, but all other dots like vowels are not necessary with practice.
This is so informative! I've been learning to write Arabic and have been wondering when/how the lines (kasra, fat-ha, duma etc) above and below to connote a short vowel came about.
Fascinating video! I enjoyed learning about the roots of my native language. :) Only it's important to mention that in case of Hebrew and Arabic at least, the system of using "dots" (or vocalising) came in a relatively late stage of the languages' development in means to help people read - not as quickly as one might think. Then again, both languages are pretty ancient and we're talking about something which happened almost two millenias ago. :)
Arabic doesn’t use dots for vowels. It uses them to distinguish identical-looking consonant letters, such as ج-ح-خ. Arabic has a different way of marking short vowels. A line above the letter for the short “ah” sound, called fat'hah, a line below the letter for the short “ih” sound, called kasrah, and a small waaw on top of the letter for the short “uu” sound, called dam'mah.
Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, not a separate language. It is considered as the eastern-Aramaic group spoken in Northern Syria, Southern Turkey and Iraq. Classical Syriac is also known as “Middle Aramaic” while modern localised dialects of Syriac are known as “Modern Aramaic”. The term “Syrians” is simply the inaccurate word the Greeks used to describe the inhabitants of Syria (Aram) and Mesopotamia, who happened to be (even to this day) a mix of Arameans, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Chaldeans for the most part.
The one thing that they left out was 'roots'. Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic/Syriac all work off of word roots. They use two or three letter roots and add different letters to give different meanings. So the words sun שמש,and son בן don't come from the same root. Therefore languages that go off of the word root system are very different from and don't correlate with writing English without vowels. And lastly, vowels came about much later in each of the languages and would, at least in Hebrew, replace letters with the vowels. Like James/Jacob is written יעקוב Ya'akov, but then later the 4th letter was replaced by a vowel point and therefore shortened to יעקב.
xUncleA123x Quite sure that יעקב is the earlier version while יעקוב is the later one. It is the same with David. Written as דוד in earlier Biblical texts, but as דויד in later texts.
Yea its so easy :) Syriac for us Assyrians uses vowels, we have 7 ... ܣܲܣܵܣܸܣܹ ܘܼܘܿ ܝܼ from right to left, named pthakha, zqapa , zlameh psheeqeh, zlameh qashyeh, rwasa , rwakha, khwasa and the prounciations are sa sah si seh uh oh ee :) and ontop of that we have other dots to change the sounds ܦ̮ܬܼܒܼܓܼܕܼܟܼ weh, thaw, wet, ghammal, thalat, khap ... We also have silent symbols to make letters silent example ܐ݉ and other signs to make letters more lightly said... Example ܝܬܼܚ̄ܙܝ ith(e)khzi (see) ... ܡܕܡ̱ܚܐ madmkha (east) ... If you go further we also have dots put ontop to indicate a word is plural example ... ܐܝܠܹ̈ܝܢ (aylen meaning these) ... And one dot to put ontop of a letter heh ܗ̇ to feminise the word example ܒܪܬܼܗ̇ bartheh (daughter of...) there are letters that are not pronounced but are placed at the end of the word to indicate verbs, pronouns, adverbs etc example ܝ for something that is indicated as being mine, ܗܘ his, ܗܝ hers and few other rules too :) go Assyrians!!! :)
Also of interest: the matres lectionis in Hebrew are also (maybe not coincidentally) the three letters used to stand for the ineffable name of God in the Bible (the Tetragrammaton); often erroneously pronounced "Yahweh". Hence some people think that it's not a coincidence that those graphs, in particular, were selected to be the matres lectionis. Of course, there are probably theories grounded in more secular explanations, but given the cultural importance placed around "the name" it wouldn't be surprising if those graphs were selected to be the matres lectionis due to their association with the Tetragrammaton.
There is a problem for me. As an Iranian who used Arabic script for Persian (and even for Azerbaijani Turkish), I know that the dots plays different role in Arabic than it does in Hebrew. In Arabic dots are an inseparable part of the script, making “s” be different from “sh”, or even “b” be different from “n”. But there are accent likes arrows that are only for helping you decide which vowel should be there when you try to read it. Let me know if I’m wrong.
@Абдульзефир thanks for your reply. Actually ب and ن have same shape in the middle form if we remove dots (ب ن ب ن) and not writing vowels in Persian (when you write in English, the proper name is Persian and not Farsi) is not stupid, since that is what we do for more than a thousand years.
W Y are Aramic, Hebrew, and Northern Arabic letters. Contemporary & Earlier Canaanite/Phoenician and Akkadian/Sumerian and Egyptian and Central-Southern Arabic used letters I and U like the Greeks in their alphabet.
The system described at 3:40 was first developed in the 9th century for Arabic, it quickly spread to Hebrew because of the close association of Jewish scholars in Late Antiquity Mesopotamia.
We could call the letters AWY as semi-consonnants, and called in arabic "weak letters", because they inflect one another, changing slighty the meaning of the word. Examples: 1. Lexicographic: Nar (fire) and Nwr (light), or Rwh (spirit/breath) and Ryh (Wind). 2. Grammar: conjugation and morphology example QWL (to say) and QAL (He said).
Qaala قَالَ = he said (the singular third person masculine in the past tense form as the base verb form in Arabic, but belongs to a hollow verb of the triliteral ق و ل Q W L), not Qal, unless you mean Qul = say (singular masculine imperative)! Naar = fire and Nuur = light, of the hollow triliteral ن و ر N W R!
that's why it was so aweful to learn yiddish after i learned hebrew. yiddish is baisicly a european proper languege but with two main hebrew influenses, the alphabet and some nouns
the letters in the map is hebrew, arabic, syrian, ancient hebrew- and phoenicain... all of them are came from the same roots. and same family of languages.
I'm worried at how funny I found this, especially the random end of "bandits take you". But it was pretty clear and sort of non-confusing to a non-native english speaker like me
The vowels that are written are the long vowels (called Huroof Al Madd in Arabic, like the vowels, though they are only three, "ا" and "و" and "ي"), but sometimes there are vowels that are written but not pronounced, and long vowels that are not written but are pronounced, but yes, mostly we write consonants only, it's like this " Cn yu (the "you" here is an example of when you cannot not write the vowel, it will be too ambiguous) rd ths? Ys yu cn", for non fluent speakers you have to add the diacritics so that it is easier for them to learn.
"Bandits take you" that made me chuckle. then I wondered if it was a it an innuendo hinting at ancient slave trades role in the spread of written language
i learned that "w" and "y" are basically consanants acting like vowels "u/oo" and "i/ee" respectively like اردو would be "u-r-d-w" if viewed as consanants but "u-r-d-u" if و changes from "w" to "u/oo" likewise, مريم would be "ma-r-ya-m" if ي is viewed as "y" but "ma-r-ia-m" if ي changes from "y" to "i/ee" this only exists in semitic scripts which uses tashkeel/nikkud (vowel notation) which is why westerners have difficulty learning mideastern languages like arabic/hebrew/persian/urdu etc which are written with eithet perso-arabic script or hebrew script
nice work, very informative content, but i have a problem with the map, it suggests that arabic came from what we now call arabia, but that's not factually true. what we now call arabic is a descendant of the nabataean language, and one of the most important earliest arabic inscriptions was found near Shahba, syria it's believed to be the tomb stone of a Lakhmid king it and praises him for conquering Najaran ( modern saudi arabia) and shammar ( yemen) and subjugating them to the romans. so to suggest that arabic came out of arabia is an anachronistic misunderstanding PS: the inscription is known as namara inscription, and FYI the roman emperor phillip the arab was born in Shahba at least a hundred years before that tombstone was set up
***** that's the general consensus. in religious narrative, they're ishmaelites aka arab. their kings names are arabic. their deities are arabic their script developed into arabic their language developed into arabic, as i said earlier, some of their inscriptions are referred to as late nabataean, or early arabic. they were called arabs by their contemporaries and when the roman annexed nabatea, they renamed it Arabia Petraea (rocky arabia)
Fun fact: Arabic consonants used to be written without dots. This means a letter like this ـىـ would represent 5 consonants, ح would represent 3 and half of the alphabet would represent 2. The dots thing came 1350 years ago when When Arabic linguists feared that the rising number of non-arabs learning Arabic would impact the language. Even when dots were invented Arabs considered sending a dotted-script letter offensive since it would imply that the reader can’t understand a script without dots. Although dots are normalized now, if you’re fluent enough you wouldn’t find a problem understanding a script without dots. Interesting stuff :)
*_...misses the point, Why-which I estimate, is that consonants were the bones of words so you always knew whom you're talking-about, and vowels were the strength or feely-part of what they're doing or what's emphasized-e.g. KNK (definitive secondary perfection gold), Apsu's kanaka were his sons, his gold, Upshukinaku Shekinah their 'shining'-Council hall..._*
I find it pretty easy to read Arabic as there's a very noticeable style in the contenents, as Arabic words are so small its very easy to be innate with it
(Tunisian Arabic) اللغة هذي ساهله و مفيهاش تعقيد. (Syrian/Lebanese Arabic) اللغة هي سهل و ما فيها كتير تعقيد. (Traditional Arabic) هذه اللغة سهل و لا يوجد فيها الكثير من التعقيد. These don't contian the so called "vowels". Give it a shot. See if you can read it and understand it. (They all mean the same thing).
The dots you find in Arabic are necessary, they are a part of the letter. You can't remove them. One dot under is b(ب), two is y (ي), put one above it and it's n (ن), two above it and it's t (ت), and three is th (ث). They may look different now but when letters are linked all become like this - > بيت، تبني. This method of using a base shape and adding dots to change it is found throughout the entire alphabets, though the letters are completely separate. They just happen to look very alike. (س & ش) (ج & ح & خ) (ف & ق) (ص & ض) (ط & ظ) (ز & ر) (ع & غ) As for the lines, those are the vowels. Those are the ones that can be taken out because native speakers can tell the word's righ pronunciation without, hence why you won't find it on keyboards for the most part. As for Hebrew, I don't know honeslty since I can't speak 😓
The ambiguity is my cryptonite. I can already read spanish perfectly after just a year but I'm a native user of Farsi and I struggle to read it. GAAH why couldn't there be a second reduction of ambiguity, like one Sūkūn per word or something- that would make this so much easier! I mean, the script is beautiful and we should never let it go, but I am legitimately contemplating learning Maltese as a *stepping-stone* to Arabic, just because it would be easier for me to become fluent thanks to the writing. Make no mistake though, I seriously see the point in abjads. I can write Farsi just fine and I frequently write english notes in Nastalikh, then read it back perfectly later (of course that I wrote it helps a lot, because the context is in my memory). So, as a gist: Alphabets spoil you. Learn as many abjadized languages as a child as possible :P. There are only really four of them anyway.
I went to Islamic school and when I was in 3rd grade, my teacher started writing Arabic without the harakat (diacritic marks for vowels). He wrote "هذا" and told me to read it. I was confused because that word got no harakat. Then, my teacher said, "This is read 'hadza' and it will not change to 'hadzu' or 'hadzi'. Once you know how pronounce and write it, you can read Arabic without harakat". OK, so the thing is you should know how those words are pronounce and written.
The hebrew text placed in the southern levant area is incorrect it should be placed further east like the aramaic script. Its the phoenician-canaanite script that has the southern levant area not just northern levant.
Not really. For one, abugidas still have a full set of characters which represent vowels for use in vowel-only syllables, or when multiple vowels run together. Two, the vowel diacrtics are compulsory in abugidas. In abjads, the vowel diacritics may be used, especially for people who are learning to write and for foreign words, but they are neither compulsory, nor often used by literate people.
NativLang - I'm curious about the relationship between the sound of the matres lectionis when they are consonants and when they are vowels. I would have thought there would be no relationship. It was random that one symbol was used for different sounds. The vowels "O" and "U" don't seem to have any connection to the consonant "w". And yet you have the verb מוּת and the noun מָוֶת, just as one example. There you have a shift from W to U, which presumably predated to matres lectionis. Strange!
@NativLang, I’d be curious to hear about why Tunisian Arabic has strayed so much from classical, modern standard and Levantine Arabic. It’s almost incomprehensible and seems to be a mix of many languages.
I don't know if it's just a poor Louisiana educational system but I never learned why vowels were so important. I can't really find any information on why languages all around have vowels and consonants. Do you mind explaining it to me?
Arabic still use harakat "the signs of vowels", a vole would only be written if it is part of the word, if it is only a pronunciation of a letter ( 'he' for example will be written with dot under H, as opposite to 'hi, pronouncing the letter with an accent is different from pronouncing a second letter , HE vs Hi')
I would really like if you made a video about the aramaic/assyrian aramaic language! It was a language used in some prayers in the jewish bible, And I believe is the true sister language of hebrew
It actually is funny. In Romanian, my native language, we use i for both /i/, /j/ and /ʲ/, u for both /u/ and /w/, e for both /e/ and /e̯/ and o for /o/ and /o̯/. We also use h for /h/, /ç/ and /x/ and n for /n/ and /ŋ/. Until I became a language nerd I didn't even hear the difference between these sounds. I think this is the case with the semitic languages.
The history line in this video got my confused, i thought it was talking about a bit of ancient history, but i know for a fact that dots and diacritics in Arabic are recent ( 1000 years maybe). Fun fact though: Arabs today can read without dots in the right context.
Yes, the dots and diacritics in the Arabic language are recent because they were developed to facilitate the learning of the Arabic language for non-Arabs after Islam.
The video do not try to say that the use of diacritics for vowels (like niqqud or tashkil) was invented at the same time as the use of mothers of reading but afterwards as a result of the ambiguity that can arrise, especially for beginners. It included it for more complete picture of how abjads indicate vowels.
Yeah, the first person who invented the Dotts on vowels was a Muslim Grammarian of 7th Century, Abu Aswad Ad-Duwalli (69 A.H / 688 C.E), which then later was adopted and incorporated by other Semitic Languages (I.e Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew) with the help of spread of Islam into their lands.
The term is “abjad.” I don’t know how to explain what it is because I suck at explaining, but there is a video in this playlist that explains the concept. It’s called “How Egypt invented the alphabet--history of writing systems #7.”
I think that there are some cases in English (and I believe in other languages as well) that a vowel letter becomes a consonant; for example, take the word 'apple,' the 'a' at the beginning of this word used as a consonant (at least it is equivalent to how 'a' would be used as a consonant in Hebrew). Another thing, the tree in min 0:39, is misleading. First Arabic splits from Aramaic, Phoenician, and Hebrew; then, Aramaic splits from Phoenician and Hebrew; lastly, Phoenician and Hebrew split (although these are very closely related languages and sometimes considered as two versions of the same language).
If you mean that, for example, the letter 'a' in the English word 'apple' does not behave like a consonant, then I won't agree with you. Simply because in this example, the letter 'a' in 'apple' makes the same sound like the latter 'aleph' (א - the Hebrew equivalent of 'a') in the Hebrew word 'abba' (אבא - father). One pronounces the first 'aleph' in 'a-bba' the same way as one pronounces the first 'a' in 'a-pple'. We consider the first 'aleph' in 'abba' as a consonant, not a vowel. Take, for example, the role of the 'a' in words apple and banana; I think the 'a' letter is used differently in those words and sounds differently. Don't you agree?
Phoenician/Canaanite had a Yad and Wa and Earlier in Bronze age Yadu and Wa and even Earlier Iadu and Uu. As did ancient Southern Arabic and Ancient Egyptian and Akkadian as well as Sumerian.
There are some ambiguities. Not beeing those "evolutions" timestamped may sound that between the discovery of alfabetic writting and the devolopment of vowel mark system there was only some years within a lifetime. But there is a dozens of centuries gap. And I'm not sure if there was any time in history that ever existed any semitic language without the so called "mater leccionis"...
An all over the place explanation, the use of English words as an example made it even more confusing. And this is coming from a native arabic speaker who knows what you are trying to explain
The word "Sanskrit" is written incorrectly on that image with Thoth at the end. It's संस्कृतम् not संस् कृतम्. The स् and क् combine into a conjunct. The virama ् (vowel muter) is never written in the middle of a word except for foreign names that can't be rendered correctly in the script.
+MrLiberali of course but there is no One aramaic language Syriac is just the largest dialect of the eastern dialects its is almost the same as other dialects syriac is directly a decendand of old aramaic
Elegant Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. It’s the eastern dialect group of Aramaic. It’s is also know as “Middle Aramaic”, which evolved from “Ancient Aramaic”.
![ละลาย (LALALYE) - DAOU PITTAYA ต้าห์อู๋ พิทยา [OFFICIAL MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wo6r9TgausI/mqdefault.jpg)
Here's an Arabic example ;
اللغة العربية » اللُّغَةُ العَرَبِيَّةُ
Both are read the same and have the same meaning, same goes with Hebrew , and I find it really useful actually it's not hard at all when you're used to it, we as natives are able to distinguish between different words without knowing the vouls, here's another example :
كتب
This is written without vouls at all and it can mean 3 things :
• كَتَبَ wrote (he)
• كُتِبَ written
• كُتُبْ books
But we can differentiate between these meaning from the context which the word came in :)
"bandits take you" I almost shat myself. I was NOT expecting that whispering.
I didn't undestand this kidnap
i can read arabic because i went to an islamic school for reading Quran but i cant read modern day arabic as i am extremely reliant on the vowels in it
Most Muslims throughout the world can't. Non-Arabic speaking people learn Quran with vowels, and can only read with vowels, myself included.
The Quran is read with the vowels on it... I've never seen a Quran without it.
Doumaham Igah Ila
I'm an Arab & Arabic it's my first language, I can easily reading the standard Arabic but I can't read the Quran without a helper 🤔🙂
Doumaham Igah Ila I can speak Arameic/syriac
thats actually really impressive did you learn Aramaic for fun i thought that died out
I think you guys forgot about that semetic languages use triconsonantal roots and word class templates. therefore it's a whole lot easier to remember which vowels to use.
In episode #7 we mention the Phoenician alphabet was being "tested in easy waters". This feature of Egyptian and Semitic was precisely what we had in mind. It's still a problem, which is why even Semitic scripts kept inventing and reinventing vowels to make things easier on the reader!
Part of the classic templates however do include matres lectionis, which predate the Greek usage of these matres lectionis as vowels. Really, these two videos should be swapped with a reference not to Greeks inventing vowels, but rather adapting matres lecitonis to include short vowels and not just long ones.
לגמרי צודק
So there is no ambiguity among the templates?
@@jcxkzhgco3050 No there is no ambiguity, but there are lots of them(especially in Arabic).
I find it funny that the wiki article in Hebrew was about Arabic. I wonder if that was by mistake, or done deliberately :P
I think you're the first one to call this out! :D
I just noticed that too :P
Lol I just had to go back and check. I didn't notice that the first time.
I thought everyone had noticed. Heh
sillyfly פחח לא חשבתי שיהיה פה אנשים דוברי עברית או שלפחות יודעים לקרוא
Persian (even though it's an IndoEuropean Language) is written in Semitic (Arabic) script!
Lion King actually 80% of Persian vocabularies and literature are taken from Arabic.
Persian sounds very arabic to my ears.
@@harshkulshrestha9440 I think you've never heard both.
@@harshkulshrestha9440
As a person who speaks Arabic, I see that it is similar to Hindi and Turkish
Also urdu and punjabi
arabic was written without dots until the spread of islam were we added them for forigners to help read the quraan , an arab can still read without dots as long as the handwriting is good
I think dots for Aramaic and Hebew is what حركات are for Arabic. No, nowadays nobody reads Arabic without dots.
no one reads Arabic without dots now a days but that doesnt mean he cant , as long as the script is neat and the reader is adequately literate , i am not generalizing of course but it is easy especially if you read alot and have a big glossary in your mind , words become easily distinguishable even without dots then .
sometimes he can't.
you couldn't differentiate between BAIT or BINT without the dots...
Wasn't it created before as you can't read a new document and guess the vowels without making mistakes
Guys I can read Arabic without dots believe me and I already did and I understand my brain tells me how I pronounce during the context
I am a native Hebrew speaker and this is the best explanation I've seen for this
Fake speakers 😂😂
גם אני
Is it harder to read Hebrew? No.
When you see the word "surrounding", you pretty much instantly know how to pronounce it, because you're familiar with it. You don't read it letter-by-letter like a child, but as a WHOLE instead.
You also know that "choir" is kwa-yer even though it seems more like cho-yir.
Reading Hebrew text (as an adult) is the same.
In fact, when the text is dotted, my eyes see the dots as strains... a visual burden. I do not pause to interpret them. they just make the text messy!
@أَحْمَد
what's abjab? we call it alphabet as a Hebrew speaker. I always thought it was because our first letter is "aleph" (א) and second is Beit (ב)
@أَحْمَد
"אל"ף בי"ת"
its pronounced almost the same. cant see the difference.
alef-Beit like alphabet
in Hebrew it sounds exactly the same.
@أَحْمَد 🤦🏾♀️
I dont think you got my point. no matter thanks any way
@أَحْمَد
alphabet is how you pronance in Hebrew both starting letters
א - alph
ב - Beit
and we dont say all 4 starting letters only those two. when you combine them you have alphabet or alphbet
that's how we say it. that's it. no need to over complete things. and א ב ג ד are four letters, when we describe the alphbeit we use only two.
@أَحْمَد
in Hebrew aleph is one letter, אל"ף
and Beit is another one, בי"ת
that's their name, that why we call the the alphbeit though its more common to do a push between like "the alph beit"
and for us you wrote 4 letters in abjad you actually wrote too much thats "aleph Beit gimal dalet" we dont say all that only the two starting words that's it.
I like how you looked up arabic in hebrew on wikipedia
I think this is the first time "Major Moments in the History of Writing!" has been worked well into the sentence, at least in a long time. "What's that? It's a major moments in the history of writing." Stinking plurals.
Anyway, good video series. I like the Arabic system, since it has an obvious way to write quickly, but also a way to write more meticulously, that every reader *should* understand (I messed up my vowels every sentence I ever read aloud, I'm sure).
+Mark Hutchens Thanks! I think we saw Major Moments coming this time and were syntactically prepared. :D
When Arabic and Syriac were new to me, the scripts seemed odd. The different letter forms, reversed writing direction, strange vowel marks... but now I'd agree with you!
bandits take u hahaha and that blink from the scribe after i was taken priceless!! nice balance of comedy and info.
the funniest thing is that the dots system in Hebrew is called - "nikud", aka DOTING.
shishoeh in Arabic they called Nikat
LYB Rebel not so different after all
shishoeh in arabic nikud is tanqit from niqat plural of nuqta (dot)
Nikat in arabic
Nuqta in Hebrew is "Nekuda" lol
I found this video quite helpful. Thanks NativLang!
+ArguingFromIgnorance Glad to return the favor after benefitting from yours!
What you failed to mention is that both Hebrew and Arabic are relying on "formulae" to make most of their words, thus making the reading and learning much easier even without putting dots and lines all over.
they did not focus on Arabic and Hebrew though as a native Arabic speaker I want to learn more about the history of my language
Here you go stance changer arabetics.com/public/html/more/History%20of%20the%20Arabic%20Script_article.htm
Nathaniel Ouzana So reading Arabic is easy you say. Can you do it fluently then?
I'm saying it's easier, not necessarily easy. I studied Arabic for a few years but I unfortunately don't remember anything nowadays. I am a native Hebrew speaker though.
im an arabic speaker...
can you please tell me how can i learn hebrew ? its my hobby and dream nowdays , for some reasons i liked hebrew
4:21 "Bandits take you" That was so cute :p
It's not only about vowels in Arabic. What mentioned in this video is true for vowels in Arabic. But, Arabic writing system has also evolve to add dots above and below the same letter shape to distinguish between different consonants. Initially, Arab we're able to read undotted text without any issue, but with spread of Islam ready started to become difficult to be read by non-arabic Muslims. So dots and other concepts mentioned in this video were created.
This is almost like an ASMR.
I like CompChomp's voice on this. For some reason her delivery sounds better here than on her own channel.
It's the same as arabic. The letter wow is و and can be placed as a long vowel or a short vowel in words.
Yeah... Almost like it literally says that Arabic is like this
Dude that is called مد، where we have
مد الواو، مد الألف، و مد الياء
Correct if in wrong tho
Correct me if I’m wrong but و can be used for W or U and ي is used for both Y and I
(Edit) I made a slightly wrong comment but the people replying have some good explanation, I think 😅
ikr
Ethiopic/Ethiopian is another name for Geez. The video was referring to Geez not Amharic.
Tigrinya is from Ethiopia as well. It's all we speak in my region :/
@@makkonen0 sorry, that was my mistake. I forgot that Triginya is spoken in Ethiopia too :-(
@@yosephberhunegn7490 You're right about them referring to Ge'ez, that's my mistake. With the sentence you said earlier, Ethiopic is another word for Ge'ez, but not Ethiopian. The word they chose to use for the video was Ethiopian not Ethiopic. A very tiny mistake but it matters because it can make people who don't know about Ethiopia or the languages there believe that people from Ethiopia speak Ethiopian (which is not true).
When i first watched this I was very confused. After I learned a few abjad scripts I understand everything in this video.
When I was learning Hebrew, the books had dots for vowels but the Torah scroll doesn’t. Once I started to prepare for my bat mitzvah, I learned how to read (or even chant) without those dots. Some letters may have the dot even without vowel dots to tell the difference between consonants themselves. ש can be both “s” and “sh” depending on whether the dot above is on the left or right respectively. ב can be “b” or “v” with or without the dot in the space, פ can be “p” or “f,” כ can be “c” like in cake or “ch” a throaty sound in “challah” (meaning bread). All are dependent on the dot, but all other dots like vowels are not necessary with practice.
These animations are great
This is so informative! I've been learning to write Arabic and have been wondering when/how the lines (kasra, fat-ha, duma etc) above and below to connote a short vowel came about.
Fascinating video! I enjoyed learning about the roots of my native language. :)
Only it's important to mention that in case of Hebrew and Arabic at least, the system of using "dots" (or vocalising) came in a relatively late stage of the languages' development in means to help people read - not as quickly as one might think. Then again, both languages are pretty ancient and we're talking about something which happened almost two millenias ago. :)
Arabic doesn’t use dots for vowels. It uses them to distinguish identical-looking consonant letters, such as ج-ح-خ. Arabic has a different way of marking short vowels. A line above the letter for the short “ah” sound, called fat'hah, a line below the letter for the short “ih” sound, called kasrah, and a small waaw on top of the letter for the short “uu” sound, called dam'mah.
I love this series! I love learning about history of language! Mostly phonecian and arabic! And others too! Even though its old.
In Hebrew these dots and dashes near the letters are called Niqqud (literally meaning "dotting")
Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, not a separate language. It is considered as the eastern-Aramaic group spoken in Northern Syria, Southern Turkey and Iraq. Classical Syriac is also known as “Middle Aramaic” while modern localised dialects of Syriac are known as “Modern Aramaic”. The term “Syrians” is simply the inaccurate word the Greeks used to describe the inhabitants of Syria (Aram) and Mesopotamia, who happened to be (even to this day) a mix of Arameans, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Chaldeans for the most part.
The one thing that they left out was 'roots'. Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic/Syriac all work off of word roots. They use two or three letter roots and add different letters to give different meanings. So the words sun שמש,and son בן don't come from the same root. Therefore languages that go off of the word root system are very different from and don't correlate with writing English without vowels.
And lastly, vowels came about much later in each of the languages and would, at least in Hebrew, replace letters with the vowels. Like James/Jacob is written יעקוב Ya'akov, but then later the 4th letter was replaced by a vowel point and therefore shortened to יעקב.
xUncleA123x
Quite sure that יעקב is the earlier version while יעקוב is the later one.
It is the same with David.
Written as דוד in earlier Biblical texts, but as דויד in later texts.
They do say that
Abjads were tested in easy waters
It was a system that worked well for the type of language
Yea its so easy :) Syriac for us Assyrians uses vowels, we have 7 ... ܣܲܣܵܣܸܣܹ ܘܼܘܿ ܝܼ from right to left, named pthakha, zqapa , zlameh psheeqeh, zlameh qashyeh, rwasa , rwakha, khwasa and the prounciations are sa sah si seh uh oh ee :) and ontop of that we have other dots to change the sounds ܦ̮ܬܼܒܼܓܼܕܼܟܼ weh, thaw, wet, ghammal, thalat, khap ... We also have silent symbols to make letters silent example ܐ݉ and other signs to make letters more lightly said... Example ܝܬܼܚ̄ܙܝ ith(e)khzi (see) ... ܡܕܡ̱ܚܐ madmkha (east) ... If you go further we also have dots put ontop to indicate a word is plural example ... ܐܝܠܹ̈ܝܢ (aylen meaning these) ... And one dot to put ontop of a letter heh ܗ̇ to feminise the word example ܒܪܬܼܗ̇ bartheh (daughter of...) there are letters that are not pronounced but are placed at the end of the word to indicate verbs, pronouns, adverbs etc example ܝ for something that is indicated as being mine, ܗܘ his, ܗܝ hers and few other rules too :) go Assyrians!!! :)
Thank you, for this. I'll never read Syrian, but I enjoyed this small glimpse into the language.
Assyrians dont exist we are Arameans
Chaldeans asshureans/Assyrians mandeans syriacs and arameans are same people just different dialects
If they were the same people, they had not all different names...
Very similar to Hebrew.
The bandits take you at the end was trippy shit
(bandits take you)
When I started learning modern Ivrit, I was SO mad when the teacher took the nekudot away. I'm hooked on phonics!
It gets easier over time.
Also of interest: the matres lectionis in Hebrew are also (maybe not coincidentally) the three letters used to stand for the ineffable name of God in the Bible (the Tetragrammaton); often erroneously pronounced "Yahweh".
Hence some people think that it's not a coincidence that those graphs, in particular, were selected to be the matres lectionis. Of course, there are probably theories grounded in more secular explanations, but given the cultural importance placed around "the name" it wouldn't be surprising if those graphs were selected to be the matres lectionis due to their association with the Tetragrammaton.
Never thought I'd enjoy being taken by bandits!
I swear learning Hebrew is going to the dentist. I like my flowing plastic English.
There is a problem for me. As an Iranian who used Arabic script for Persian (and even for Azerbaijani Turkish), I know that the dots plays different role in Arabic than it does in Hebrew. In Arabic dots are an inseparable part of the script, making “s” be different from “sh”, or even “b” be different from “n”. But there are accent likes arrows that are only for helping you decide which vowel should be there when you try to read it. Let me know if I’m wrong.
@Абдульзефир thanks for your reply. Actually ب and ن have same shape in the middle form if we remove dots (ب ن ب ن) and not writing vowels in Persian (when you write in English, the proper name is Persian and not Farsi) is not stupid, since that is what we do for more than a thousand years.
W Y are Aramic, Hebrew, and Northern Arabic letters.
Contemporary & Earlier Canaanite/Phoenician and Akkadian/Sumerian and Egyptian and Central-Southern Arabic used letters I and U like the Greeks in their alphabet.
The hebrew example at 4:08 doesn’t just have markings for vowels, nikud, it also has trope marks that indicate how it’s supposed to be sung!
Only in the Torah, Hebrew is not a tonal language.
@@Vpentrov I know that… I speak Hebrew… I’m saying that when they showed it at 4:08 they were showing the trope as well
@@Langwidere903 o
The system described at 3:40 was first developed in the 9th century for Arabic, it quickly spread to Hebrew because of the close association of Jewish scholars in Late Antiquity Mesopotamia.
I love this animation style.
I love this series!
ME TOO😍😍
+Robert Fuqua Thank you! You're awesome!!
This was really entertaining AND informative. You did a really good job with this
We could call the letters AWY as semi-consonnants, and called in arabic "weak letters", because they inflect one another, changing slighty the meaning of the word. Examples: 1. Lexicographic: Nar (fire) and Nwr (light), or Rwh (spirit/breath) and Ryh (Wind). 2. Grammar: conjugation and morphology example QWL (to say) and QAL (He said).
Qaala قَالَ = he said (the singular third person masculine in the past tense form as the base verb form in Arabic, but belongs to a hollow verb of the triliteral ق و ل Q W L), not Qal, unless you mean Qul = say (singular masculine imperative)!
Naar = fire and Nuur = light, of the hollow triliteral ن و ر N W R!
Centuries later Yiddish did the same thing with the Hebrew alphabet, repurposing consonants.
yes.
but they had Europised it.
they used letter like ע א ו י
as vowels.
that's why it was so aweful to learn yiddish after i learned hebrew. yiddish is baisicly a european proper languege but with two main hebrew influenses, the alphabet and some nouns
I was hoping Yiddish wouldn't be too bad after I have gotten good enough with German and Hebrew.
hehe no
the letters in the map is hebrew, arabic, syrian, ancient hebrew- and phoenicain... all of them are came from the same roots. and same family of languages.
Love your videos keep up the good work.
Damn you bandits!
I'm worried at how funny I found this, especially the random end of "bandits take you". But it was pretty clear and sort of non-confusing to a non-native english speaker like me
And U letter preexisted the W which was a latter middle iron age innovation to the U.
Lol, what was that bandits thing at 4:22 ?
yeah, I didn't get that either.
It's the transition to the next video (about India).
varana312 Oh, I see.
Really great stuff. Thanks!
The vowels that are written are the long vowels (called Huroof Al Madd in Arabic, like the vowels, though they are only three, "ا" and "و" and "ي"), but sometimes there are vowels that are written but not pronounced, and long vowels that are not written but are pronounced, but yes, mostly we write consonants only, it's like this " Cn yu (the "you" here is an example of when you cannot not write the vowel, it will be too ambiguous) rd ths? Ys yu cn", for non fluent speakers you have to add the diacritics so that it is easier for them to learn.
"Bandits take you" that made me chuckle. then I wondered if it was a it an innuendo hinting at ancient slave trades role in the spread of written language
i learned that "w" and "y" are basically consanants acting like vowels "u/oo" and "i/ee" respectively
like اردو would be "u-r-d-w" if viewed as consanants but "u-r-d-u" if و changes from "w" to "u/oo"
likewise, مريم would be "ma-r-ya-m" if ي is viewed as "y" but "ma-r-ia-m" if ي changes from "y" to "i/ee"
this only exists in semitic scripts which uses tashkeel/nikkud (vowel notation) which is why westerners have difficulty learning mideastern languages like arabic/hebrew/persian/urdu etc which are written with eithet perso-arabic script or hebrew script
nice work,
very informative content,
but i have a problem with the map, it suggests that arabic came from what we now call arabia, but that's not factually true.
what we now call arabic is a descendant of the nabataean language, and one of the most important earliest arabic inscriptions was found near Shahba, syria
it's believed to be the tomb stone of a Lakhmid king it and praises him for conquering Najaran ( modern saudi arabia) and shammar ( yemen) and subjugating them to the romans.
so to suggest that arabic came out of arabia is an anachronistic misunderstanding
PS: the inscription is known as namara inscription, and FYI the roman emperor phillip the arab was born in Shahba at least a hundred years before that tombstone was set up
*****
that's the general consensus.
in religious narrative, they're ishmaelites aka arab.
their kings names are arabic.
their deities are arabic
their script developed into arabic
their language developed into arabic, as i said earlier, some of their inscriptions are referred to as late nabataean, or early arabic.
they were called arabs by their contemporaries
and when the roman annexed nabatea, they renamed it Arabia Petraea (rocky arabia)
LightBearer nabat kingdom was not in syria!! It existed in the southern western area of current-day jordan
Fun fact: Arabic consonants used to be written without dots. This means a letter like this ـىـ would represent 5 consonants, ح would represent 3 and half of the alphabet would represent 2. The dots thing came 1350 years ago when When Arabic linguists feared that the rising number of non-arabs learning Arabic would impact the language. Even when dots were invented Arabs considered sending a dotted-script letter offensive since it would imply that the reader can’t understand a script without dots. Although dots are normalized now, if you’re fluent enough you wouldn’t find a problem understanding a script without dots. Interesting stuff :)
*_...misses the point, Why-which I estimate, is that consonants were the bones of words so you always knew whom you're talking-about, and vowels were the strength or feely-part of what they're doing or what's emphasized-e.g. KNK (definitive secondary perfection gold), Apsu's kanaka were his sons, his gold, Upshukinaku Shekinah their 'shining'-Council hall..._*
@0:53 I am amazed how my brain managed to read "going with friends to the port"!!! Am I the only one? Have you found the same sentence?
Quite close... only "party" instead of "port" ☺
I find it pretty easy to read Arabic as there's a very noticeable style in the contenents, as Arabic words are so small its very easy to be innate with it
consonants*
AsiaEuropeEuropeNorthamericaAsiaAustraliaEurope
hasan kamran Yea I know urdu as well Arabic letters were created for Arabic so that's why it's more excessive in other languages
@hasan kamran Arabic is one of the hardest languages to learn
(Tunisian Arabic)
اللغة هذي ساهله و مفيهاش تعقيد.
(Syrian/Lebanese Arabic)
اللغة هي سهل و ما فيها كتير تعقيد.
(Traditional Arabic)
هذه اللغة سهل و لا يوجد فيها الكثير من التعقيد.
These don't contian the so called "vowels". Give it a shot. See if you can read it and understand it. (They all mean the same thing).
The one in the middle describes how pure Semites look
The dots you find in Arabic are necessary, they are a part of the letter. You can't remove them. One dot under is b(ب), two is y (ي), put one above it and it's n (ن), two above it and it's t (ت), and three is th (ث). They may look different now but when letters are linked all become like this - > بيت، تبني. This method of using a base shape and adding dots to change it is found throughout the entire alphabets, though the letters are completely separate. They just happen to look very alike. (س & ش) (ج & ح & خ) (ف & ق) (ص & ض) (ط & ظ) (ز & ر) (ع & غ)
As for the lines, those are the vowels. Those are the ones that can be taken out because native speakers can tell the word's righ pronunciation without, hence why you won't find it on keyboards for the most part. As for Hebrew, I don't know honeslty since I can't speak 😓
they don't add the dots in modern Hebrew so telling the sin from a shin and a bet from a vet (hebrew letters ) is guesswork for new readers.
Note how they didn't use Arabic letters in their examples
The ambiguity is my cryptonite. I can already read spanish perfectly after just a year but I'm a native user of Farsi and I struggle to read it. GAAH why couldn't there be a second reduction of ambiguity, like one Sūkūn per word or something- that would make this so much easier! I mean, the script is beautiful and we should never let it go, but I am legitimately contemplating learning Maltese as a *stepping-stone* to Arabic, just because it would be easier for me to become fluent thanks to the writing.
Make no mistake though, I seriously see the point in abjads. I can write Farsi just fine and I frequently write english notes in Nastalikh, then read it back perfectly later (of course that I wrote it helps a lot, because the context is in my memory).
So, as a gist: Alphabets spoil you. Learn as many abjadized languages as a child as possible :P. There are only really four of them anyway.
hasan kamran I learned Spanish later actually, but I have a Pakistani parent.
I went to Islamic school and when I was in 3rd grade, my teacher started writing Arabic without the harakat (diacritic marks for vowels). He wrote "هذا" and told me to read it. I was confused because that word got no harakat.
Then, my teacher said, "This is read 'hadza' and it will not change to 'hadzu' or 'hadzi'. Once you know how pronounce and write it, you can read Arabic without harakat".
OK, so the thing is you should know how those words are pronounce and written.
I mean, the alif does kind of give it away as ending in /a/...
The hebrew text placed in the southern levant area is incorrect it should be placed further east like the aramaic script. Its the phoenician-canaanite script that has the southern levant area not just northern levant.
Would you say the markers around consonants in abjads make them a bit like abugidas?
Not really. For one, abugidas still have a full set of characters which represent vowels for use in vowel-only syllables, or when multiple vowels run together. Two, the vowel diacrtics are compulsory in abugidas. In abjads, the vowel diacritics may be used, especially for people who are learning to write and for foreign words, but they are neither compulsory, nor often used by literate people.
thanks for helping with my Arabic!
1:22 Gang with friends 😳 Linguist Gang Skrtt Skrtt.
NativLang - I'm curious about the relationship between the sound of the matres lectionis when they are consonants and when they are vowels. I would have thought there would be no relationship. It was random that one symbol was used for different sounds. The vowels "O" and "U" don't seem to have any connection to the consonant "w". And yet you have the verb מוּת and the noun מָוֶת, just as one example. There you have a shift from W to U, which presumably predated to matres lectionis. Strange!
W is actually the consonant version of the oo (represented by U in transliteration) or o sound.
@NativLang, I’d be curious to hear about why Tunisian Arabic has strayed so much from classical, modern standard and Levantine Arabic. It’s almost incomprehensible and seems to be a mix of many languages.
The fact we Arabic speakers do not use the marks in writing doesn't mean we can't read it actually even children can read it easily
Yep.
Bandits took me -- to the subscribe button!
I don't know if it's just a poor Louisiana educational system but I never learned why vowels were so important. I can't really find any information on why languages all around have vowels and consonants. Do you mind explaining it to me?
That is what I really do not understand at all: Why were the vowels just considered useless to write in the phoenician alphabet and on?
So that's why modern abjads have consonants that double as vowels as well as diacritics to place on the double letters to avoid confusion
Arabic still use harakat "the signs of vowels", a vole would only be written if it is part of the word, if it is only a pronunciation of a letter ( 'he' for example will be written with dot under H, as opposite to 'hi, pronouncing the letter with an accent is different from pronouncing a second letter , HE vs Hi')
You should make a video game in Unity or something. It could be a fun language based puzzle game.
I would really like if you made a video about the aramaic/assyrian aramaic language! It was a language used in some prayers in the jewish bible, And I believe is the true sister language of hebrew
It actually is funny. In Romanian, my native language, we use i for both /i/, /j/ and /ʲ/, u for both /u/ and /w/, e for both /e/ and /e̯/ and o for /o/ and /o̯/. We also use h for /h/, /ç/ and /x/ and n for /n/ and /ŋ/. Until I became a language nerd I didn't even hear the difference between these sounds. I think this is the case with the semitic languages.
Is there any semitic languages that uses latin or greek letters? Does that fix vowel problem.
I am such an ignorant... didn't understand a thing... !
But listened wholeheartedly though..... :D
The history line in this video got my confused, i thought it was talking about a bit of ancient history, but i know for a fact that dots and diacritics in Arabic are recent ( 1000 years maybe). Fun fact though: Arabs today can read without dots in the right context.
Yes, the dots and diacritics in the Arabic language are recent because they were developed to facilitate the learning of the Arabic language for non-Arabs after Islam.
The video do not try to say that the use of diacritics for vowels (like niqqud or tashkil) was invented at the same time as the use of mothers of reading but afterwards as a result of the ambiguity that can arrise, especially for beginners.
It included it for more complete picture of how abjads indicate vowels.
When latter hebrew, arabic, and aramaic were up they used the different but newer y and w consonants. Like "wady" instead of "wadi".
Yeah, the first person who invented the Dotts on vowels was a Muslim Grammarian of 7th Century, Abu Aswad Ad-Duwalli (69 A.H / 688 C.E), which then later was adopted and incorporated by other Semitic Languages (I.e Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew) with the help of spread of Islam into their lands.
I’m new to the channel. What is an “oddjob” (spelling)? You use this word several times.
Great channel. Thanks for all your hard work.
The term is “abjad.” I don’t know how to explain what it is because I suck at explaining, but there is a video in this playlist that explains the concept. It’s called “How Egypt invented the alphabet--history of writing systems #7.”
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad
Damn! In my imperfect featural abjad, the vowels are marked with dots.
حتى الكثير من المفردات العربية باللهجة اليمنية نفس العبري ..
لغتين شقيقتين لشعب واحد اليمني
I think that there are some cases in English (and I believe in other languages as well) that a vowel letter becomes a consonant; for example, take the word 'apple,' the 'a' at the beginning of this word used as a consonant (at least it is equivalent to how 'a' would be used as a consonant in Hebrew).
Another thing, the tree in min 0:39, is misleading. First Arabic splits from Aramaic, Phoenician, and Hebrew; then, Aramaic splits from Phoenician and Hebrew; lastly, Phoenician and Hebrew split (although these are very closely related languages and sometimes considered as two versions of the same language).
What do you mean by that?
If you mean that, for example, the letter 'a' in the English word 'apple' does not behave like a consonant, then I won't agree with you. Simply because in this example, the letter 'a' in 'apple' makes the same sound like the latter 'aleph' (א - the Hebrew equivalent of 'a') in the Hebrew word 'abba' (אבא - father). One pronounces the first 'aleph' in 'a-bba' the same way as one pronounces the first 'a' in 'a-pple'. We consider the first 'aleph' in 'abba' as a consonant, not a vowel. Take, for example, the role of the 'a' in words apple and banana; I think the 'a' letter is used differently in those words and sounds differently. Don't you agree?
Phoenician/Canaanite had a Yad and Wa and Earlier in Bronze age Yadu and Wa and even Earlier Iadu and Uu. As did ancient Southern Arabic and Ancient Egyptian and Akkadian as well as Sumerian.
There are consonants in the Phoenician alphabet that are used as vowels. This is long before the Greeks
The video is nice, no need to start discussing races in comments..
Forget about race, we're all from earth.
4:36 how far i have come in a few months. I can read all of these words except the one in Tunisia/Algeria
Yeah that one is called the amazig language
@@lunaanime4865 actually, Amazigh. ⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖ
There are some ambiguities. Not beeing those "evolutions" timestamped may sound that between the discovery of alfabetic writting and the devolopment of vowel mark system there was only some years within a lifetime. But there is a dozens of centuries gap. And I'm not sure if there was any time in history that ever existed any semitic language without the so called "mater leccionis"...
An all over the place explanation, the use of English words as an example made it even more confusing. And this is coming from a native arabic speaker who knows what you are trying to explain
Do a video about the Inuktitut language alphabet.
2:45 This didnt matter because the order in which thees were used was CVC
I speak the language mentioned in the beginning of the video
The word "Sanskrit" is written incorrectly on that image with Thoth at the end. It's संस्कृतम् not संस् कृतम्. The स् and क् combine into a conjunct. The virama ् (vowel muter) is never written in the middle of a word except for foreign names that can't be rendered correctly in the script.
errorat 3:18 .. writing "n(y)oos" in a consonant-only alphabet would yield , there is no w-sound like that of .
Watch the video again. It clearly explained that "w, y, and ' " were eventually used to help distinguish long vowels.
nyz
Why peopel stay say Aramaic and Syriac it is the same language there is no Aramaic without Syriac
Faisal Thabit maybe because Aramaic is older than Syriac 🙂
+MrLiberali of course but there is no One aramaic language Syriac is just the largest dialect of the eastern dialects its is almost the same as other dialects syriac is directly a decendand of old aramaic
Faisal Thabit I can speak Arameic/Syriac😀
Faisal Thabit Yep actuelly syriac was a simple evolution of aramaic
Elegant Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. It’s the eastern dialect group of Aramaic. It’s is also know as “Middle Aramaic”, which evolved from “Ancient Aramaic”.