@Muhammad Talha Good to know that. Even I have learnt Urdu being an Indian Hindu. And I agree with you. But one thing about Urdu is that it is more free flowing in writing than Hindi .
Problem is, this writing system predates Ashoka and goes back to the time of Panini, the scholar who first systematized the Brahmi alphabet in Takshila in the Iron Age.
@@viciousraccoon7094 The Indus valley script is unrelated to the Brahmi script or any other Indic script . First of all, whether the Indus valley script is a proper script or some form of collection of symbols is not confirmed. Most writings in this script are only a few characters long. Secondly , we don't know anything about the underlying language to ascertain that any of the modern Indic languages are it's descendents. The Brahmi script (along with its sister script Karoshthi) closely resembles the Aramaic alphabet of the time and this indicates an Aramaic origin of the Brahmic family of scripts. The Aramaic script ultimately came from the Proto Sinaitic script derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics. The oldest recorded writing in India dates to Mauryan era (save the Indus valley script/symbols?) and most of the indigenous writing systems of the subcontinent are derivatives of the Brahmi script.
Asoka didn't invent the brahmi script, he just popularised it through his Ashokan pillars spread out throughout the the Indian subcontinent, which I should add is no small feat in itself😁
@@Sumitkumaar0999 Pramaan de bhimte!!! Ek inscription ka naam bta Ashoka ke samay ka jo Paali m;ein ho. Chal tu 5th century se pehle ka ek Paali la inscription ka naam bta de. 😁
As someone who knows English and Hindi, the Hindi writing system (Devanagari) is much simpler, more intuitive, and all around easier than English (Roman alphabet), this video makes it look way more complicated than it really is
I am fluent in both and it's definitely easier to read Hindi. But somehow, in the electronic format, people are using the Latin script even for Hindi and other Indic languages. Who knows what happens 100 years down the line.
@@Blaze6432 I disagree with that assertion. The Latin alphabet is wonderful for languages that are derived from Latin, the Runic Scripts were perfect for English; but the Brahmic scripts are on a different level: much easier to learn, phonetically coherent and far more logical. The only advantage that the Latin alphabet has over the Brahmic scripts is that it can be cursive and therefore can be written much faster; but India solves that issue by using really short words: most Indian words are derived from singular roots which are modified to one or two syllables at max. This makes it highly efficient. In the manner that one can't write आइ लिव् इन् अ हाऊस़ without being an idiot, one cannot write " maiM ghara mEM rahEtA huM " without looking like dyslexic asswipe. However, the former makes much more sense than the latter. This can even be seen in the international phonetic alphabet which borrows its phonetic structure almost entirely from the Brahmic script family, combing it with the Latin alphabet.
@WhAtEveRrr Every language has to borrow words from some or the other language. What some call as Shudh or pure hindi is in fact nothing but a collection of Sanskrit plus Sanskritized loan words. It is a common belief amongst people that languages are static and should be thought of as some code given to us by our parents/schools. But it is not so. Languages are always growing and evolving in some way. Take english for example. It has countless words borrowed from almost all major languages. As for Hindi going completely extinct, I doubt that. At one point in our history, our ancestors spoke Sanskrit. Then Prakrit>hindustani>hindi. People and languages both change with time.
@@mountainsmakemehorny That's because your writing in Roman characters based on English alphabet not actually adopting a standardization from the Roman alphabet. Obviously any idiot who sticks a bunch random capitals in the sentence is going to look dumb, but you can modify the script to suit the language. If you were even remotely educated about Roman script you would know it's the only script used for languages on almost every continent and a big reason why is that it's rules change for each language that it officially adopts. People who write online in Hindustani with Roman characters are typically trying to write them in line as if they are English words, hence why it always looks off.
I love how the abjads, and alphabets got their long history lesson in this series; even Chinese and Mayan are examined. However, little is mentioned about the origins of the abudiga writing systems except for a fake story about King Ashoka getting it from the phoenicians.
Lol, blame the ASI and our eminent historians. It's sad but almost all of the major archeology happened during British times. While most of our own historians and ASI sit on their butt guzzling funds. Good amount of old ruins and forts are deteriorating away. Have you seen some of old temples they have 'repaired'? Many of them look worse than when they were broken. So yeah, expect this weak story of Ashoka just creating a whole unknown new system to be the only major hypothesis for the next few decades atleast.
Not so unaccurate. As far as I've read, Indic Brahmi script does is ispirated in semitic abjads, but far away in history. Almost in the beginning of semitic scripts, Indians took them and developed a new system. If I'm not wrong, when the Akkadian became a lingua franca in Middle East, Aryans where already in India and where talking Vedic Sanskrit. The story of Ashoka is a metaphor 'cause even with the writing system, the Vedic accent musted to be transmited orally 'cause Brahmi script had no representation for it as modern Indic scripts have, in a simmilar way to classical Greek, which had no representation of the pitch accent when it was used, and was added when the stress accent developed.
@@CBullion005 Ashoka came a millenium after the post Vedic age. A millenium is enough to wipe accents. The brahmi script definitely isn't a modified copy of abjad alphabets. brahmi has a system of combing letters and consonants but not the abjads. Also Vedic Sanskrit died out of conversation a millennium before Alexander. It's not that brahmi was the only script either. There were others like the paishachi(which later came to be written in brahmi) but brahmi got ahead due to ashoka's initiative..
@@CBullion005 you're correct but much more would've been said about origins of this script which seems to ultimately come from egyptian hieroglyphs instead of attributing it to ashoka. Panini definitely talks about something called "lipi" or script. One another theory can be that of indus script relation given that dravidian tamil script (which is brahmi) has shown similarities with indus script. Its possible aryans learnt that script from fellow dravidian population of south india. It's ignorant to reduce it to a mere inspiration from abjads since it differs so much in terms of use of vovels and consonants.
Sanskrit is one of the oldest. Hindi isn't old but Sanskrit is. I have learned Sanskrit and the grammar and the language is way better tbh. The hardness level is over 9000
The huge table of ligatures for Devanagari is only really relevant for font designers. Most combinations of consonants can be derived by a few simple rules, apart from a few irregular ligatures like the ones for "ksha", "shra", "tra" "dya", "ddha" and "jña". There also several pairs of consonants which are only combined into one ligature in print and not in handwriting (like retroflex "tta", "ttha", "dda" and "ddha"). And lastly, I've never heard of a word that actually contains "ddhrya", the ligature which is always used to make Devanagari look complicated.
I wonder if this is normally the case for ligature-heavy scripts - beautiful and complex at a glance, but internally mostly regular. What you sketched could be abstractly said of Arabic, Byzantine Greek, etc. Thank you for your insights.
Actually shra (श्र) is not irregular either. When the alphabet श is to be joint to another consonant, it takes the form श्च, श्न, श्र, श्ल, श्व etc in some cases.
@@अजिङ्क्यगोखले When I was in school, we were taught to write clusters beginning with श as श्च, श्न, श्व, etc. I don't know how someone would write श्च or श्न by hand without making it look really ugly.
A correction regarding the spread of alpha syllabaries to south-east Asia, They did not spread from Tibet to Burma, the Burmese script is a modification of the Kalinga script and the other southeast Asian scripts are modifications of a precursor to the modern Tamil script.
@@Dhruv-Kumar all scripts used for Dravidian languages and Sanskritic languages(languages evolved from Sanskrit) are derivatives of the brahmi script. Brahmi script in southern india was written on palm leaves so they evolved to be more curvy in comparison to brahmi script's evolution in northern parts which have straight lines and sharp angles along with curves. The only outlier is the santali language which is of Austroasiatic origin.
It's "ddhrya," the longest consonant conjunct in Sanskrit, as written in Devanagari. It's not a word itself; just a cluster of consonants that could form the start of a syllable. The video is a little misleading showing it in isolation, though. It would never begin a word. It would always have a vowel in front of it, or it's impronounceable, e.g., "-addhrya" where the syllable break is "ad | dhrya." Important to note: This really is a consonantal "r." Sanskrit also has a vocalic "r" but this is not that.
I don't know about the whole story, I mean if I'm not wrong writing system was there long before Ashoka , and even panini mentioned scribbing .. but yes ashoka edicts are major source of brahmi script but it itself came from kharoshthi so the story is historically incorrect.. though fun to watch and explain the linguistic elements nicely
@Andrew Goering Brahmi has no connection with Aramaic or any other semitic scripts. No historian was able to show it convincingly. There are texts which are part of vedas called brahmanas.Many historians believe that by the time of compilation of brahmanas around 900bc writing was there.Also starting from 600bc the gangetic plain was experiencing high urbanisation. So writing must have predated that period.Writing in the earliest period in India must have been on perishable materials that too probably only by brahmins.Also the gangetic plain suffered terrible devastation during islamic rule. So this factors may explain the lack of evidence of early Indian epigraphy.Also I strongly believe the brahmi script is descended from the indus script.
The entire timeline of indian history is distorted and it has been fabricated to suit western history. Ashoka didn't exist in the 3rd century BCE and subsequently Buddha didn't exist in the 6th century. Looking at subsequent Greek and Indian accounts we find out that Alexander was a contemporary of the kings who were alteast a 1000 years after the mauryas. Chandranmaasa/Xandrames from the naga dynasty was the contemporary of Alexander and they have falsely associated Xandrames with Dhanananda from the nanda dynasty which is absolutely rubbish. Mauryas did not rule over the entire Indian subcontinent, it was guptas and their kingdom. If you count all the kings mentioned in Indian literature then ashoka's reign was somewhere near 1500 BCE as per puranic history. Selucus's daughter was married off to Chandragupta of the Gupta dynasty not maurya. What we learn today is a fabricated story which does not match at all if you read the Indian history. All this false history about Chandragupta being a tutelage of Chanakya due to foreign invasion. Indian history has been pushed back by atleast 1000 years, 1200 to be more precise. Buddha dates back to 1700 BCE Xandrames = Chandranmaas (naga dynasty and contemporary of Alexander) Sandrakottus= Chandragupta of the Gupta dynasty(Vijayaditya) Sandracyptus= Samudragupta Ashokaditya Vikramaditya who expanded the territory even beyond Iran
It may be just sorta confusing. It's a hardish subject to condense into a short TH-cam video. So, the result is that there's not a lot of pause. With every segment, you're immediately learning and revising previous information, no time to digest THEN get to reapply or modify it.
I have to agree, it seemed like it built a very good platform for a longer video, then ended. The story didn't really link with the info. Although, I am now interested and think this could make a great but longer video :P
@@jey.bee_ Yaa... But since education is focused on English, we never "consciously" learn our mother tongue and we never understand how unique it will be for a foreigner.
Good job with the video. I'd like to point out that recent excavations in the state of Tamil Nadu have found out evidence of the use of brahmi script before Ashokan period (5th maybe 6th century BC). So, there's a good chance this story didn't go way we think it did.
The Sanskrit language is like learning mathematics. The alphabet with consonants and vowels are arranged as two tables matrix like. The elements in the tables could be added. The entire grammar is founded on word tables with tenses, number, person etc merging into it!! It develops logical thinking from childhood.
I am reading, writing and talking in Hindi my whole life and never thought it is so difficult in construction of word. Maybe it is my first language or maybe we write what we speak. Don't know, can anyone clarify?
It’s just that we standardized our language much before the rest of the world. So our writing system and phonetics could develop around each other. It’s now have become so much natural that we don't even think that what we write might differentiate from what we speak.
Telugu is my mother tongue but hindi and Telugu follow same principles. I love Telugu and our Indian language systems are called abugidas and far advanced than anymlanguages
This was an amazing video, and as a hindi speaker I'm really thankful for my writing system coz reading it is legit very easy, and there are no silent letters or pronouncing the same letter in multiple different ways😂 what you see is what you speak 😂
Unindicated silencing of sounds does exist in Hindi, but perhaps not apparent to most Hindi speakers. The first three letters in namkeen are the same as namak yet no one pronounces namkeen as namakeen. The second 'a' of namak is silenced in namkeen. So not completely without ambiguity. :)
@@rohansaxena4751 This was just one example. Hindi has many more such words, as you can easily realise. :) So do many other modern Indo-Aryan languages. This feature is called 'schwa deletion'. It wasn't present in old Indo-Aryan (i.e. Sanskrit) where, unless indicated by a virama (halant), schwa was retained for every letter. So going by Sanskrit's reading tradition, Hindi's namkeen will be read as namakeena (न+म+की+न). For the word to be pronounced as namkeen in Sanskrit, we have to write नम्कीन् (I don't think there's actually such a word present in Sanskrit though).
@@shivampatnaik2000 I think that's because the pronounciation of hindi language got adultered at some point in history. Because if we speak by the rules of samskrit, from which hindi is derived, we would have pronounced each letter with its proper length of timing unless it was supposed to be pronounced short, marked by a halant.
@@esmeelin5435 "Adultered" and "proper" aren't words I'd use here. Gives off the impression that Hindi is somewhat inferior to Sanskrit. Languages evolve all the time, spoken language much faster than the written one (thus spellings often stay the same while their pronunciations change). Although it would make it much more logical and easier for second language learners if Hindi's spellings were completely consistent, there's nothing improper about the current system.
Writing system of Indic family in South and Southeast Asia are increditably diverse, especially those in Southeast Asia. SEA people are very talented and creative in modifying South Indian scripts (Pallava) into their own unique form of script to write their native languages: Old Mon, Old Khmer and Old Javanese (Kawi). These 3 scripts had been further developped by Tibeto-Burmans (Burmese, Karens), Tais (Thai/Lao/Dai/Shan) and Malayo-Polynesians (Malay, Javanese, Tagalog, etc) respectively. Each nations created their own artistic styles depending on writing materials: Mons and Burmese use semi-symmetrically round shape (lone) in order to write on the palm leaf easily, Khmers use straight shape and decorated the 'bar' or Serif into sharp edges on the top of letter (sok) to carve on stone beautifully. Thais and Laos modified Old Khmer and created a little "round head" (hua) on the letter to write on the paper pulp. Tools used to write is also influence the shape of scripts, for example Thais in Yunnan (Dai) uses Chinese brush so their script became square like Chinese character. That's why Southeast Asia is rich of indegenous scripts even in small tribes. Unfortunately, the Malays had replaced their ancient scripts derived from India by Arabic and finally Roman, the Tagalogs and other Filipinos too.
Well it is an extremely organised and scientific way of writing, as there is absolutely zero scope of any ambiguity in devanagari. There is a one-one correspondence between what is written and what is said. Moreover you totally missed how these consonants are arranged in neat stacks, where the rows correspond to the nature of pronunciation of the consonant (guttural, palatal, cerebral, dental, labial) and the columns correspond to the aspiration, softness and nasality of the consonants. It's a control freak's dream!!
Wow, you are so right! I just recited the alphabets to myself now, and like you said they are grouped according to how their sounds are made (with the lips, tongue, etc). How did I never notice this till now? That's just brilliant.
Very interesting, Siddhesh. Yeah, I'm surprised he didn't mention that given that the next video is all about that feature of Hangul. BTW, "cerebral"? How to pronounce consonants when using telepathy is built into the writing system? Wow!! 🙂
hahahah sorry! well, one linguistics course later I find myself in a better position to express my observations! the stops and nasals are arranged in a 5x5 matrix, the rows corresponding, in that order, to 1)velars, 2)palatals (some prefer to call these postalveolar affricates), 3)postalveolar retroflex sounds, 4)dentals and 5)bilabials. The columns similarly correspond to 1)voiceless, 2)aspirated voiceless, 3)voiced, 4)murmured (breathy voiced) and 5)nasal sounds! finally there are the approximants and liquids along with the labiodental fricative 'v' and the last row is occupied by the sibilants. There are more symbols for Persian loanwords, sounds that may be used in Dravidian languages etc and the exact phonology of each of these sounds vary from language to language. I actually want to know more about how non-IndoAryan languages adapt to the basic structure of the Indic Abugida. Especially languages like Tibetan and Thai, which at their core are very different from Indo Aryan and Dravidian languages.
Thanks for all the replys I kinda get it I just don't understand the writing system but I understand the language as I speaks Urdu as it's my secondary language
+Qais Rashid The Devanagari script is a little like Arabic. Every consonant includes the vowel a. For example, क = ka. If you only want k, you need to add a sukun to kill the vowel: क् (k). So, you can have क् (k), क (ka), का (kā), कि (ki), की (kī), कु (ku), कू (kū), कृ (kŕ), कॅ (kĕ), के (ke), कै (kai), कॉ (kŏ), को (ko), कौ (kau).
But vowel marking is not essential in Semitic sentences. > In devanagari script, you can't alter the pronunciation. Significant accents can arise even in languages with fully phonemic writing system.
This described everything my professor taught me in one semester in Hindi one. Wow. Thank you so much! I am refreshing my Hindi and this helps immensely. Keep up the good work and bless you for this work!
In India 3 styles of knowledge transmission was present. 1) Manuscripts(written system) 2) Through sculpters on temples and others building 3) Oral system ( Rishis believed knowledge should be present in our head, not forgotten in books) Writing system has been discover in Saraswati -Sindhu civilization. In main gate of Dholaveera there is some written words found. Not yet decifered.
Sharda script ( script of Kashmiri language) is even more complicated just like Tibetan script, we join consonants vertically to form hybrid sounds so it becomes even harder to learn all the hybrid consonant combinations, because each time depending upon the starting and ending sounds the consonants combine differently.
I think it's the most usef writing system to know since it can be used to transliterate most of the languages! I've learned Japanese, German, english and french. And I always used the Devnagari script to note down the pronounciation of words because devnagari contains almost all the consonants and vowels and is completely phonetic.
It’s good, but not perfect (no language/script is anyway [or needs to be] ), for example the distinction between V and W sound is not clear in Devanagari.
@@johnjohntv1195 Yes of course it is not perfect. But it comes close. Also, what do you mean 'v' and 'w' sounds? How are they different? Can you give me an example?
@@ExistentialDodo V is pronounce very similar to F When you say V you bite your lower lip When you say W you don't, it kinda sounds like Oo Indians use both of the letter interchangeably
@@ExistentialDodo yes, use Google translater speech to observe the difference V has this vibration to it वह is generally pronounced as Vo in most of India while in certain parts like Bihar It's more like wo
Indic writing systems are much older than Ashoka... it is (very) factually wrong to imply that Ashoka invented this system with any inspiration from any other alphabet system!
I'm a native Tagalog (Filipino) speaker learning Japanese. I'm amazed how I keep bumping into similarities between these two languages. This video explains a lot for me.
zhan_rand Wait, what? I was so shook when I saw this. I speak Tagalog (I'm a native speaker) and also am learning Japanese. What similarities have you or "El Tiburón Grande" found?
Javie Mike you will only see the similarities if you study japanese. but let me give you an example Japanese alphabet: A I U E O KA SA TA NA HA MA YA RA WA Tagalog alphabet: A E I O U BA KA DA GA HA KA LA MA NA NGA PA RA SA TA WA YA Japanese alphabet represents syllables, and so Tagalog. Tagalog words that is similar but have slight and different meaning: suki ano ito gawa ako nawa mata asoko (aso ko) kami kita tawa etc etc A foreigner mght think when first time hearing Tagalog conversation is it is Japanese being spoken. Search *COMA by Gumi* and *Tagalog vocaloid* in TH-cam and head on to comment section. read it. Look at these questions and answers answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110712235436AAeJudB look at the second top comment ph.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100721042035AAJPMrl answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070929032925AAyBiq2 look at the second top comment th-cam.com/video/z_7JsBjIqoA/w-d-xo.html
zhan_rand I've already told you that I am studying Japanese. And hey, you can get really technical with me. Hindi sa pag-aano pero I think I've read more research papers about language than an average person
Austric family is just a hypothetical language super family, it is not supported by most linguists, but some consider japanese as a sister language of Austronesian
amarigna is a spoken language. but ethiopic Ge'ez is a written language. Amhara people and tigray people speak two different spoken languages that are very similar but they write using the same alphabets. the alphabets are called Ethiopic Ge'ez. My father is from ethiopia so i know this. ;)
Sitizen Kane because most non-amhars chose amarigna as their official language. a lot of non-amharas talk amharic as their second language. it is just like in the united states the english are the minority and there are more germans but english is the official language.
The ways we've found to improve various scribing system, quite fascinating. Maybe a little confusing as trying to grasp every method in the rather limited space of the video. I dunno since I'm not familiar with these languages but alpha syllabaries sound pretty nifty. They seem at least somewhat easy to learn the vowels if they all work on the same principle. (plus they look rather elegant when written)
Arthion trust ne devnagri is the least confusing script you will ever find. I became fluent in less than a year. I grew up speaking Spanish as my mother tongue it took me many years to learn basic English but I became fluent in Hindi in one year. I am not exaggerating. the reason is Devnagri script is absolute. I mean unlike english where letter 'C' can be used both as 'K' and 'S' in devnagri there is absolutely separate letter for separate sound which in absolutely no case can be used interchangeably. the figure and sound of a letter remains always the same. and mostly you don't need to write the vowels separately. you don't need to struggle for precise pronunciation it always remains clear. so although the number of alphabets is little more than double than that of Roman it is far far far far far far far far far far far less confusing than English.
Diego Sebastiàn Pérez देवनागरी (Devanagari) is absolute for संस्कृतम् (Sanskrit) not for Hindi or any modern Indian language because of schwa deletion with deletes schwas in between words and word finally. Devanagari is itself pronounced Devnagri. Ashoka is pronounced Ashok, Siddharata Gautama is pronounced Siddhart Gautam. Buddha is pronounced Buddh etc.
All Indic languages are phonetic, so what you read is what you speak. The only languages that are tricky are that use the Arabic Script like Urdu, because it is written in a cursive fashion and often drop the vowels, so for beginners it can be tricky to know when it'll sound like pu or pi
Our abugida system of writing is so ingenious, that I am confident, that someday it will replace the roman script in the West, much the same way through Indian numerals replaced the Roman ones. In a small video like this, is is not quite possible to understand the features of our script, and what exactly makes it so special.
Actually, that may not happen, because the International Phonetic Association has already incorporated phonetic logic in the Latin script by making use of diacritics and all that.
@⌘ Hyperborean Bard ⌘ that is completely untrue. Devanagari has around 50 different symbols whose rules of combinations or joDanI are really simple. Technically, you can recreate nearly every sound in human speech with just 50 akSaras. Apart from English which is horrible in the phonetic department, every other European language makes extensive use of diacritics, and the usage of two different vowels to make a different sound (in French/Greek) is far more complex. For an Occidental, the Latin scripts will be much easier, while for an Indian the Brahmic scripts will be much easier. But if you decide to conduct an experiment with a person unfamiliar with either of the scripts, he will always tend to side with the more logical and more constant Brahmic scripts.
@@servantofaeie1569 Unfortunately my computer doesn't recognise those characters. Is that one of the scripts used in the books the Jesuits destroyed when they came to the Philippines in the 16th century?
Knowing thats its none of my business, I will still try to help. Take these words Kin Keen Now notice that they pronounce very similar, but "ee" sound is shorter in 'kin', while longer in 'keen'. However we are using two very separate vowels 'i' and 'e'. They can sound different in the words 'Kind' and 'Ken'. This is pure inconsistency and becomes like Japanese at a point. We have to learn to memorise a written word as a symbol for something that sounds entirely different than it should. This is never the case with Hindi/Sanskrit Devanagiri script. Here is the consonant for 'K' क - pronounced as 'ka' Here is the consonant for 'N' न - pronounced as 'na' The sounds of these consonants will never change. Here are the vowel notations for "ee" कि "ki" as in 'kin' How do I write Kin in Sanskrit? किन् Why the sign under न ? Because otherwise it will be read as "kina". This special sign is called "halant", which signifies the dummy vowel a is cut out. Any character with a halant under it, signifies the sound of the character is half. However in Hindi, we simply assume the last character of the any word will be read as a "half character". So in modern Hindi, the halant is excluded from the words. So 'Kin' in Hindi is written as किन Moving on to "Keen". The longer "ee" has a separate vowel notation As I mentioned, the consonants of K and N remain the same, the vowel notation, though looks the same, it changes position though. Because it makes the "ee" sound, the symbol will be the same. The position will change from left to right. So here is the sanskrit text for keen कीन् And here is the Hindi version of it कीन For Ken, the 'e'makes an entirely different sound. The vowel notation has to be entirely different. Here's the Sanskrit 'Ken' केन् And here's the Hindi Ken केन However, the problem here is that the Hindi version of Ken will sound pretty much like Cane. Which is why many Indians struggle with correct pronunciations of such english words. I have seen Hindi medium students pronounce pen and 'pain'. But that inconsistency of sound is not really our fault. English is a very wierd language. In Hindi we can solve this by writing as it was in Sanskrit. Overall, thanks to British Raj, we have learnt to assume the sounds when reading an english word written in Devanagiri. Now moving on, Lets go for the words Cap and Cape The consonant that makes 'ka' sound remains the same. And the consonant that was used for "pa" sound is प (an inverted p) Cape is written as - केप While Cap is written as - कैप No inconsistent vowels and consonants. No sudden transition from K to C for the sound thats the same. Some of the most inconsistent uses of C Cecelia Cate I mean... what the hell? Consider this word- Accident. Use C as both K and C In Devanagiri 'C' of Cecelia is denoted by स and it will not change for that sound. The same consonant will be used for 's' in 'sound'. The consonants for L and Y are ल, य Ceclia - सिसिलिया Sylvia - सिल्विया But for Kate and Catie Kate- केट Catie (American accent) - कैटी Catie (British accent) - केटी Also know that we have seprate Vowel characters for words that start with a vowel, or has two vowels one after the other. Accident- ऐक्सिडेन्ट Axis - ऐक्सिस Access - ऐक्सेस Success- सक्सेस Recess - रीसेस Slight note: ऐ is the vowel character that makes the sound for 'a' as in 'as' ए is the vowel character that makes the sound 'A' So Acess- ऐक्सेस Excess- एक्सेस Accept - ऐक्सेप्ट Except - एक्सेप्ट Aspect- ऐस्पेक्ट Expect - एक्सपेक्ट You can play with Devanagiri forever..
In my opinion, the various modern versions of the Brahmi script are by far the coolest in the world. I especially like the look of Tibetan script, but all of them are cool. I like the idea of an inherent vowel sound that's only different if an extra stroke is added.
I’m from Sri Lanka (which is just south of India). Our main script uses this same system. For example, ස (sa) සි (si) සු (su) සෙ (se) බ (ba) බි (bi) බු (bu) බෙ (be) ම (ma) මි (mi) මු (mu) මෙ (me) This system makes language learning trivial, once you know each letter and vowel attachment. It’s phonetic and so it makes it completely easy to understand and and read for a beginner.
As an Indian I can see this type is of structure even influencing modern programing languages. Annotations, inheritance and function overloading seems the same. I find code easy to read and understand because of this.
minor criticism; 1) This video is a bit fast for the concepts. 2)referring to it as "India" makes time period/place ambiguous. Are you talking about an Indian kingdom? All of India? India at the time of the Phoenecians? Or modern India? I think that ambiguity adds to the confusion of something that's already a little hard to grasp.
Simgen x Thanks for the info. My history on India is kind of sparse and I didn't know if this was one of the few periods where most of the land was consolidated or his was more like the Mughal(which I think was basically the northern half/two thirds?)
prior to 1947, INDIA=INDIAN SUBCONTINENT=SOUTH ASIA. When someone mentions India they're talking about all of India. Individual kingdoms are of little important.
Asoka only popularized the brahmic script in whole South Asia(Indian subcontinent),south East Asia ( Vietnam🇻🇳, combodia, Myanmar🇲🇲,Thailand🇹🇭,Javanese,laos 🇱🇦) & East Asia ( Japan, Mongolia & Tibet) . Sanskrit(संस्कृत भाषा) were used by devnagari script after 1500 BCE (ऋग्वेद). Sanskrit as speaking language used from 4125 BCE from Magadh empire (मगध साम्राज्य) .
You should also have mentioned how the alphabet has separate letters for vowels too, and that all the letters are arranged in a grid according to type of consonant they are(dental, palatal, aspirated, unaspirated etc)
For a moment, you had me very confused! "Writing system" would be a better alternative to "alphabet". Alphabet is one of the several writing systems prevalent in the world. Abugida is another. Abugidas are not alphabets. Apologies for being an irritating pedant. 🙏 :)
Most countries developed their own writing system based on phonetics. The smallest quantum of sound produced in a word represents that sound (syllable). This makes it super easy as it is mathematical in construct and there's only one way to pronounce it. Great video and she has such an beautiful voice. Could listen to it all day. Radio voice
This way makes writing and reading easier in indic laungages Take the word "niluka" its english its niluka but if you write it in sinhala without combining vowels and letters its written as, "න්ඉල්උක්ආ" But if you combine the vowels and turn them into syllables its just, "නිලූකා" Because... න් + ඉ = නි (n + i = ni) ල් + උ = ලු (l + u = lu) ක් + ආ = කා (k + a = ka)
The writing system on the top left at 0:13 (with the triangle shape) says: Inuktitut. Inuk means an Inuit person (it also just means person) and titut means "like a". Inuktitut means like a person. The Inuktitut word for English in Qallunaatitut (ᖃᓪᓗᓈᑎᑐᑦ) . Qallunaat means a non-inuk person so Qallunaatitut means like a non- inuk person.
Writting systems in India predate Ashoka, as claimed in this video. Moreover attention to Indus Valley Scripts, Chola Scripts , Language written in texts in Nalanda and Takshashila which predate even Ashoka's own empire and family line. Hasn't been taken into consideration.
For those wondering what do those sentences mean shown starting from 3:05 They all are the same Sanskrit statement written in different south southeast asian scripts It means : May lord Shiva, protect those who are devoted to seek the substances and flavours of the Divine Language. गीर्वणभाषा - Girvana bhasha - usually means Divine language but here it means 'Local language' or Sanskrit.
no not really, Devanagari has way more support for non-Indo-Aryan and non-Dravidian languages. More vowels and consonants. English can be written even better, लैक् द़िस्, सी? No nukta in Brahmi.
Those northern indic writing systems place the cluster horizontally, meanwhile Javanese and Balinese place it vertically, like in Pallava. It consumes space, so you need an extra line below. Thus, Balinese and Javanese script traditionally written with a bit wider space. Both scripts are still not aesthetically written in computer (especially when typing it in the internet using the browser), because computer is only designed for the "one line" script only. The second line is often got cut. Pasta पस्त (hindi) ᬧᬲ᭄ᬢ (Balinese) ꦥꦱ꧀ꦠ (Javanese) I hope it can be resolved soon, so it would be easier to read entire lines...
@Kala Kauwa the difference is, you change the height of the letters. Compare between ट and ट्ट Thus, it can still "accomodate" the one line writting space. It is not be allowed in Javanese nor in Balinese, because the first line is always to be in the same height. I think the only solution is minimizing the size of the letter by a half. But, it has to be still readable and distinguishable...
Yes!Philippines was mentioned. Filipinos took Baybayin from a yet unknown source 500 years ago.But it didn't allow a consonant without a vowel after it.Filipinos just provided the consonant in their mind.
@@multiversetraveller3118 true. For example in malayalam, 'sri lanka' is written as "ശ്രീ ലങ്ക" (shri lan(g)ka) or it may be written also as "ശ്രീ ലംക"( shri lam-ka) though that is not an agreed arrangement of letters to signify the word "lanka" but it is remarkably similar to the Sinhala "ශ්රී ලංකා" to signify "Sri Lanka".
So this theory is just one among the 3 main umbrella theories for writing in india 1) as said here Ashokan time scribes made brahmi from middle eastern scripts from which tamil brahmi developed and so on.. 2) Ashokan brahmi itselfwas derived from tamil brahmi which came from the middle east through spice trading routes.. 3) Brahmi/Tamil Brahmi developed from pre existing native scripts (like the Indus Script) But whichever the case, Abugidas are amazing.. much better than alphabets and abjads
This system of writing avoids a lot of problems in English writing , like how C, She, See & Sea all sound exactly the same. But English writing is far simpler because it is only 26 characters in different arrangements.
SANSKRIT is very clear ,clean Language, extremely perfect for programming language, make least amount of lines or sentence by a brief note, offcourse an ancient one makes her Unbelievable...
Would've been better if you had mentioned the main script "Brahmi" from which all the Indic scripts descended from. Many may think the north Indian variant of Brahmi i.e. devanagari is the main script & others are it's variants. At least mention that in the video (which I'm not sure how some do it in there videos by showing some texts regarding any correction) or description to be clear.
Unless the Amharic language pronounces symbols of the Ge'ez script differently from the Ge'ez language (3:26), the base symbol መ is not pronounced "ma" ("mɑ:" in phonetic), rather "muh" ("mə" in phonetic). Same goes for the other base symbols ለ and በ.
In a more practical question. What is the thing of Indian with the bar on top of the words? Is that a way of identifying the word as that block? Would you put a bar over the whole word after writing it, or make the bar as you go along? Does this have any relation to how they did cursive writing or was it just stylistic?
I guess it is just stylistic and helps to separate words. When writing, we write the characters first, then draw the line. When in hurry or for rough scribble, the line is omitted. I've noticed many omit the line in a signature.
Asita Singh Is that made after you wrote the whole thing or during the process of writing? Can it be omitted or it become too confusing (similar to omitting spaces in English)? I think it gives the writing a really cool look. It looks like the letters are hanging in that bar!
Luiz Sarchis well I and I have seen most people make it after they write the letters. I think it is necessary art least while writing. Might not me necessary while shining though I think. But I have personally never seen anyone not use the line even in signatures. And yeah it does look like letters hanging of a bar :)
I guess it is also a cultural thing. In Nepal, most of the signatures I see in Nepali don't have the line, including mine. And I've seen many scribbles without the lines. I have also had friends who have missed drawing the lines in a hurry during an exam. You can think about it like doting the i's and crossing the t's while writing cursive English. I personally draw the line after writing each word.
To be more specific, the vowels are the smallest amount of sound you can produce. They are called swar. In contrast, consonants (vyanjan) are created using a syllable with that stroke (halant) at the bottom, plus the first vowel ‘a’ which can be replaced with other vowels. Not just that, every row in the table of consonants use different parts of the mouth for pronunciation, for example, the ‘p’ row or p warg (प-वर्ग) requires you to touch both your lips for pronouncing every consonant in that row, so the second consonant फ is pronounced as ‘pha’ and not ‘fa’ because the latter requires you to touch your lower lip with your teeth. There were a few farsi (persian words that couldn’t be pronounced in Hindi, so, a ‘.’ at the bottom was invented for all of those words. So, फ़ is pronounced as ‘fa’. and farsi is written as फ़ारसी but all the Hindi words, eg. फल , lack a ‘.’ at the bottom are pronounced as ‘phal’, not ‘fal’. There are other similar symbols as well, like ॉ which are used for English words that have ‘o’ pronounced kind of like ‘au’, eg. doctor is written as डॉक्टर . PS: Nusery grammar books do include the diagram of various parts of the mouth labelled ( like talu or तालु) and how to pronounce consonants, but pseudo nationalists never cared about it. All they care about is protecting cows from non natives.
NativLang, have you ever heard of Pali? I assume you would if you've done a video with Ashoka. It might make an interesting video or part of a video of more or less "dead languages" that have long been used for solely religious or philosophical purposes( such as Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Sanskrit).
But actually Tamil script is not a complete script . There are no Tamil Alphabets for certain formal pronounciations like Ga, Da, Ba, fa, dha . Only க ப ட த used for several prounounciations .
@@Variouscartoontopic It is quite weird that you choose to say that Tamil doesn't have a complete script. In fact, a language with fewer letters can be seen as more primitive and ancient. And you are wrong about Tamil not having Ga, Da, Ba, and Dha, it does, just not in the way you think. What makes a "pronunciation" formal and a script "complete" anyway? Does Hindi have the ɻ sound?
I find it funny how they call it abugida, which is based on the Ethiopian Ge'ez script. It seems that they made an effort to find an example with a phoenician basis when in reality Indic scripts pretty much have a monopoly on them. Then again kakhagagha isnt quite as catchy abugida lol.
ᜀᜄ᜔ ᜐᜒᜈᜂᜈᜅ᜔ ᜐᜒᜐ᜔ᜆᜒᜋᜅ᜔ ᜉᜈᜓᜎᜆ᜔ ᜈᜅ᜔ ᜉᜒᜎᜒᜉᜒᜈᜐ᜔ ᜈ ᜊᜌ᜔ ᜊᜌᜓᜈ ᜀᜌ᜔. ᜊᜐᜒ ᜐ ᜊᜇᜋᜒᜃ Tagalog : ang sinaunang sistemang panulat ng Pilipinas na baybayin ay base sa brahmic English : the ancient pre colonial Filipino writing system called the baybayin was based on brahmic we also use alphasyllabary. what is called "hash" in the video, we call "kudlit" in baybayin. thank you India for sharing your script system across southeast asia.
If Nalanda University hadn't burnt down by Jihadi Bhaktiyar Khilji, a whole new chapter of South East Asian history preserved in India would have opened.
The Tamil script definitely follows similar patterns but the system of writing is ancient and no where related to the devanagari script... Its based on tamil brahmi.
Sanskrit is my favourite language. I am a North Indian but Sanskrit is kind of a language where you need to understand the grammar and that is one of the most Hardest and interesting thing
I actually really like the indi writing system, especially as to how easy it is Is to comprehend when learning how to write in those said Languages. My people's writing system is one of those languages that is heavily influenced by this kind of writing system. I'll give a quick example Think of this ᜊ as a B , the only difference is it's pronounced as a Ba' in it's original form. If one wants to use the same vowel or sound again but with just slight alteration to fit what your trying to imply, it can be altered slightly exactly in four ways ex. ᜊ = Ba' ᜊᜒ = Bi' / Be' ᜊᜓ = Bu' / Bo' ᜊ᜔ = B' You write it like so Ba+Bo+Y ᜊ + ᜊᜓ + ᜌ᜔ = ᜊᜊᜓᜌ᜔᜶ - BaBoY meaning Pig 🐖
The whole story is wrongly attributed to Ashoka, who has no contribution in writing languages. He spread his messages using existing writing scripts (called lipis of Sanskrit and Prakrit). The separation of consonants and vowels (abugida) are credited to Panini, the famous Sanskrit gramarian, who standardized Sanskrit language in Abugida system in 4th century BC. He is considered to be the father of linguistics.
worlds first university 'taxishila' is their way back before Ashoka. so written script is present in ancient India before Ashoka. if u want u can browse
+Jace Nath Agree - definitely South Indian, even if not from the Tamil script proper. The turning world only showed spread over geography, not a path of chronological inheritance. Thanks for watching and commenting!
You're both wrong, it was Brahmi, which influenced South-East Asian scripts. This happened at a time when Eastern, Western, Northern Southern etc. Indian identities had yet to be established. e.g. Siddham Brahmi resulted in Tibetan and other Central Asian scripts, while Pallava Brahmi resulted in South-East Asian ones. More particularly, Vatteluttu Brahmi which morphed into Tamil script did not result in any script in South-East Asia at all. So, the claim that "At 3:06 that was actually South Indian Tamil writing which influenced the creation of the other Southeast Asian scripts" is absolutely wrong. It was Pallava not Vatteluttu/future Tamil.
+Masih Dajjal yes, but at the same time South India remained culturally distinct and for the most part, linguistically separate from the North Indians. Yes sometimes the areas were controlled by empires from the North, but the South Indians extended their dominion over most of Southeast Asia. The Pallava script was descended from the Brahmi script but was used to write Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit, so it can be called an early Tamil script. It, in turn, heavily influenced the writing systems of Southeast Asia. I agree with you, but at the same time South Indian culture, language, and writing system had significant influence on Southeast Asia which is what I meant in my comment.
+Jace Nath I wouldn't say it remains culturally distinct, I mean shaiva siddhant of tamil nadu has common things with kashmiri shaivism, it is North's constant contact with western world (including middle East which is actually west) that added to northern culture
With Punjabi as my second language I can confirm this system is great and makes the language easy to learn.
JI BILKUL! but Punjabi Bha is like Pa. Pagat Singh, Paarat. hehe!
Yeah, I can confirm this as another Punjabi!
@Muhammad Talha Good to know that. Even I have learnt Urdu being an Indian Hindu. And I agree with you. But one thing about Urdu is that it is more free flowing in writing than Hindi .
@North Sentinelese ਇਤ੍ ਤੇਯ੍ਕ੍ਸ੍ ਈਬ਼ਿਨ੍ ਲੇਸ੍ ਤੈਮ੍ ਵਿਨ੍ ਯੂ ਆਰੇਦੀ ਨੋ ਦ਼ਿ ਅਦ਼੍ਰ੍ ਬ੍ਰਾਹ੍ਮਿਕ੍ ਸ੍ਕ੍ਰਿਪ੍ਤ੍ਸ੍!
ਤੁਹਾਡੇ ਲਈ ਅੱਛਾ
I've loved the Devanagari system of writing since I first encountered it. It's visually appealing as well as functionally clever!
WildStar2002 सुनकर अच्छा लगा
प्रशंसा के लिए धन्यवाद। (Hindi-Devanagiri script)
প্রশংষা ষূনে ভালো লাগলো। (Bengali- Pali script)
Happy to hear so.
@@hussainpainter52 हा हा हा ... हरामखोर 😂😂😂
Wow! I didn’t think I’d run into you in a NativLang-video, of all places. Well met, regardless; and I really like your videos. 😮👍🏻
Best thing is that script is phonetically complete one-to-one match between spelling and pronunciation.
Problem is, this writing system predates Ashoka and goes back to the time of Panini, the scholar who first systematized the Brahmi alphabet in Takshila in the Iron Age.
There is no evidence of brahmi script before asoka. Hence Panini's work is supposed to have been transmitted orally in the past
@@38-jishjilson89 Ever heard of indus script
@@viciousraccoon7094 The Indus valley script is unrelated to the Brahmi script or any other Indic script . First of all, whether the Indus valley script is a proper script or some form of collection of symbols is not confirmed. Most writings in this script are only a few characters long.
Secondly , we don't know anything about the underlying language to ascertain that any of the modern Indic languages are it's descendents.
The Brahmi script (along with its sister script Karoshthi) closely resembles the Aramaic alphabet of the time and this indicates an Aramaic origin of the Brahmic family of scripts. The Aramaic script ultimately came from the Proto Sinaitic script derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The oldest recorded writing in India dates to Mauryan era (save the Indus valley script/symbols?) and most of the indigenous writing systems of the subcontinent are derivatives of the Brahmi script.
@@38-jishjilson89 I don't agree to that, brahmi is somehow related to indus script not aramaic
@@viciousraccoon7094 Compare the Aramaic alphabet with the Brahmi script and you'll understand.
Asoka didn't invent the brahmi script, he just popularised it through his Ashokan pillars spread out throughout the the Indian subcontinent, which I should add is no small feat in itself😁
Exactly!
Brahmi nahi pali thi vo
@@Sumitkumaar0999
Paali 5th century ke b;aad ki hai.
Tbb Paali thi hi nhi chomu.
@@dustudent1637 अबे चोमू पाली इस्तेमाल करता था अशोका ब्राह्मी तो सिंधु घाटी मे मिली थी क्या अशोका उस समय भी था 😜😜😜😜😜
@@Sumitkumaar0999
Pramaan de bhimte!!!
Ek inscription ka naam bta Ashoka ke samay ka jo Paali m;ein ho.
Chal tu 5th century se pehle ka ek Paali la inscription ka naam bta de.
😁
As someone who knows English and Hindi, the Hindi writing system (Devanagari) is much simpler, more intuitive, and all around easier than English (Roman alphabet), this video makes it look way more complicated than it really is
I am fluent in both and it's definitely easier to read Hindi. But somehow, in the electronic format, people are using the Latin script even for Hindi and other Indic languages. Who knows what happens 100 years down the line.
The English alphabet and the Roman Alphabet aren't the same. Roman characters are currently the most flexible and easiest in the world.
@@Blaze6432 I disagree with that assertion. The Latin alphabet is wonderful for languages that are derived from Latin, the Runic Scripts were perfect for English; but the Brahmic scripts are on a different level: much easier to learn, phonetically coherent and far more logical.
The only advantage that the Latin alphabet has over the Brahmic scripts is that it can be cursive and therefore can be written much faster; but India solves that issue by using really short words: most Indian words are derived from singular roots which are modified to one or two syllables at max. This makes it highly efficient.
In the manner that one can't write आइ लिव् इन् अ हाऊस़ without being an idiot, one cannot write " maiM ghara mEM rahEtA huM " without looking like dyslexic asswipe. However, the former makes much more sense than the latter. This can even be seen in the international phonetic alphabet which borrows its phonetic structure almost entirely from the Brahmic script family, combing it with the Latin alphabet.
@WhAtEveRrr Every language has to borrow words from some or the other language. What some call as Shudh or pure hindi is in fact nothing but a collection of Sanskrit plus Sanskritized loan words. It is a common belief amongst people that languages are static and should be thought of as some code given to us by our parents/schools. But it is not so. Languages are always growing and evolving in some way. Take english for example. It has countless words borrowed from almost all major languages.
As for Hindi going completely extinct, I doubt that. At one point in our history, our ancestors spoke Sanskrit. Then Prakrit>hindustani>hindi. People and languages both change with time.
@@mountainsmakemehorny That's because your writing in Roman characters based on English alphabet not actually adopting a standardization from the Roman alphabet. Obviously any idiot who sticks a bunch random capitals in the sentence is going to look dumb, but you can modify the script to suit the language. If you were even remotely educated about Roman script you would know it's the only script used for languages on almost every continent and a big reason why is that it's rules change for each language that it officially adopts. People who write online in Hindustani with Roman characters are typically trying to write them in line as if they are English words, hence why it always looks off.
the indic language writing system is one of the best in the world!! you can produce evry sound without making a mess out of it!!
Not Chinese
@@Sumit-rp5mxwdym
make the z sound
@@hemarajamanickam1704 ja with a dot done
Try writing between the Va sound instead of the Wa sound or try writing the French R.
I love how the abjads, and alphabets got their long history lesson in this series; even Chinese and Mayan are examined. However, little is mentioned about the origins of the abudiga writing systems except for a fake story about King Ashoka getting it from the phoenicians.
Lol, blame the ASI and our eminent historians. It's sad but almost all of the major archeology happened during British times. While most of our own historians and ASI sit on their butt guzzling funds.
Good amount of old ruins and forts are deteriorating away. Have you seen some of old temples they have 'repaired'? Many of them look worse than when they were broken. So yeah, expect this weak story of Ashoka just creating a whole unknown new system to be the only major hypothesis for the next few decades atleast.
Not so unaccurate. As far as I've read, Indic Brahmi script does is ispirated in semitic abjads, but far away in history. Almost in the beginning of semitic scripts, Indians took them and developed a new system. If I'm not wrong, when the Akkadian became a lingua franca in Middle East, Aryans where already in India and where talking Vedic Sanskrit. The story of Ashoka is a metaphor 'cause even with the writing system, the Vedic accent musted to be transmited orally 'cause Brahmi script had no representation for it as modern Indic scripts have, in a simmilar way to classical Greek, which had no representation of the pitch accent when it was used, and was added when the stress accent developed.
@@CBullion005 Ashoka came a millenium after the post Vedic age. A millenium is enough to wipe accents. The brahmi script definitely isn't a modified copy of abjad alphabets. brahmi has a system of combing letters and consonants but not the abjads. Also Vedic Sanskrit died out of conversation a millennium before Alexander. It's not that brahmi was the only script either. There were others like the paishachi(which later came to be written in brahmi) but brahmi got ahead due to ashoka's initiative..
@@CBullion005 you're correct but much more would've been said about origins of this script which seems to ultimately come from egyptian hieroglyphs instead of attributing it to ashoka. Panini definitely talks about something called "lipi" or script.
One another theory can be that of indus script relation given that dravidian tamil script (which is brahmi) has shown similarities with indus script. Its possible aryans learnt that script from fellow dravidian population of south india.
It's ignorant to reduce it to a mere inspiration from abjads since it differs so much in terms of use of vovels and consonants.
@@CBullion005 Aryan Invasion is already disproven
I am not sure if its factually right
Writing systems in India predate Ashoka
deepak srinivasan exactly prakrit etc were there before ashoka
Yes, but Indian writing is more than just Hindi, isn't it? Many south Indian languages are much older than Hindi, or even Prakrit.
Sanskrit is one of the oldest. Hindi isn't old but Sanskrit is. I have learned Sanskrit and the grammar and the language is way better tbh. The hardness level is over 9000
Gireesh G Prasad dude that's Sanskrit written in Devnagari script
pkbaby OK, I'm aware of that. My comment was in reply to the comment above mine, which casually equated Hindi to "the language of India".
The huge table of ligatures for Devanagari is only really relevant for font designers. Most combinations of consonants can be derived by a few simple rules, apart from a few irregular ligatures like the ones for "ksha", "shra", "tra" "dya", "ddha" and "jña". There also several pairs of consonants which are only combined into one ligature in print and not in handwriting (like retroflex "tta", "ttha", "dda" and "ddha"). And lastly, I've never heard of a word that actually contains "ddhrya", the ligature which is always used to make Devanagari look complicated.
I wonder if this is normally the case for ligature-heavy scripts - beautiful and complex at a glance, but internally mostly regular. What you sketched could be abstractly said of Arabic, Byzantine Greek, etc. Thank you for your insights.
Actually shra (श्र) is not irregular either. When the alphabet श is to be joint to another consonant, it takes the form श्च, श्न, श्र, श्ल, श्व etc in some cases.
How on Earth do you say all that consonant clusters? Thank goodness my native language Tamil doesn't have as many consonant clusters.
@@अजिङ्क्यगोखले When I was in school, we were taught to write clusters beginning with श as श्च, श्न, श्व, etc. I don't know how someone would write श्च or श्न by hand without making it look really ugly.
@@jcxkzhgco3050 I'm sorry, but doesn't Tamil have joint consonants?
A correction regarding the spread of alpha syllabaries to south-east Asia, They did not spread from Tibet to Burma, the Burmese script is a modification of the Kalinga script and the other southeast Asian scripts are modifications of a precursor to the modern Tamil script.
Brahmi was used for all Indic languages
@@दीपकनागर-ज6दsoutheast asian scripts are more related to dravidian scripts.
@@Dhruv-Kumar all scripts used for Dravidian languages and Sanskritic languages(languages evolved from Sanskrit) are derivatives of the brahmi script. Brahmi script in southern india was written on palm leaves so they evolved to be more curvy in comparison to brahmi script's evolution in northern parts which have straight lines and sharp angles along with curves.
The only outlier is the santali language which is of Austroasiatic origin.
Hahaha those are not developed by ashok. Were present before him & grammatically arranged by panini.
I can read Hindi and Sanskrit but what the heck was the word in the thumbnail?!
some random complex sound Lol
Arusha Nirvan I was wondering the same lol
It looks so weird and intimidating...
द्ध्य Well my keyboard can manage about that much, couldn't accommodate the " r ".
It's "ddhrya," the longest consonant conjunct in Sanskrit, as written in Devanagari. It's not a word itself; just a cluster of consonants that could form the start of a syllable. The video is a little misleading showing it in isolation, though. It would never begin a word. It would always have a vowel in front of it, or it's impronounceable, e.g., "-addhrya" where the syllable break is "ad | dhrya." Important to note: This really is a consonantal "r." Sanskrit also has a vocalic "r" but this is not that.
I don't know about the whole story, I mean if I'm not wrong writing system was there long before Ashoka , and even panini mentioned scribbing .. but yes ashoka edicts are major source of brahmi script but it itself came from kharoshthi so the story is historically incorrect.. though fun to watch and explain the linguistic elements nicely
I agree with you
@@soumendraphukan2679 It's a bit semito-supremacist ;)
@Andrew Goering Brahmi has no connection with Aramaic or any other semitic scripts.
No historian was able to show it convincingly.
There are texts which are part of vedas called brahmanas.Many historians believe that by the time of compilation of brahmanas around 900bc writing was there.Also starting from 600bc the gangetic plain was experiencing high urbanisation.
So writing must have predated that period.Writing in the earliest period in India must have been on perishable materials that too probably only by brahmins.Also the gangetic plain suffered terrible devastation during islamic rule.
So this factors may explain the lack of evidence of early Indian epigraphy.Also I strongly believe the brahmi script is descended from the indus script.
The entire timeline of indian history is distorted and it has been fabricated to suit western history. Ashoka didn't exist in the 3rd century BCE and subsequently Buddha didn't exist in the 6th century. Looking at subsequent Greek and Indian accounts we find out that Alexander was a contemporary of the kings who were alteast a 1000 years after the mauryas. Chandranmaasa/Xandrames from the naga dynasty was the contemporary of Alexander and they have falsely associated Xandrames with Dhanananda from the nanda dynasty which is absolutely rubbish. Mauryas did not rule over the entire Indian subcontinent, it was guptas and their kingdom. If you count all the kings mentioned in Indian literature then ashoka's reign was somewhere near 1500 BCE as per puranic history. Selucus's daughter was married off to Chandragupta of the Gupta dynasty not maurya. What we learn today is a fabricated story which does not match at all if you read the Indian history. All this false history about Chandragupta being a tutelage of Chanakya due to foreign invasion. Indian history has been pushed back by atleast 1000 years, 1200 to be more precise.
Buddha dates back to 1700 BCE
Xandrames = Chandranmaas (naga dynasty and contemporary of Alexander)
Sandrakottus= Chandragupta of the Gupta dynasty(Vijayaditya)
Sandracyptus= Samudragupta Ashokaditya
Vikramaditya who expanded the territory even beyond Iran
@@fomoviews2642 , link?
I found this video much more confusing than your usual ones.
Hmm. I appreciate the feedback! I'll have to rewatch and think about it.
It may be just sorta confusing.
It's a hardish subject to condense into a short TH-cam video. So, the result is that there's not a lot of pause. With every segment, you're immediately learning and revising previous information, no time to digest THEN get to reapply or modify it.
I have to agree, it seemed like it built a very good platform for a longer video, then ended. The story didn't really link with the info. Although, I am now interested and think this could make a great but longer video :P
I'm back, I started on this video and watched the series. Makes more sense now, however I think it was a sharper transition that the rest.
It wasn't confusing to me probably because I already know one of those systems.... ලසන්ත රණසිංහ ;)
Bruh I'm a native Hindi speaker but lemme tell you, I've never paid this much attention to my mothertongue at all 😂 love the vid BTW
Only english😂..
Well, that is not a good thing.
@@jey.bee_ Yaa... But since education is focused on English, we never "consciously" learn our mother tongue and we never understand how unique it will be for a foreigner.
I'm terrable in my mother tongue: japanese
@@thewhovianhippo7103 cuz it uses a lot of chinese characters I guess?
Good job with the video. I'd like to point out that recent excavations in the state of Tamil Nadu have found out evidence of the use of brahmi script before Ashokan period (5th maybe 6th century BC). So, there's a good chance this story didn't go way we think it did.
The Sanskrit language is like learning mathematics.
The alphabet with consonants and vowels are arranged as two tables matrix like.
The elements in the tables could be added.
The entire grammar is founded on word tables with tenses, number, person etc merging into it!!
It develops logical thinking from childhood.
Yeah it's grammar is mathematical in nature.
भारतीय लेखन व्यवस्था की जानकारी देने के लिए, धन्यवाद।
I am reading, writing and talking in Hindi my whole life and never thought it is so difficult in construction of word.
Maybe it is my first language or maybe we write what we speak.
Don't know, can anyone clarify?
It’s just that we standardized our language much before the rest of the world. So our writing system and phonetics could develop around each other. It’s now have become so much natural that we don't even think that what we write might differentiate from what we speak.
@@arijitpalit2756 sounds right 👍
member of the diaspora trying to learn hindi and can confirm the writing system is very difficult for me🙈
Telugu is my mother tongue but hindi and Telugu follow same principles. I love Telugu and our Indian language systems are called abugidas and far advanced than anymlanguages
Dont know about you, but i got a great headache after watching this video.
This was an amazing video, and as a hindi speaker I'm really thankful for my writing system coz reading it is legit very easy, and there are no silent letters or pronouncing the same letter in multiple different ways😂 what you see is what you speak 😂
Unindicated silencing of sounds does exist in Hindi, but perhaps not apparent to most Hindi speakers. The first three letters in namkeen are the same as namak yet no one pronounces namkeen as namakeen. The second 'a' of namak is silenced in namkeen. So not completely without ambiguity. :)
@@shivampatnaik2000 oh wow I never thought about that, thanks for bringing it to my attention!
@@rohansaxena4751
This was just one example. Hindi has many more such words, as you can easily realise. :) So do many other modern Indo-Aryan languages. This feature is called 'schwa deletion'. It wasn't present in old Indo-Aryan (i.e. Sanskrit) where, unless indicated by a virama (halant), schwa was retained for every letter. So going by Sanskrit's reading tradition, Hindi's namkeen will be read as namakeena (न+म+की+न). For the word to be pronounced as namkeen in Sanskrit, we have to write नम्कीन् (I don't think there's actually such a word present in Sanskrit though).
@@shivampatnaik2000 I think that's because the pronounciation of hindi language got adultered at some point in history.
Because if we speak by the rules of samskrit, from which hindi is derived, we would have pronounced each letter with its proper length of timing unless it was supposed to be pronounced short, marked by a halant.
@@esmeelin5435
"Adultered" and "proper" aren't words I'd use here. Gives off the impression that Hindi is somewhat inferior to Sanskrit. Languages evolve all the time, spoken language much faster than the written one (thus spellings often stay the same while their pronunciations change). Although it would make it much more logical and easier for second language learners if Hindi's spellings were completely consistent, there's nothing improper about the current system.
Writing system of Indic family in South and Southeast Asia are increditably diverse, especially those in Southeast Asia. SEA people are very talented and creative in modifying South Indian scripts (Pallava) into their own unique form of script to write their native languages: Old Mon, Old Khmer and Old Javanese (Kawi). These 3 scripts had been further developped by Tibeto-Burmans (Burmese, Karens), Tais (Thai/Lao/Dai/Shan) and Malayo-Polynesians (Malay, Javanese, Tagalog, etc) respectively.
Each nations created their own artistic styles depending on writing materials: Mons and Burmese use semi-symmetrically round shape (lone) in order to write on the palm leaf easily, Khmers use straight shape and decorated the 'bar' or Serif into sharp edges on the top of letter (sok) to carve on stone beautifully. Thais and Laos modified Old Khmer and created a little "round head" (hua) on the letter to write on the paper pulp. Tools used to write is also influence the shape of scripts, for example Thais in Yunnan (Dai) uses Chinese brush so their script became square like Chinese character.
That's why Southeast Asia is rich of indegenous scripts even in small tribes. Unfortunately, the Malays had replaced their ancient scripts derived from India by Arabic and finally Roman, the Tagalogs and other Filipinos too.
thanks, it was very informative.👍
Nice info
3:06 This is Tamil and it's spoken in South India and North Sri Lanka.
Balinese write in this system, too
@Pavan Kumar हाँ आप बिल्कुल सही हैं भ्राता!!
Yes, all works the same way, because Panini the Sanskrit scholars characterized it that way
Well it is an extremely organised and scientific way of writing, as there is absolutely zero scope of any ambiguity in devanagari. There is a one-one correspondence between what is written and what is said. Moreover you totally missed how these consonants are arranged in neat stacks, where the rows correspond to the nature of pronunciation of the consonant (guttural, palatal, cerebral, dental, labial) and the columns correspond to the aspiration, softness and nasality of the consonants. It's a control freak's dream!!
Wow, you are so right! I just recited the alphabets to myself now, and like you said they are grouped according to how their sounds are made (with the lips, tongue, etc). How did I never notice this till now? That's just brilliant.
Very interesting, Siddhesh. Yeah, I'm surprised he didn't mention that given that the next video is all about that feature of Hangul. BTW, "cerebral"? How to pronounce consonants when using telepathy is built into the writing system? Wow!! 🙂
hahahah sorry! well, one linguistics course later I find myself in a better position to express my observations! the stops and nasals are arranged in a 5x5 matrix, the rows corresponding, in that order, to 1)velars, 2)palatals (some prefer to call these postalveolar affricates), 3)postalveolar retroflex sounds, 4)dentals and 5)bilabials. The columns similarly correspond to 1)voiceless, 2)aspirated voiceless, 3)voiced, 4)murmured (breathy voiced) and 5)nasal sounds! finally there are the approximants and liquids along with the labiodental fricative 'v' and the last row is occupied by the sibilants. There are more symbols for Persian loanwords, sounds that may be used in Dravidian languages etc and the exact phonology of each of these sounds vary from language to language. I actually want to know more about how non-IndoAryan languages adapt to the basic structure of the Indic Abugida. Especially languages like Tibetan and Thai, which at their core are very different from Indo Aryan and Dravidian languages.
siddhesh gandhi how did I never notice the segregation of the columns?!!
sanjay puranik It’ll happen don’t worry! ;)
Does anybody else don't understand and is confused but is still intrigued ??
Thanks for all the replys I kinda get it I just don't understand the writing system but I understand the language as I speaks Urdu as it's my secondary language
+Qais Rashid The Devanagari script is a little like Arabic. Every consonant includes the vowel a. For example, क = ka. If you only want k, you need to add a sukun to kill the vowel: क् (k). So, you can have क् (k), क (ka), का (kā), कि (ki), की (kī), कु (ku), कू (kū), कृ (kŕ), कॅ (kĕ), के (ke), कै (kai), कॉ (kŏ), को (ko), कौ (kau).
But vowel marking is not essential in Semitic sentences.
> In devanagari script, you can't alter the pronunciation.
Significant accents can arise even in languages with fully phonemic writing system.
@@wobeck you forgot कॄ कॢ कॣ
@@erkinalp inorder to incorporate all the phonetic accents too DEVANAGARI offers the accent "matras" signs too like ॅ ॖॗ ऻ ऺ ॏ ॊ ऀ ॓ ॔ ॎ ॰ ः ॒ ऽ ॱ ॆ ॉ ॄ ॽ
हाँ हाँ हाँ हाँ
Cue Navras. th-cam.com/video/D9s18rUaubc/w-d-xo.html
हे हे हे हे हे
Yes yes yes lmao
हो हो हो
कमपस तनदश तपजै।
This described everything my professor taught me in one semester in Hindi one. Wow. Thank you so much! I am refreshing my Hindi and this helps immensely. Keep up the good work and bless you for this work!
you studung hindi?
Tum bread nhi ho ye bhot dukhad baat hai, Kaash mujhe koi aisa vayakti mille jisse chai ke saath kha saku
@@cunningfox1798 you use Google right?
@@amanbhardwaj7624 Delhi se hu behenchod, Google gya tel lene, humare toh paad se bhi hindi nikalti hai
this explains so much about the history of everything human. linguistics and writing systems show that we are connected.
BTW keep on uploading these, they are so good
I love this channel! I too have an interest in ancient scripts... I studied, ones from the philippines like Baybayin, Kulitan, Tagbanwa etc.
i said "hell yeah" llike i was watching the superbowl and my team scored when i saw you posted another video, seriously addicted to them! thank you
+giuseppe cesati YEAH! That's AMAZING!
In India 3 styles of knowledge transmission was present.
1) Manuscripts(written system)
2) Through sculpters on temples and others building
3) Oral system ( Rishis believed knowledge should be present in our head, not forgotten in books)
Writing system has been discover in Saraswati -Sindhu civilization.
In main gate of Dholaveera there is some written words found. Not yet decifered.
I've just come across your channel and being the passionate linguist that I am, I find your videos very interesting! Many thanks for all these videos!
You old turd
Sharda script ( script of Kashmiri language) is even more complicated just like Tibetan script, we join consonants vertically to form hybrid sounds so it becomes even harder to learn all the hybrid consonant combinations, because each time depending upon the starting and ending sounds the consonants combine differently.
But actually Kasmiri is written using Perso-Arabic script right .
@@Variouscartoontopic that's the Standard language. Before the Islamic conquest, Kashmiri had Sharda script.
@@Variouscartoontopicshraddha script existed before islam was born 😅
Perhaps the extensive presence of sandhi in Sanskrit gave them the idea of joining letters like that.
I think it's the most usef writing system to know since it can be used to transliterate most of the languages! I've learned Japanese, German, english and french. And I always used the Devnagari script to note down the pronounciation of words because devnagari contains almost all the consonants and vowels and is completely phonetic.
It’s good, but not perfect (no language/script is anyway [or needs to be] ), for example the distinction between V and W sound is not clear in Devanagari.
@@johnjohntv1195 Yes of course it is not perfect. But it comes close. Also, what do you mean 'v' and 'w' sounds? How are they different? Can you give me an example?
@@ExistentialDodo V is pronounce very similar to F
When you say V you bite your lower lip
When you say W you don't, it kinda sounds like Oo
Indians use both of the letter interchangeably
@@adam-cs6qb Wait, both of those sound the same to me. So to you would "Van" and "Wan" or "Wow" and "Vow" sound different?
@@ExistentialDodo yes, use Google translater speech to observe the difference
V has this vibration to it
वह is generally pronounced as Vo in most of India while in certain parts like Bihar It's more like wo
Indic writing systems are much older than Ashoka... it is (very) factually wrong to imply that Ashoka invented this system with any inspiration from any other alphabet system!
Since linguistics is one of the first Indian sciences, Indian languages are highly evolved
I'm a native Tagalog (Filipino) speaker learning Japanese. I'm amazed how I keep bumping into similarities between these two languages. This video explains a lot for me.
there is a proposed lanuage superfamily called Austric which groups Austronesian and Japonic in the same family
zhan_rand Wait, what? I was so shook when I saw this. I speak Tagalog (I'm a native speaker) and also am learning Japanese. What similarities have you or "El Tiburón Grande" found?
Javie Mike
you will only see the similarities if you study japanese. but let me give you an example
Japanese alphabet:
A
I
U
E
O
KA
SA
TA
NA
HA
MA
YA
RA
WA
Tagalog alphabet:
A
E
I
O
U
BA
KA
DA
GA
HA
KA
LA
MA
NA
NGA
PA
RA
SA
TA
WA
YA
Japanese alphabet represents syllables, and so Tagalog.
Tagalog words that is similar but have slight and different meaning:
suki
ano
ito
gawa
ako
nawa
mata
asoko (aso ko)
kami
kita
tawa
etc etc
A foreigner mght think when first time hearing Tagalog conversation is it is Japanese being spoken.
Search *COMA by Gumi* and *Tagalog vocaloid* in TH-cam and head on to comment section. read it.
Look at these questions and answers
answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110712235436AAeJudB
look at the second top comment ph.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100721042035AAJPMrl
answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070929032925AAyBiq2
look at the second top comment th-cam.com/video/z_7JsBjIqoA/w-d-xo.html
zhan_rand I've already told you that I am studying Japanese. And hey, you can get really technical with me. Hindi sa pag-aano pero I think I've read more research papers about language than an average person
Austric family is just a hypothetical language super family, it is not supported by most linguists, but some consider japanese as a sister language of Austronesian
ethiopian is not a language, in ethiopia people speak amhara
amarigna is a spoken language. but ethiopic Ge'ez is a written language. Amhara people and tigray people speak two different spoken languages that are very similar but they write using the same alphabets. the alphabets are called Ethiopic Ge'ez.
My father is from ethiopia so i know this. ;)
Amhara is the official language but Oromo is spoken by more people in ethiopia.
Sitizen Kane yeah, more people speak oromo as their first language, because oromo is the biggest ethnicity group.
ptegegn1 Why is Amhara the 'official' language though?
Sitizen Kane because most non-amhars chose amarigna as their official language. a lot of non-amharas talk amharic as their second language. it is just like in the united states the english are the minority and there are more germans but english is the official language.
The ways we've found to improve various scribing system, quite fascinating. Maybe a little confusing as trying to grasp every method in the rather limited space of the video.
I dunno since I'm not familiar with these languages but alpha syllabaries sound pretty nifty. They seem at least somewhat easy to learn the vowels if they all work on the same principle. (plus they look rather elegant when written)
Arthion trust ne devnagri is the least confusing script you will ever find. I became fluent in less than a year. I grew up speaking Spanish as my mother tongue it took me many years to learn basic English but I became fluent in Hindi in one year. I am not exaggerating. the reason is Devnagri script is absolute. I mean unlike english where letter 'C' can be used both as 'K' and 'S' in devnagri there is absolutely separate letter for separate sound which in absolutely no case can be used interchangeably. the figure and sound of a letter remains always the same. and mostly you don't need to write the vowels separately. you don't need to struggle for precise pronunciation it always remains clear.
so although the number of alphabets is little more than double than that of Roman it is far far far far far far far far far far far less confusing than English.
Diego Sebastiàn Pérez
देवनागरी (Devanagari) is absolute for संस्कृतम् (Sanskrit) not for Hindi or any modern Indian language because of schwa deletion with deletes schwas in between words and word finally. Devanagari is itself pronounced Devnagri. Ashoka is pronounced Ashok, Siddharata Gautama is pronounced Siddhart Gautam. Buddha is pronounced Buddh etc.
Pack Man the grammar of Hindi is tough AF mate
All Indic languages are phonetic, so what you read is what you speak. The only languages that are tricky are that use the Arabic Script like Urdu, because it is written in a cursive fashion and often drop the vowels, so for beginners it can be tricky to know when it'll sound like pu or pi
Uncle Podger Urdu is read backwards too right? Also it can't touch the ground I'm pretty sure
Our abugida system of writing is so ingenious, that I am confident, that someday it will replace the roman script in the West, much the same way through Indian numerals replaced the Roman ones. In a small video like this, is is not quite possible to understand the features of our script, and what exactly makes it so special.
Actually, that may not happen, because the International Phonetic Association has already incorporated phonetic logic in the Latin script by making use of diacritics and all that.
@⌘ Hyperborean Bard ⌘ that is completely untrue. Devanagari has around 50 different symbols whose rules of combinations or joDanI are really simple. Technically, you can recreate nearly every sound in human speech with just 50 akSaras. Apart from English which is horrible in the phonetic department, every other European language makes extensive use of diacritics, and the usage of two different vowels to make a different sound (in French/Greek) is far more complex.
For an Occidental, the Latin scripts will be much easier, while for an Indian the Brahmic scripts will be much easier. But if you decide to conduct an experiment with a person unfamiliar with either of the scripts, he will always tend to side with the more logical and more constant Brahmic scripts.
I love your videos. So elegant and the animations done beautifully. Really fascinating. thank you.
I wonder what will happen if somehow philippines native writing system survive all these years...
I've never even seen the original Tagalog script.
@@metawolf987 now you have
ᜀᜁᜂᜃᜄᜅᜆᜇᜈᜉᜊᜋᜌᜎᜏᜐᜑ
it has, its all over the internet
@@servantofaeie1569 Thank you for sharing that. I never heard of this script either.
@@servantofaeie1569 Unfortunately my computer doesn't recognise those characters. Is that one of the scripts used in the books the Jesuits destroyed when they came to the Philippines in the 16th century?
Knowing thats its none of my business, I will still try to help.
Take these words
Kin
Keen
Now notice that they pronounce very similar, but "ee" sound is shorter in 'kin', while longer in 'keen'. However we are using two very separate vowels 'i' and 'e'. They can sound different in the words 'Kind' and 'Ken'.
This is pure inconsistency and becomes like Japanese at a point. We have to learn to memorise a written word as a symbol for something that sounds entirely different than it should.
This is never the case with Hindi/Sanskrit Devanagiri script.
Here is the consonant for 'K'
क - pronounced as 'ka'
Here is the consonant for 'N'
न - pronounced as 'na'
The sounds of these consonants will never change.
Here are the vowel notations for "ee"
कि "ki" as in 'kin'
How do I write Kin in Sanskrit?
किन्
Why the sign under न ? Because otherwise it will be read as "kina". This special sign is called "halant", which signifies the dummy vowel a is cut out. Any character with a halant under it, signifies the sound of the character is half.
However in Hindi, we simply assume the last character of the any word will be read as a "half character". So in modern Hindi, the halant is excluded from the words. So 'Kin' in Hindi is written as
किन
Moving on to "Keen".
The longer "ee" has a separate vowel notation
As I mentioned, the consonants of K and N remain the same, the vowel notation, though looks the same, it changes position though. Because it makes the "ee" sound, the symbol will be the same. The position will change from left to right.
So here is the sanskrit text for keen
कीन्
And here is the Hindi version of it
कीन
For Ken, the 'e'makes an entirely different sound. The vowel notation has to be entirely different. Here's the Sanskrit 'Ken'
केन्
And here's the Hindi Ken
केन
However, the problem here is that the Hindi version of Ken will sound pretty much like Cane. Which is why many Indians struggle with correct pronunciations of such english words. I have seen Hindi medium students pronounce pen and 'pain'. But that inconsistency of sound is not really our fault. English is a very wierd language. In Hindi we can solve this by writing as it was in Sanskrit. Overall, thanks to British Raj, we have learnt to assume the sounds when reading an english word written in Devanagiri.
Now moving on,
Lets go for the words
Cap and Cape
The consonant that makes 'ka' sound remains the same. And the consonant that was used for "pa" sound is
प
(an inverted p)
Cape is written as - केप
While Cap is written as - कैप
No inconsistent vowels and consonants. No sudden transition from K to C for the sound thats the same.
Some of the most inconsistent uses of C
Cecelia
Cate
I mean... what the hell?
Consider this word- Accident. Use C as both K and C
In Devanagiri 'C' of Cecelia is denoted by स and it will not change for that sound. The same consonant will be used for 's' in 'sound'.
The consonants for L and Y are ल, य
Ceclia - सिसिलिया
Sylvia - सिल्विया
But for Kate and Catie
Kate- केट
Catie (American accent) - कैटी
Catie (British accent) - केटी
Also know that we have seprate Vowel characters for words that start with a vowel, or has two vowels one after the other.
Accident- ऐक्सिडेन्ट
Axis - ऐक्सिस
Access - ऐक्सेस
Success- सक्सेस
Recess - रीसेस
Slight note: ऐ is the vowel character that makes the sound for 'a' as in 'as'
ए is the vowel character that makes the sound 'A'
So
Acess- ऐक्सेस
Excess- एक्सेस
Accept - ऐक्सेप्ट
Except - एक्सेप्ट
Aspect- ऐस्पेक्ट
Expect - एक्सपेक्ट
You can play with Devanagiri forever..
@Veer Aggarwal She used to be a famous Quoran. Not sure if she is currently active on Quora
In my opinion, the various modern versions of the Brahmi script are by far the coolest in the world. I especially like the look of Tibetan script, but all of them are cool. I like the idea of an inherent vowel sound that's only different if an extra stroke is added.
Yup. That's why while learning English, I would be so angry, coz it is not a phonetic language at all.
@@DipayanPyne94 yeah it sometimes makes me think "wtf were they smoking when they created this mess"... But anyways.. this shit is universal now, ig
@@DipayanPyne94english is still 99% phonetic compared to japanese chinese
Siddham script look coolest in my opinion
@@Dhruv-Kumarcorrect💀
I’m from Sri Lanka (which is just south of India). Our main script uses this same system. For example,
ස (sa) සි (si) සු (su) සෙ (se)
බ (ba) බි (bi) බු (bu) බෙ (be)
ම (ma) මි (mi) මු (mu) මෙ (me)
This system makes language learning trivial, once you know each letter and vowel attachment. It’s phonetic and so it makes it completely easy to understand and and read for a beginner.
As an Indian I can see this type is of structure even influencing modern programing languages. Annotations, inheritance and function overloading seems the same. I find code easy to read and understand because of this.
I can confirm that 'hybrid alphabet thing' is the official way of referring to it.
I swear to god if I hear "major moments in history" one more time Imma drop out
minor criticism;
1) This video is a bit fast for the concepts.
2)referring to it as "India" makes time period/place ambiguous. Are you talking about an Indian kingdom? All of India? India at the time of the Phoenecians? Or modern India? I think that ambiguity adds to the confusion of something that's already a little hard to grasp.
The Indian subcontinent I think. Ashoka's kingdom nearly covered the entire subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan)
The Indian subcontinent.
Simgen x Thanks for the info. My history on India is kind of sparse and I didn't know if this was one of the few periods where most of the land was consolidated or his was more like the Mughal(which I think was basically the northern half/two thirds?)
prior to 1947, INDIA=INDIAN SUBCONTINENT=SOUTH ASIA. When someone mentions India they're talking about all of India. Individual kingdoms are of little important.
***** what are you talking about? I don't understand how you construed any part of what I said to be talking about Phoenecians in India.
Omg no, the system was crafted by पाणिनी (Panini), that too lots of centuries before Ashoka the great.
Asoka only popularized the brahmic script in whole South Asia(Indian subcontinent),south East Asia ( Vietnam🇻🇳, combodia, Myanmar🇲🇲,Thailand🇹🇭,Javanese,laos 🇱🇦) & East Asia ( Japan, Mongolia & Tibet) .
Sanskrit(संस्कृत भाषा) were used by devnagari script after 1500 BCE (ऋग्वेद).
Sanskrit as speaking language used from 4125 BCE from Magadh empire (मगध साम्राज्य) .
Interresting. I didn't knew about the system behind it. Now the system seems not that difficult as I thought. I really love the series btw.
You should also have mentioned how the alphabet has separate letters for vowels too, and that all the letters are arranged in a grid according to type of consonant they are(dental, palatal, aspirated, unaspirated etc)
For a moment, you had me very confused!
"Writing system" would be a better alternative to "alphabet". Alphabet is one of the several writing systems prevalent in the world. Abugida is another. Abugidas are not alphabets.
Apologies for being an irritating pedant. 🙏 :)
@Veer Aggarwal
I'm no more than an enthusiast myself! :)
Most countries developed their own writing system based on phonetics. The smallest quantum of sound produced in a word represents that sound (syllable). This makes it super easy as it is mathematical in construct and there's only one way to pronounce it.
Great video and she has such an beautiful voice. Could listen to it all day. Radio voice
This way makes writing and reading easier in indic laungages
Take the word "niluka"
its english its niluka but if you write it in sinhala without combining vowels and letters its written as,
"න්ඉල්උක්ආ"
But if you combine the vowels and turn them into syllables its just,
"නිලූකා"
Because...
න් + ඉ = නි (n + i = ni)
ල් + උ = ලු (l + u = lu)
ක් + ආ = කා (k + a = ka)
Sinhala has such a beautiful script! One of my favourites.
The letter in thumbnail was easy to read and pronounce.It sounded like shooting a bullet.
The writing system on the top left at 0:13 (with the triangle shape) says: Inuktitut. Inuk means an Inuit person (it also just means person) and titut means "like a". Inuktitut means like a person. The Inuktitut word for English in Qallunaatitut (ᖃᓪᓗᓈᑎᑐᑦ) . Qallunaat means a non-inuk person so Qallunaatitut means like a non- inuk person.
First Last Thanks for all this information. Are you an Inuk yourself?
I'm fluent in Hindi, Bengali and English, all of them being somewhat of native languages for me.
I'm currently learning tibetan.
Writting systems in India predate Ashoka, as claimed in this video. Moreover attention to Indus Valley Scripts, Chola Scripts , Language written in texts in Nalanda and Takshashila which predate even Ashoka's own empire and family line. Hasn't been taken into consideration.
Actually, the writing system predates Ashoka. It's probably started in Panini's era
You are amazing,I absolutely love this series
+Handrea Alexandru Thank you!
Yeah, true
For those wondering what do those sentences mean shown starting from 3:05
They all are the same Sanskrit statement written in different south southeast asian scripts
It means : May lord Shiva, protect those who are devoted to seek the substances and flavours of the Divine Language.
गीर्वणभाषा - Girvana bhasha - usually means Divine language but here it means 'Local language' or Sanskrit.
this writing system *Brahmi* has spread from India to as far as Maritime Southeast Asian islands of Indonesia (kawi) and the Philippines (baybayin)
Wow, this sheds some light on the Thai writing system!
Bhrami has always been more efficient than the devanagari script.
no not really, Devanagari has way more support for non-Indo-Aryan and non-Dravidian languages. More vowels and consonants. English can be written even better, लैक् द़िस्, सी? No nukta in Brahmi.
Apparently you couldn't carve out circles in the Brahmi script
I can't wait for the next episode. Your series is phenomenal and deserves much more views!
+ninjae4976 YAY! Only two episodes left... how is this going by so fast?
Those northern indic writing systems place the cluster horizontally, meanwhile Javanese and Balinese place it vertically, like in Pallava. It consumes space, so you need an extra line below. Thus, Balinese and Javanese script traditionally written with a bit wider space. Both scripts are still not aesthetically written in computer (especially when typing it in the internet using the browser), because computer is only designed for the "one line" script only. The second line is often got cut.
Pasta
पस्त (hindi)
ᬧᬲ᭄ᬢ (Balinese)
ꦥꦱ꧀ꦠ (Javanese)
I hope it can be resolved soon, so it would be easier to read entire lines...
@Kala Kauwa the difference is, you change the height of the letters. Compare between ट and ट्ट
Thus, it can still "accomodate" the one line writting space. It is not be allowed in Javanese nor in Balinese, because the first line is always to be in the same height.
I think the only solution is minimizing the size of the letter by a half. But, it has to be still readable and distinguishable...
@Kala Kauwa i know it has a "double line too" in Hindi, but it is not as extreme as in Javanese and Balinese. Noto fonts are not helping btw
Yes!Philippines was mentioned.
Filipinos took Baybayin from a yet unknown source 500 years ago.But it didn't allow a consonant without a vowel after it.Filipinos just provided the consonant in their mind.
Sinhala is very much like this. You should do a video of Sinhala transliteration of Pali
Sinhala script descended from south Indian brahmi scripts. Obviously it will be the same as most of India.
@@multiversetraveller3118 true. For example in malayalam,
'sri lanka' is written as "ശ്രീ ലങ്ക" (shri lan(g)ka) or it may be written also as "ശ്രീ ലംക"( shri lam-ka) though that is not an agreed arrangement of letters to signify the word "lanka" but it is remarkably similar to the Sinhala
"ශ්රී ලංකා" to signify "Sri Lanka".
Sinhala script looks very much similar to oriya
Yeah Sinhala script is very much similar to Kannada script also .
𝗞𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗮𝗱𝗮 - ಎ ಖ ರ ಬ
𝗦𝗶𝗻𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗮 - ධ න ර ඩ
@@lamewater772 can you illustrate it ??
So this theory is just one among the 3 main umbrella theories for writing in india
1) as said here Ashokan time scribes made brahmi from middle eastern scripts from which tamil brahmi developed and so on..
2) Ashokan brahmi itselfwas derived from tamil brahmi which came from the middle east through spice trading routes..
3) Brahmi/Tamil Brahmi developed from pre existing native scripts (like the Indus Script)
But whichever the case, Abugidas are amazing.. much better than alphabets and abjads
Make a video about Javanese writing system in Indonesia. It is much like the Indian ones
Bharat was area from Iran to Indonesia.That's why some people say Aryans were from Iran.
muh amin is javanese official script in java? i have learned to write my name in it !
muh amin is javanese official script in java? i have learned to write my name in it !
well Southeast asia was CIVILIZED already before indo-european speakers came. It's just that India influenced Southeast asia with its religion
I feel sad when linguistics is used as a way to gauge the superiority of cultures speaking the language... goes against the very spirit of linguistics
FYI, some South Indian languages do not add vowels to the left
This system of writing avoids a lot of problems in English writing , like how C, She, See & Sea all sound exactly the same. But English writing is far simpler because it is only 26 characters in different arrangements.
With Hindi as my first language I find this is the best possible way to explain to foreigners of hybrid alphabets
SANSKRIT is very clear ,clean Language, extremely perfect for programming language, make least amount of lines or sentence by a brief note, offcourse an ancient one makes her Unbelievable...
Total nonsense
@@gauravtejpal8901 elaborate?
Devanagari is the coolest writing system.
can you make two videos: one for Inuit and other for Greenlandic? I'd love to!
I mean, Inuit language
This video used Devanagari script while Ashok used Brahmi. Please see Brahmi on wikipedia, it was totally different.
Would've been better if you had mentioned the main script "Brahmi" from which all the Indic scripts descended from. Many may think the north Indian variant of Brahmi i.e. devanagari is the main script & others are it's variants. At least mention that in the video (which I'm not sure how some do it in there videos by showing some texts regarding any correction) or description to be clear.
This was interesting, and reminded me of Hebrew.
Thank you.
Unless the Amharic language pronounces symbols of the Ge'ez script differently from the Ge'ez language (3:26), the base symbol መ is not pronounced "ma" ("mɑ:" in phonetic), rather "muh" ("mə" in phonetic).
Same goes for the other base symbols ለ and በ.
You’re absolutely correct 👍
We have writing this way much before ashoka. Thanks for bringing it to all.
In a more practical question. What is the thing of Indian with the bar on top of the words? Is that a way of identifying the word as that block? Would you put a bar over the whole word after writing it, or make the bar as you go along? Does this have any relation to how they did cursive writing or was it just stylistic?
I guess it is just stylistic and helps to separate words. When writing, we write the characters first, then draw the line. When in hurry or for rough scribble, the line is omitted. I've noticed many omit the line in a signature.
Luiz Sarchis just like we join the letters in English to make a word, the same way we make a line above the letters in the word to indicate that.
Asita Singh Is that made after you wrote the whole thing or during the process of writing? Can it be omitted or it become too confusing (similar to omitting spaces in English)?
I think it gives the writing a really cool look. It looks like the letters are hanging in that bar!
Luiz Sarchis well I and I have seen most people make it after they write the letters. I think it is necessary art least while writing. Might not me necessary while shining though I think. But I have personally never seen anyone not use the line even in signatures. And yeah it does look like letters hanging of a bar :)
I guess it is also a cultural thing. In Nepal, most of the signatures I see in Nepali don't have the line, including mine. And I've seen many scribbles without the lines. I have also had friends who have missed drawing the lines in a hurry during an exam. You can think about it like doting the i's and crossing the t's while writing cursive English. I personally draw the line after writing each word.
To be more specific, the vowels are the smallest amount of sound you can produce. They are called swar. In contrast, consonants (vyanjan) are created using a syllable with that stroke (halant) at the bottom, plus the first vowel ‘a’ which can be replaced with other vowels. Not just that, every row in the table of consonants use different parts of the mouth for pronunciation, for example, the ‘p’ row or p warg (प-वर्ग) requires you to touch both your lips for pronouncing every consonant in that row, so the second consonant फ is pronounced as ‘pha’ and not ‘fa’ because the latter requires you to touch your lower lip with your teeth. There were a few farsi (persian words that couldn’t be pronounced in Hindi, so, a ‘.’ at the bottom was invented for all of those words. So, फ़ is pronounced as ‘fa’. and farsi is written as फ़ारसी but all the Hindi words, eg. फल , lack a ‘.’ at the bottom are pronounced as ‘phal’, not ‘fal’. There are other similar symbols as well, like ॉ which are used for English words that have ‘o’ pronounced kind of like ‘au’, eg. doctor is written as डॉक्टर .
PS: Nusery grammar books do include the diagram of various parts of the mouth labelled ( like talu or तालु) and how to pronounce consonants, but pseudo nationalists never cared about it. All they care about is protecting cows from non natives.
NativLang, have you ever heard of Pali? I assume you would if you've done a video with Ashoka. It might make an interesting video or part of a video of more or less "dead languages" that have long been used for solely religious or philosophical purposes( such as Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Sanskrit).
Was learning how to write in Tamil and loved how great the writing system is
But actually Tamil script is not a complete script . There are no Tamil Alphabets for certain formal pronounciations like Ga, Da, Ba, fa, dha .
Only க ப ட த used for several prounounciations .
@@Variouscartoontopic It is quite weird that you choose to say that Tamil doesn't have a complete script. In fact, a language with fewer letters can be seen as more primitive and ancient. And you are wrong about Tamil not having Ga, Da, Ba, and Dha, it does, just not in the way you think. What makes a "pronunciation" formal and a script "complete" anyway? Does Hindi have the ɻ sound?
You mean an abugida?
Both are acceptable
An alphasyllabary and an abugida refer to the same thing
Fair enough, but since they used "abjad" (and not consonantary) in the story, they should have used the parallel "abudgida"
I find it funny how they call it abugida, which is based on the Ethiopian Ge'ez script. It seems that they made an effort to find an example with a phoenician basis when in reality Indic scripts pretty much have a monopoly on them. Then again kakhagagha isnt quite as catchy abugida lol.
@SakthiV ok here what about kachatapa loll
This concept is common throughout most of Indian languages.
I speak Telugu and it is pretty much the same.
ᜀᜄ᜔ ᜐᜒᜈᜂᜈᜅ᜔ ᜐᜒᜐ᜔ᜆᜒᜋᜅ᜔ ᜉᜈᜓᜎᜆ᜔ ᜈᜅ᜔ ᜉᜒᜎᜒᜉᜒᜈᜐ᜔ ᜈ ᜊᜌ᜔ ᜊᜌᜓᜈ ᜀᜌ᜔. ᜊᜐᜒ ᜐ ᜊᜇᜋᜒᜃ
Tagalog : ang sinaunang sistemang panulat ng Pilipinas na baybayin ay base sa brahmic
English : the ancient pre colonial Filipino writing system called the baybayin was based on brahmic
we also use alphasyllabary.
what is called "hash" in the video, we call "kudlit" in baybayin.
thank you India for sharing your script system across southeast asia.
If Nalanda University hadn't burnt down by Jihadi Bhaktiyar Khilji, a whole new chapter of South East Asian history preserved in India would have opened.
Thanks for this! I've been learning the Thai script, and now I know where it comes from.
I'm curious about what animation software you use to make these, it's got a nice 3-d/2-d blend and I like the syle
I do agree that the languages in india and southeast asia do look cool and intimidaing
The Tamil script definitely follows similar patterns but the system of writing is ancient and no where related to the devanagari script... Its based on tamil brahmi.
almost all Indian languages se the same system.
Super Junior's Super Juniors
No though, for example, Tamil does not have samyuktakshar
FAHEEM SYED க்ஷ (ksha) is a samyuktakshara!
Sanskrit is my favourite language. I am a North Indian but Sanskrit is kind of a language where you need to understand the grammar and that is one of the most Hardest and interesting thing
Both Tamil script and devanagri derive from brahmi script
I actually really like the indi writing system, especially as to how easy it is Is to comprehend when learning how to write in those said Languages.
My people's writing system is one of those languages that is heavily influenced by this kind of writing system.
I'll give a quick example
Think of this ᜊ as a B , the only difference is it's pronounced as a Ba' in it's original form.
If one wants to use the same vowel or sound again but with just slight alteration to fit what your trying to imply, it can be altered slightly exactly in four ways
ex.
ᜊ = Ba'
ᜊᜒ = Bi' / Be'
ᜊᜓ = Bu' / Bo'
ᜊ᜔ = B'
You write it like so
Ba+Bo+Y
ᜊ + ᜊᜓ + ᜌ᜔
= ᜊᜊᜓᜌ᜔᜶ - BaBoY meaning Pig 🐖
The whole story is wrongly attributed to Ashoka, who has no contribution in writing languages. He spread his messages using existing writing scripts (called lipis of Sanskrit and Prakrit). The separation of consonants and vowels (abugida) are credited to Panini, the famous Sanskrit gramarian, who standardized Sanskrit language in Abugida system in 4th century BC. He is considered to be the father of linguistics.
worlds first university 'taxishila' is their way back before Ashoka. so written script is present in ancient India before Ashoka. if u want u can browse
अशोक ने अक्षर-अक्षर की खोज नहीं की, यह उससे पहले है
2:52 What I ominously refer to as, "the chart". It took me 20 minutes one time to figure out what त्त was when I only had my phone.
Figure क्त
@@अजिङ्क्यगोखलेkta (I can read a bit of hindi)
At 3:06 that was actually South Indian Tamil writing which influenced the creation of the other Southeast Asian scripts, not Nepali Devanagari.
+Jace Nath Agree - definitely South Indian, even if not from the Tamil script proper.
The turning world only showed spread over geography, not a path of chronological inheritance.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
+NativLang oh okay. And thanks for a great video!
You're both wrong, it was Brahmi, which influenced South-East Asian scripts. This happened at a time when Eastern, Western, Northern Southern etc. Indian identities had yet to be established. e.g. Siddham Brahmi resulted in Tibetan and other Central Asian scripts, while Pallava Brahmi resulted in South-East Asian ones. More particularly, Vatteluttu Brahmi which morphed into Tamil script did not result in any script in South-East Asia at all.
So, the claim that "At 3:06 that was actually South Indian Tamil writing which influenced the creation of the other Southeast Asian scripts" is absolutely wrong. It was Pallava not Vatteluttu/future Tamil.
+Masih Dajjal yes, but at the same time South India remained culturally distinct and for the most part, linguistically separate from the North Indians. Yes sometimes the areas were controlled by empires from the North, but the South Indians extended their dominion over most of Southeast Asia. The Pallava script was descended from the Brahmi script but was used to write Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit, so it can be called an early Tamil script. It, in turn, heavily influenced the writing systems of Southeast Asia. I agree with you, but at the same time South Indian culture, language, and writing system had significant influence on Southeast Asia which is what I meant in my comment.
+Jace Nath I wouldn't say it remains culturally distinct, I mean shaiva siddhant of tamil nadu has common things with kashmiri shaivism, it is North's constant contact with western world (including middle East which is actually west) that added to northern culture