Beautiful chart shows how the English alphabet evolved

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/04/beautiful-chart-shows-how-the.html

5 Likes

That chart suffers from survivor bias. What about Þ, Ð,and ſ ?

11 Likes

Anyone know what happened between Ancient Latin and Roman? It is like there was an influential scribe who happened to be dyslexic - B, C, D, E, F, K, L, P, S all flipped. (And how did I and Z get swapped?)

8 Likes

Don’t forget &

3 Likes

Definitely needs some mention of Þ Ð from English and their disappearance due to the introduction of continental type which had no need of those characters.

It’s still nice to see them living a happy, free range existence in Iceland.

9 Likes

Making the letters colorful on a black background definitely ups the cool factor, but didn’t my 1968 Encyclopedia Britannica have all the same information?

3 Likes

Behold, English as she is spoke

1 Like

don’t forget Ƿ

1 Like

Interestingly, several of the Arabic numerals rotated when they came to Europe. So ٢ became 2, ٣ became 3, and ٧ became 7. I have seen it argued that this was because they were originally used on physical counters rather than written on paper to do calculations.

3 Likes

World Book Encyclopedias first page was and evolution from the Phoenician to modern for whatever letter the book was covering.

I liked that and learned about the Phoenicians too

Edit: Though I must add that third grade Eric read it as Peh Ho nikians

2 Likes

You missed Ȝ :frowning:

1 Like

@AndreaJames

And before anyone complains:
“Shouldn’t you have titled this ‘Evolution of the Latin Alphabet?’”

Oh, I hate when someone gets between me and my pedantry.

6 Likes

The ampersand is an evolved, cursive “et.”

2 Likes

Is it really? I only ever knew it by name, as a degenerative “and, per se and”

3 Likes

Yep. Some fonts show an & where you can clearly see the “et” letters, such as shown on the left side of the bottom row of examples here: https://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-3/signs-and-symbols/ampersands

1 Like

As much as I enjoyed that book, how is it relevant?

Thé au harem d’Archiméde?

What do those letters sound like?

I suspect you replied to the wrong comment

et is, per se, and

1 Like