You’d think that would have become mu.
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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That remind me of this.
(Credits in the image)
I just see Nyan Cat
Hmm, why did the proto-I turn into Z and the proto-Z turn into I? And why did proto-φ not turn into Φ? I do love this graphic though!
As written language spread through existing spoken languages, changes are made to match the spoken sounds and languages that have different pronunciation requirements repurpose, drop, create, or modify characters to fit their phonetic needs.
But how did the V become a U?
Pronunciation evolution differentiated U and V more and people started differentiating that with an extra sign. As in, the Roman V was pronounced kinda like both and not like today's V - the Roman symbol V is not the modern letter V. You may notice that modern media about ancient Rome have been making Vs sound more like Us.
It looks like V became U, V, & W
Pour one out for the homies we lost along the way
⨂ 𐤎 ʍ ϕ ⲯ
Hm. Wonder why the Romans “flipped” the letters.
Easier to read in your rear view
My guess would be it's easier to write quickly like that when you write left to right.
Notice there was no letter J around the time of Jesus. Hrmmm 😆
That's why some crosses have "INRI" written: Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum
The name "Jesus" comes from the Greek Iēsous, which is a transliteration of the Hebrew name Yeshua (or sometimes the longer form, Yehoshua), meaning "Yahweh saves."
“Yahweh saves.”
... so Jesus is basically "God Saves" so "Jesus Saves" is just "God Saves Saves"?
Hence Iesus Nazarenus in Latin.
Any reason why Romans mirrored some letters ?
It was likely caused by the transition from right-to-left to left-to-right writing
So basically, while Egyptian hieroglyphs didn't have a specific writing direction, boustrophedon was a very common system, where you'd start writing in one direction, and then switch direction on the next line (so the first letter of the second line is right under the last letter of the first line).
The Phonecian script, however, started to stick to right-to-left for writing. When the greeks first adapted the Phonecian alphabet for the Greek language, they wrote in right-to-left and boustrophedon. When writing boustrophedon, they would flip the letters to match the writing direction. When left to right started to gain popularity, the flipped letters were used, and left-to-right is now what is used in the Greek alphabet and its descendants.
And why did they swap I and Z?
Z was temporarily removed from the latin alphabet, and when it was readded, it was added to the end
Thank you!
Sometimes, you just gotta go for style points.
Anybody else find it weird how the letter forms changed a bunch in BC and then hardly at all in CE?
Maybe because at that point the Roman Empire controlled most of that part of the world? Also maybe literacy was increasing, requiring more consistency? Then as the Roman Empire declined centuries later different cultures only iterated in their own language? Just some guesses.
A is for auroch
aurochs is the singular. aurochsen is plural. notice the similarity to ox/oxen
(Me silently crossing out “A Cow”)
Its a moo point what variety of bovine it is.
Is there a meme like this for Kanji being derived from chinese characters
It's the same thing though. Basically there are traditional characters, used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapour, and others, and Japan simplified the characters in 1945, then China simplified theirs, but in another way.
A better comparison would be the hiragana and katakana being derived from kanji.
The Greek was sneaking a look from across the table .... which is why they reoriented the symbol
Major missed opportunity not making Canaanite and Greek head be turned a different angle
"What's wrong with your spelling, man? Everyone knows 'aardvark' starts with 'bull's head'."
At first, I thought this was going to be about constructing the cardinal numbers ℵ~1~, ℵ~2~, ℵ~3~ ...
ا
Up next: Mamdani is forcing schools to teach Islamic, Egyptian letters!
This is a good one