You didn't mention that the reason Sequoyah's script looks like he was illiterate and just copied letters he thought looked nice. Was because he was illiterate and just copied letters he thought looked nice.
He wasn't completely illiterate, he could recognize some words spelled out, but not enough to understand how they function. He actually invented numerals first which were partially inspired by devengari in shape if I remember correctly. Then he developed the original "cursive" script. which had a big touch from Arabic but he had to change it to fit the printing press, sooooo Ꭰ is a Ꭱ is e etc etc etc etc. :)
@@landon8214 you're correct, technically-- the above post meant that, when Sequoyah was creating his aplhabet, he started with the numbers first, then the letters. The Arabs still "invented" our number system... Although the Sumerians invented the "first" known number system.
I love Mongolian script too it looks cool and relatively easy to write! Tibetan, well as per mentioned the spelling rule is hard to get your head around at first but there are certain rules to stop it from going TOO wild, so... with some practice, it's good.
My personal favorite is Georgian, followed closely by Hangul. I recently came across the Canadian script a few months ago and really like how it looks.
The Inuit languages are official languages in Nunavut, a Canadian northern territory. In the south, I often hear land acknowledgements when we gather. For example, the last conference I went to, we were on the land of the Anishinaabe Peoples and the Haudenosaunee Peoples. There is an official definition of "Indian" in Canada which refers to the aboriginal peoples. People from India are called South Asians. I am an immigrant to Canada.
Not really, there's a lot of sounds that require a lot of symbols. Even such a simple word as Swedish Oro(anxiety) is weird in IPA [²ɯᵝːrɯᵝː] the only simple part is the r. I'm from Sweden and I can't say it. Well I don't speak standard Swedish so perhaps that's why...
@@L1M.L4M I don't know. But it's a possible feature to be included. I'd also be amazing being capable of phonetically reading whistle tones in languages or languages which basically are made up by whistling. And to not include such when trying to contain all sounds a language can have is langosism.
The Gothic alphabet is actually used by the modern gothic revival community. The use of the so called Ahsabairka is sadly hindered by Unicode not supporting a lowercase and the lack of quality fonts out there.
In my opinion, one of the most underrrated writing systems is Mandombe. It's used to write 4 of the languages spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Kokongo, Tshiluba, Lingala, and Swahili. I really like how geometric its characters are, and the way it's constructed. It was invented in the 1970's by one guy who claimed that it was revealed to him in a dream. I recommend looking it up, the story behind it is really interesting!
I think you missed a few... The Sinhalese letter ඝ (gha) Sinhalese letter ස (sa) Sinhalese letter ය (ya) Sinhalese letter ය්රී (yree) Sinhalese letter ධ (dha) Sinhalese letter ධි (Dhi) Sinhalese letter ධ්රි (Dhri) Sinhalese letter ට්ඨි (tthi) Sinhalese letter ඣ (jha) Sinhalese letter ඞ (Hard 'Da') Sinhalese letter ඩි (Hard 'Di') Sinhalese letter ශ්ර (shra) Sinhalese letter ශ්රී (shree) Sinhalese letter භ (bha) Sinhalese letter භ්ර (bhra) Sinhalese letter ඝ්රා (ghra) Sinhalese letter ක්රි (kri) Sinhalese leter බ (ba) යීධ්ඨිධ්රිසිධිඞට්ඨිජ්කිඣඣස්ක්ස්ය්රී
My top ten most favourite scripts: 10. hangeul script: It is by all standards, the best writing system for the korean language and the best writing system ever devised. 9. aramaic script: the compact, flowing and mystical aesthetic is unmatched. I personally think it is the best abjad there is. 8. tengwar: the elven script developed by JRR Tolkien. Enough said. 7. Ancient greek script: Just something about the fluidity of the alphabets. Also the diacritics and the terminal sigma. 6. The latin script: far more versatile than people give it credit for. It has stood the test of time. 5. Hentai-kana: Fell in love with this one after seeing a calligraphy video on meiji era names of girls in japanese. It just looks brilliant, each syllable is a work of art. 4. Balinese: the unusual mix of regularity and flow. It feels free flowing and constrained at the same time. It is simply a well formed script. 3. cursive cyrillic: uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu 2. Devanagari: It is simple personal bias, and also the fact that it can be used for almost every Indian language without much modification. 1.5!!! Cursive bichig: It is art. See it. 1. Modi: a compact CURSIVE abugida (direct descendant of devanagari). Also the original script for my mother tongue.
@@livedandletdie not if you don't understand it though 😛 , and I actually have tried making con-scripts myself, and it is a serious pain to come up with cursive forms. So I pretty much revere anything cursive, or any script that looks flowy now.
Modi and Gurmukhi are actually better than Devanagri, they both have better cursive flow and Gurmukhi was actually designed to handle the sounds found in all Indian languages, Arabic, Farsi and the tones that are found in Punjabi which is the only tonal Indo European language.
Korean? 😂😂😂😂. That bish only made for the Korean language, can not write any other language where as scripts like Russian or the Roman alphabet can be used by numerous languages
Hangeul is basically a successful constructed script and I love it for that. I also like runes, I read about them in a divination book and just waiting for a trip to the countryside to collect stones for them.
I think that Tironian notes is an interesting script, it started out as a normal shorthand but due to being in use for a very long time it actually became a prestige script of sorts, at its peak it had 13 thousand symbols and was used for actual published books with a cleaned-up orthography, and its "&" symbol became widely adopted. I also really like cuneiform, because a language made of indentations in clay seems ridiculously useful to me, you can literally write with no ink or paper and erase letters by just rubbing them out with your finger, and due to having no lines it can be extremely compact, an experienced cuneiform writer could grab a fistful of clay and write like 30 lines of text on it using only a reed stylus. Also, there are these devices called wax tablets that were commonly used in Western civilization from ancient Greek times up until the 1800s, they were like two small picture frames containing a soft wax and binded together like a little book that you could open up and write in using a stylus, similar to a small portable whiteboard; however this took a lot of skill due to Europe's reliance on Phoenician-derived line scripts, I'm actually amazed that we didn't invent our own home-grown cuneiform during this time period. And I would argue that cuneiform is superior even for the ink-and-paper medium: imagine if you had little stamp pads on your fingers representing the different cuneiform marks and you typed letters directly onto the page, so we wouldn't even need to invent pens in order to write, and I bet it's much faster than a pen. We do actually have a modern cuneiform-like script which is called Braille, but it's used only by blind people which is probably why it looks so unattractive (btw I have no doubt that some blind people in ancient Sumeria could read cuneiform, since it's just a series of holes in a clay surface). Speaking of which, imagine if we did all write in Braille, we could read text without even looking at it. And a Kindle wouldn't even need a screen, it could just be a machine with a bunch of dots that pop up, and you can drag your finger across the dots to read while you watch a movie or something. So I kind of like Braille, but I feel that it needs some fixing to be a great script.
Sequoyah's original Tsalagi syllabary looked very different, and you might want to check that out too. The version still in use came about basically from sending it to the printer's. They could either create totally new type based on his more complex squiggly-looking script, or slightly modify a bunch of characters they already had and go from there. So, the cheaper and easier option won out. At least one pic is available online of a handwritten copy attributed to Sequoyah from a museum collection, showing the original longhand and print forms together. Not much resemblance between them. I actually think the OG version looks way cooler.
I'm extremely bias bc I'm a native Russian speaker, so my number 1) is Cyrillic. My favourite alphabet based on it: Serbian Cyrillic and Chukchi Cyrillic 2) Demotic is so PRETTYYY +Egyptian hieroglyphics. I love them. 3) Every Indian script. I love them all 4) Semitic scripts. I love how they represent their root system + they're beautiful 5) Thai
I really like Cyrillic because at least in Russian, the language I’m learning, the lower cases tend to be the same height except for letters like б. It makes it look really neat because they seem like they fit in their own square.
My favourites (Mostly on aesthetic purpose): 10) Latin writting 9) Georgian script 8) Hebrew alphabets 7) Devanagari script 6) Mongolian script 5) Tibetan script 4) Egyptian hieroglyphs 3) Yi script 2) Chinese characters 1) Hangeul (Korean script, which is my motherland's script)
"Katakana is significantly simpler than hiragana" - that's like saying that upper case letters are significantly simpler than lowercase letters or that one font of the latin alphabet is significantly simpler than another font
idk cause katakana is literally simpler than hiragana in that it is made from parts of kanji rather than entire kanji themselves. I had a problem with hentaigana even as a joke being called its own writing system, when all it is is hiragana that didnt make the cut after the 1900 spelling reform. like it's literally the inverse of a writing system lol its a system of what not to write. the literal translation of hentaigana 変体仮名 is "variant/changed body kana" and is a more apt comparison to your comment than katakana imo
I've watched a video about japanese's writing systems and that sparkled my curiosity, it's been 200 days since I've been studying it non-stop, hiragana looks cute, katakana looks badass and kanji look difficult, the perfect pick for a new language to learn
Þe Engliſh language has þe cooleſt writing ſyſtem if ȝou chuſe to uſe all þe bells & whiſtles þat were ſterilized out by þe printing preſs. It miȝt be odd at firſt, but I find þat þis ſtyle features much more diſtinct overall word ſhapes þan ſtandard orþography. More aſcenders & deſcenders to ſet words apart from each oþer. Plus, þe letter Þ looks really cool, & þis alſo allows Y to act only as a vowel.
Sutton SignWriting should be in there. It's really cool. Very distinctive, and also straightforward to read (though I find it harder to write). And it renders a whole massive group of previously unwritten languages writable.
I'm a huge fan of the Greek alphabet myself. I love the lowercase forms of the letters; they look smoother and sleeker than Latin lowercase characters. I wonder why more languages don't use the Greek alphabet? The only major language to use the Greek alphabet today is Greek itself, but there are some other minor languages spoken in and near Greece that do use the Greek alphabet as well (Arvanitika and Tsakonian mainly), and historically other languages in the eastern Mediterranean region did use the Greek alphabet. I should note that Arvanitika is a dialect of of the Albanian language spoken inside of Greece; otherwise, Albanian uses the Latin alphabet.
@@sbclaridge the Greek language has historically not been manipulated to fit other phonetic systems, and given it only has 24 letters total, many languages today can’t fit their sound inventories effectively within even an altered Hellenic script
Ogham was also used in Scotland to write Pictish. Some of the lines went in different directions to the Irish Ogham scripts but that's just them wanting to be different. Also, since Pictish has gone extinct it's the only examples of what the language was like apart from place names!
I'm glad Mongolian got a special mention at least, I am trying to learn both the language and script and I think it's pretty neat. But some of my own special mentions would go to Phags-pa, Telugu and Georgian. They all look pretty cool IMO. "Hello" in Telugu: హలో "Hello" in Georgian: გამარჯობა I'd show Phags-pa, but I don't think it's supported. And looking at some of the ones on your list, I thought trying to learn Cyrillic was bad enough with Latin-looking letters that sound nothing like the Latin.
my personal favourite is georgian, i love how all the letters look like cute pretzels also as a Guatemalan I'm proud to say we learned how to read mayan numerals at school. it works for nothing but saying "oh, there says 5898" whenever you see ancient stuff at museums, but it's still a dope ability ig
Right there near the end, and I had to listen several times to be sure, you said number one was "used in Japan until the *earlieth* *twenty* century." That's an easy one to miss. It almost got by me. It's not the usual verbal gaff. Cool video. Haven't heard of some of these. Will have to do some research on them.
I'd like to add some honorable mentions. - Boring Latin (English that does have no special letters) - Spiced up Latin (Like German which has the original latin plus cool bonus letters such as ä ö ü and ß) - Arabic (It looks cool but it is to tiny on computer screens) - Latin++ (The Polish one where they used latin letters but added cool stuff for every letter to work with their language) - Cyrillic (іт юст лукс реалли ґуд анд алсо гас латін леттерс) - Georgian (Looks gorgeous )
the brahmi script evolved into Siddham an Tibbetan in the east of the subcontinent, which both look insanely cool (also Sylheti Nagri is probs the most underrated south asian script imo lol)
As a native Arabic speaker , i love the Arabic script so much , even though alot of westerns always underestimate it by saying it looks like spaghetti whatever , which i see no connection ع ث ل م ن ط ك ي س ش ض و ذ ح ز أ . But as matter of fact it's a very beautiful elegant and the no western script in my opinion comes close to the beauty of Arabic script , especially the Arabic calligraphy is something beyond beautiful . Also u did not have to put the war criminal George bush , he indeed liked the arab to the point of doing war crimes in iraq , that was so insensitive
I'll add Sundanese. Sure it's mostly replased by the Latin script but it looks like, and I say it totally out of love, how it looks like a generic science fiction "Alienese" script.
Have you looked at SignWriting? It can write any sign language, and with some ectentions, it van also write dancing, scate boarding and much more. Remember, language is not just speech, signed laguges are languages too, and they can be written. And they do have some cool gramatical features
Awesome video, thanks for making it. How exactly is katakana simpler than hiragana? Its like having the same syllabery but twice in 2 different fonts. Also i like hiragana, katakana is barely used compared to hiragana.
I've been teaching myself some hentai gana recently. the history behind it is really cool and I want to delve into more of the old manyougana poetry that came from chinese educated japanese poets. also funny name.
I'm a sucker for indian and generally central asian area scrips(even though hindi and begali look completely different from tamil and stuff). Also I love cursive scripts like arabic and mongolian(does that count? idk). Also Oghams super cool great choice for number 2
தமிழ் is so cool and weirdly easy to learn, abugidas are amazing! Just take a look at knot, butterfly, cow riding a snake, and inductor with a trailer: இ ஐ ஊ ணை, also circles: ஃ ... and then there's kshau: க்ஷௌ
As someone who has also studied Japanese, I prefer hiragana because it’s more loopy and noodle like and is easier to write in and remember and make look nicer.
These are good ones, but Tifinagh (also called the Berber or Amazigh script) and Tibetan (basically Devanagari, but 100 times better) are an easy top two for me. Also, Georgian script > every other Greek derived script.
I know you sorta glossed over it by mentioning Brahmi script but I think this video needs at least an honorable mention for THAI! Admittedly the way it functions is lowkey a little dumb, but it looks absolutely beautiful if you ask me
Me also a Japanese learner: Learns hiragana fully in a day and around a hundered kanji in a week Also me: been studying for 7 months and still only know 2/3ds of katakana...
Thought Georgian and Hangul would've made the list. They're certainly some of the tidiest writing systems out there. Also, Katakana is only slightly simpler than Hiragana. 😑
my favorite alphabet is Cyrillic, I don't know how to explain it exactly, but the way it sounds, the designs, I don't know, I just know that I like it a lot, so much so that I learned to read it myself (I don't know anything about the Slavic languages or the other languages that use it, and my favorite letter is this one: Д
4:06 I'm pretty sure the letter on 6th row in 3rd column is a Sinhalese letter in the Cherokee alphabet example you used. I checked the original one and the letter was not there. You should've noticed as you even made Sinhala an honorable mention with the exact same letter. Unless this was intentional.
It helps when talking about the Cherokee Syllabary to note that Sequoyah was totally illiterate when he decided to create a writing system for the Cherokee nation to use.
I like the Gothic and Elder Futhark alphabets. Wish those would make a comeback. Hell, I wonder what it'd be like if the Norse still used the Elder Futhark into the Viking Age (The Younger Futhark doesn't look as intuitive) but it had developed further apace instead of being supplanted by the Latin alphabet.
@@Arviragus13 Younger Futhark might be easier to write, but you have too many sounds for one letter. Doesn't that get confusing? At least have more letters or diacritic marks on the runes.
@@Arviragus13 On my left arm, I have a tattoo in English directly converted to the Elder Futhark script. It reads "Be gay, do crime". I want to have each rune colored in a different color of the 2021 Progress Pride flag. And I also have a chest tattoo of a Mjolnir in the transgender flag colors.
My rank : 10 : Assyrian It looks like it's ancient and IT IS 9 : Pahlavi script Keyboard version only , the classical handwriting isn't so special 8 : Brahmi As you mentioned in the video 7 : Hebrew Easy to write and beautiful looking 6 : Etruscan Nice P 5 : Georgian Pure beautiful 4 : Canadian ( Inuktitut ) based-est alphabet designer 3 : Telugu script వ 2 : Ge'ez ፊ 1 : Tibetan
You didn't mention that the reason Sequoyah's script looks like he was illiterate and just copied letters he thought looked nice. Was because he was illiterate and just copied letters he thought looked nice.
He wasn't completely illiterate, he could recognize some words spelled out, but not enough to understand how they function.
He actually invented numerals first which were partially inspired by devengari in shape if I remember correctly.
Then he developed the original "cursive" script. which had a big touch from Arabic but he had to change it to fit the printing press, sooooo Ꭰ is a Ꭱ is e etc etc etc etc. :)
Also because letters similar to the Latin ones were cheaper to print afaik
@Yona I thought numbers were arabic? Not a linguistics nerd so wouldn't be surprised if I'm wrong
@@landon8214 you're correct, technically-- the above post meant that, when Sequoyah was creating his aplhabet, he started with the numbers first, then the letters.
The Arabs still "invented" our number system... Although the Sumerians invented the "first" known number system.
@@jaredwoods2361 ah that makes more sense
The Mongolian script is pretty cool, but Tibetan is even cooler!
You meant arabic?
😎 مشالله
@@thediaxd3747 It's a cool script but not even near to the ones in the vid
Their spelling tho
@@thediaxd3747 it's spelled "ماشاء الله" lmao
I love Mongolian script too it looks cool and relatively easy to write! Tibetan, well as per mentioned the spelling rule is hard to get your head around at first but there are certain rules to stop it from going TOO wild, so... with some practice, it's good.
10) 0:12 Gothic
9) 0:52 Katakana
8) 1:17 Futhorc
7) 1:48 Brahmi
6) 2:08 Armenian
5) 2:55 Ancient South Arabian
4) 3:24 Canadian Syllabic
3) 3:56 Cherokee
2) 5:02 Ogham
1) 5:37 HENTAIGANA 🐙🐙🐙
(১) বাংলা
What are you doing step alphabet?
1 หาว
hentai means evolution
@@RagTheOne721 yeah, "change of stage"
My personal favorite is Georgian, followed closely by Hangul. I recently came across the Canadian script a few months ago and really like how it looks.
The Inuit languages are official languages in Nunavut, a Canadian northern territory. In the south, I often hear land acknowledgements when we gather. For example, the last conference I went to, we were on the land of the Anishinaabe Peoples and the Haudenosaunee Peoples. There is an official definition of "Indian" in Canada which refers to the aboriginal peoples. People from India are called South Asians. I am an immigrant to Canada.
Mkhedruli absolutly Goat hands down aesthetic
Georgian looks like it came straight from Middle Earth, and I love it for that.
I think IPA is interesting, mostly because almost every sound that can be made by a human has a symbol.
Not really, there's a lot of sounds that require a lot of symbols. Even such a simple word as Swedish Oro(anxiety) is weird in IPA [²ɯᵝːrɯᵝː] the only simple part is the r. I'm from Sweden and I can't say it. Well I don't speak standard Swedish so perhaps that's why...
What about Whisteling in languages?
@@jonasarnesen6825 does it have a script?
@@L1M.L4M I don't know. But it's a possible feature to be included.
I'd also be amazing being capable of phonetically reading whistle tones in languages or languages which basically are made up by whistling.
And to not include such when trying to contain all sounds a language can have is langosism.
isn't one of the whistling languages spanish? in the canary islands if i remember
I agree, we should bring back the Gothic script
The Gothic alphabet is actually used by the modern gothic revival community. The use of the so called Ahsabairka is sadly hindered by Unicode not supporting a lowercase and the lack of quality fonts out there.
*𐌲𐍉𐌸𐌹𐌺
And the Anglo-Saxon runes!!
In my opinion, one of the most underrrated writing systems is Mandombe. It's used to write 4 of the languages spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Kokongo, Tshiluba, Lingala, and Swahili. I really like how geometric its characters are, and the way it's constructed. It was invented in the 1970's by one guy who claimed that it was revealed to him in a dream. I recommend looking it up, the story behind it is really interesting!
I looked it up and it's absolutely mesmerizing.
@@artlover5060 It really is isn't it? Glad someone else appreciates it!
I think you missed a few...
The Sinhalese letter ඝ (gha)
Sinhalese letter ස (sa)
Sinhalese letter ය (ya)
Sinhalese letter ය්රී (yree)
Sinhalese letter ධ (dha)
Sinhalese letter ධි (Dhi)
Sinhalese letter ධ්රි (Dhri)
Sinhalese letter ට්ඨි (tthi)
Sinhalese letter ඣ (jha)
Sinhalese letter ඞ (Hard 'Da')
Sinhalese letter ඩි (Hard 'Di')
Sinhalese letter ශ්ර (shra)
Sinhalese letter ශ්රී (shree)
Sinhalese letter භ (bha)
Sinhalese letter භ්ර (bhra)
Sinhalese letter ඝ්රා (ghra)
Sinhalese letter ක්රි (kri)
Sinhalese leter බ (ba)
යීධ්ඨිධ්රිසිධිඞට්ඨිජ්කිඣඣස්ක්ස්ය්රී
ඞ⃤ඩා⃝ඞ⃞ඩා⃟ඞ⃠ඩා⃢ඩාඞ☺︎꫞
My top ten most favourite scripts:
10. hangeul script: It is by all standards, the best writing system for the korean language and the best writing system ever devised.
9. aramaic script: the compact, flowing and mystical aesthetic is unmatched. I personally think it is the best abjad there is.
8. tengwar: the elven script developed by JRR Tolkien. Enough said.
7. Ancient greek script: Just something about the fluidity of the alphabets. Also the diacritics and the terminal sigma.
6. The latin script: far more versatile than people give it credit for. It has stood the test of time.
5. Hentai-kana: Fell in love with this one after seeing a calligraphy video on meiji era names of girls in japanese. It just looks brilliant, each syllable is a work of art.
4. Balinese: the unusual mix of regularity and flow. It feels free flowing and constrained at the same time. It is simply a well formed script.
3. cursive cyrillic: uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
2. Devanagari: It is simple personal bias, and also the fact that it can be used for almost every Indian language without much modification.
1.5!!! Cursive bichig: It is art. See it.
1. Modi: a compact CURSIVE abugida (direct descendant of devanagari). Also the original script for my mother tongue.
Chinmay Joshi I guess you are a native Marathi speaker.
Cursive Cyrillic is cursed as f. ш л и ж х щ ц й pretty much look the same... So one gets a headache when looking at it.
@@livedandletdie not if you don't understand it though 😛 , and I actually have tried making con-scripts myself, and it is a serious pain to come up with cursive forms. So I pretty much revere anything cursive, or any script that looks flowy now.
Modi and Gurmukhi are actually better than Devanagri, they both have better cursive flow and Gurmukhi was actually designed to handle the sounds found in all Indian languages, Arabic, Farsi and the tones that are found in Punjabi which is the only tonal Indo European language.
Korean? 😂😂😂😂. That bish only made for the Korean language, can not write any other language where as scripts like Russian or the Roman alphabet can be used by numerous languages
Hangeul is basically a successful constructed script and I love it for that. I also like runes, I read about them in a divination book and just waiting for a trip to the countryside to collect stones for them.
Hangeul to Chinese scripts is like how AI is to humanity.
This video is about cool looking, not about successful scripts.
What do you think of devnagri script, it is also very organised and easy to use
I think that Tironian notes is an interesting script, it started out as a normal shorthand but due to being in use for a very long time it actually became a prestige script of sorts, at its peak it had 13 thousand symbols and was used for actual published books with a cleaned-up orthography, and its "&" symbol became widely adopted. I also really like cuneiform, because a language made of indentations in clay seems ridiculously useful to me, you can literally write with no ink or paper and erase letters by just rubbing them out with your finger, and due to having no lines it can be extremely compact, an experienced cuneiform writer could grab a fistful of clay and write like 30 lines of text on it using only a reed stylus. Also, there are these devices called wax tablets that were commonly used in Western civilization from ancient Greek times up until the 1800s, they were like two small picture frames containing a soft wax and binded together like a little book that you could open up and write in using a stylus, similar to a small portable whiteboard; however this took a lot of skill due to Europe's reliance on Phoenician-derived line scripts, I'm actually amazed that we didn't invent our own home-grown cuneiform during this time period. And I would argue that cuneiform is superior even for the ink-and-paper medium: imagine if you had little stamp pads on your fingers representing the different cuneiform marks and you typed letters directly onto the page, so we wouldn't even need to invent pens in order to write, and I bet it's much faster than a pen. We do actually have a modern cuneiform-like script which is called Braille, but it's used only by blind people which is probably why it looks so unattractive (btw I have no doubt that some blind people in ancient Sumeria could read cuneiform, since it's just a series of holes in a clay surface). Speaking of which, imagine if we did all write in Braille, we could read text without even looking at it. And a Kindle wouldn't even need a screen, it could just be a machine with a bunch of dots that pop up, and you can drag your finger across the dots to read while you watch a movie or something. So I kind of like Braille, but I feel that it needs some fixing to be a great script.
Novel
Sanskrit looks pretty awesome
The Tironian et survives in Ireland and Scotland.
@@qwertyTRiG TIL.
Canadian Script is the coolest because it's used in the Arctic!
Indeed it’s cool
*happy canadian noises.mp4
@@haydend.maniac227 I’m trying to convert it to Sm’algyax and Michif.
i live near places that have signs in maliseet. god i wish i could learn it!
Sequoyah's original Tsalagi syllabary looked very different, and you might want to check that out too.
The version still in use came about basically from sending it to the printer's. They could either create totally new type based on his more complex squiggly-looking script, or slightly modify a bunch of characters they already had and go from there. So, the cheaper and easier option won out.
At least one pic is available online of a handwritten copy attributed to Sequoyah from a museum collection, showing the original longhand and print forms together. Not much resemblance between them. I actually think the OG version looks way cooler.
No, the coolest writing system is the one and only…
*ITHKUIL MORPHOPHONOLOGICAL ABUGIDA*
Beside jokes, Tai Viet needs some recognition, it's so elegant
I'm extremely bias bc I'm a native Russian speaker, so my number 1) is Cyrillic. My favourite alphabet based on it: Serbian Cyrillic and Chukchi Cyrillic
2) Demotic is so PRETTYYY +Egyptian hieroglyphics. I love them.
3) Every Indian script. I love them all
4) Semitic scripts. I love how they represent their root system + they're beautiful
5) Thai
Since you love Cyrillic you should've at least included greek too since it's based on greek
I am a Chinese speaker so I may get biased too. So my #1 is:
Russian Cyrillic
#2, Mongolian Cyrillic
#3, Kazakh Cyrillic
...
@@Jacob.D. Beautiful!
I really like Cyrillic because at least in Russian, the language I’m learning, the lower cases tend to be the same height except for letters like б. It makes it look really neat because they seem like they fit in their own square.
@@willyorgy4677 yeah, true! ❤️
My favourites (Mostly on aesthetic purpose):
10) Latin writting
9) Georgian script
8) Hebrew alphabets
7) Devanagari script
6) Mongolian script
5) Tibetan script
4) Egyptian hieroglyphs
3) Yi script
2) Chinese characters
1) Hangeul (Korean script, which is my motherland's script)
Yi script is strange since it looks a lot like bronze script characters
what is "hindu" script?
@@Deepak_Dhakad he probably meant Devanagari one
@@user-mc8wg6qq3b ah okay tq
Apologies for my misconception. The "Hindu script" was meant for Devanagari script 😅
"Katakana is significantly simpler than hiragana" - that's like saying that upper case letters are significantly simpler than lowercase letters or that one font of the latin alphabet is significantly simpler than another font
😂
Yeah I knew he would probably bring that kinda stupid argument… tsk
idk cause katakana is literally simpler than hiragana in that it is made from parts of kanji rather than entire kanji themselves. I had a problem with hentaigana even as a joke being called its own writing system, when all it is is hiragana that didnt make the cut after the 1900 spelling reform. like it's literally the inverse of a writing system lol its a system of what not to write. the literal translation of hentaigana 変体仮名 is "variant/changed body kana" and is a more apt comparison to your comment than katakana imo
I've watched a video about japanese's writing systems and that sparkled my curiosity, it's been 200 days since I've been studying it non-stop, hiragana looks cute, katakana looks badass and kanji look difficult, the perfect pick for a new language to learn
In cherokee he didn’t make that syllabus. His was all cursive looking but the americans changed it for the news press.(i’m cherokee)
Þe Engliſh language has þe cooleſt writing ſyſtem if ȝou chuſe to uſe all þe bells & whiſtles þat were ſterilized out by þe printing preſs. It miȝt be odd at firſt, but I find þat þis ſtyle features much more diſtinct overall word ſhapes þan ſtandard orþography. More aſcenders & deſcenders to ſet words apart from each oþer. Plus, þe letter Þ looks really cool, & þis alſo allows Y to act only as a vowel.
You include ȝogh but no love for ƿynn?
I am against the inclusions of long s and the thing that looks like the number 3, but other than that i agree
Sutton SignWriting should be in there. It's really cool. Very distinctive, and also straightforward to read (though I find it harder to write). And it renders a whole massive group of previously unwritten languages writable.
My top 10 favourite scripts:
10) Thai
9) Cyrillic
8) Latin
7) Armenian
6) Sitelen Pona
5) Hanzi (Traditional)
4) Zhuyin
3) Hangeul
2) Katakana
1) Greek
Thank you! Cyrillic is awesome
Thank you! We do use traditional Hanzi and Zhuyin in my country
ευχαριστώ! όπως αποκαλώ την ελληνική γλώσσα, τον πατέρα της δυτικής γραφής!
I'm a huge fan of the Greek alphabet myself. I love the lowercase forms of the letters; they look smoother and sleeker than Latin lowercase characters.
I wonder why more languages don't use the Greek alphabet? The only major language to use the Greek alphabet today is Greek itself, but there are some other minor languages spoken in and near Greece that do use the Greek alphabet as well (Arvanitika and Tsakonian mainly), and historically other languages in the eastern Mediterranean region did use the Greek alphabet. I should note that Arvanitika is a dialect of of the Albanian language spoken inside of Greece; otherwise, Albanian uses the Latin alphabet.
@@sbclaridge the Greek language has historically not been manipulated to fit other phonetic systems, and given it only has 24 letters total, many languages today can’t fit their sound inventories effectively within even an altered Hellenic script
5:33 i was hoping you’d mention hangeul. absolute best writing system
I spent alot of time creating a writing system that I thought was cool. What I didn't think about is how I am going to remember them...
Ogham was also used in Scotland to write Pictish. Some of the lines went in different directions to the Irish Ogham scripts but that's just them wanting to be different. Also, since Pictish has gone extinct it's the only examples of what the language was like apart from place names!
I like the aesthetics of N’ko. I have a conscript based on it
Looks like Arabic that is made to be non cursive lol
I got so happy when you said Cherokee its one of my favorite writing systems im learning the language!
Georgian has a nice aesthetic.
Thanks for including Sinhala as an honourable mention (even if it’s a little sus).
I personally love old Norse, it’s not particularly cool to look at, but it sound awesome when spoken.
I'm glad Mongolian got a special mention at least, I am trying to learn both the language and script and I think it's pretty neat.
But some of my own special mentions would go to Phags-pa, Telugu and Georgian. They all look pretty cool IMO.
"Hello" in Telugu: హలో
"Hello" in Georgian: გამარჯობა
I'd show Phags-pa, but I don't think it's supported.
And looking at some of the ones on your list, I thought trying to learn Cyrillic was bad enough with Latin-looking letters that sound nothing like the Latin.
my personal favourite is georgian, i love how all the letters look like cute pretzels
also as a Guatemalan I'm proud to say we learned how to read mayan numerals at school. it works for nothing but saying "oh, there says 5898" whenever you see ancient stuff at museums, but it's still a dope ability ig
Right there near the end, and I had to listen several times to be sure, you said number one was "used in Japan until the *earlieth* *twenty* century." That's an easy one to miss. It almost got by me. It's not the usual verbal gaff.
Cool video. Haven't heard of some of these. Will have to do some research on them.
You and nativlang are the best linguistics/languages related UA-cam channels, period
I'd like to add some honorable mentions.
- Boring Latin (English that does have no special letters)
- Spiced up Latin (Like German which has the original latin plus cool bonus letters such as ä ö ü and ß)
- Arabic (It looks cool but it is to tiny on computer screens)
- Latin++ (The Polish one where they used latin letters but added cool stuff for every letter to work with their language)
- Cyrillic (іт юст лукс реалли ґуд анд алсо гас латін леттерс)
- Georgian (Looks gorgeous )
arabic doesn't look cool. it's trash
as a Pole, THANKS YOU
also our language is pretty hard tho
Omg I also love all these scripts. Well maybe just all in existence 😭
My favourite alphabet is georgian alphabet. It looks super cool, a lot of circles and cute in general
the brahmi script evolved into Siddham an Tibbetan in the east of the subcontinent, which both look insanely cool (also Sylheti Nagri is probs the most underrated south asian script imo lol)
As a native Arabic speaker , i love the Arabic script so much , even though alot of westerns always underestimate it by saying it looks like spaghetti whatever , which i see no connection ع ث ل م ن ط ك ي س ش ض و ذ ح ز أ .
But as matter of fact it's a very beautiful elegant and the no western script in my opinion comes close to the beauty of Arabic script , especially the Arabic calligraphy is something beyond beautiful .
Also u did not have to put the war criminal George bush , he indeed liked the arab to the point of doing war crimes in iraq , that was so insensitive
Georgian is more beautiful
@@a.v.j5664 that is your opinion .
In my opinion Arabic is more beautiful .
@@mimimusa757 👍
I agree. Spaghetti doesn't have dots.
So what if it looks like spaghetti? Spaghetti is good
Is there any exotic writing system like the one from Kēlen? (I know it's a colang but i just want to know if there is a system near the Kēlen one)
I think Maya is actually one of the closest. More so in that it's just super complicated but in a neat way
@@ConnorQuimby Thanks, i'm going to research about it
I'll add Sundanese. Sure it's mostly replased by the Latin script but it looks like, and I say it totally out of love, how it looks like a generic science fiction "Alienese" script.
Pretty sad you didn't mention the Tifinagh script its objectively pretty cool.
Right? If you’re into the Canadian script, why not Tifinagh?
For Me
10) Greek Alphabet
9) Glagolithic
8) Cypriot
7) Phoenician
6) Archaic Greek
5) Linear A
4) Runic
3) Cuneiform
2) Old Italic
1) Linear B
Have you looked at SignWriting? It can write any sign language, and with some ectentions, it van also write dancing, scate boarding and much more. Remember, language is not just speech, signed laguges are languages too, and they can be written. And they do have some cool gramatical features
My latin handwriting uses fixed symbols for common abbreviations and specific variants of letters wich are word/sentence-position-dependent.
4:29 Amogus said hi
I think the Georgian alphabet is very cool-looking.
Awesome video, thanks for making it.
How exactly is katakana simpler than hiragana? Its like having the same syllabery but twice in 2 different fonts. Also i like hiragana, katakana is barely used compared to hiragana.
Celtiberian is pretty neat. It encodes in a single glyph 2 allophonic letters. Like k and g for example, being the same letter.
Arabic not being on here is not only apostasy but also a savage underrating of a massively widespread and awesome script
My 10 [not counting Latin, obvious biases there]
10. Hebrew
9. Thai
8. Elvish
7. Deseret
6. Sanskrit
5. Arabic
4. Greek
3. Kartvelian (Georgian)
2. Cyrillic
1. Hangul
sanskrit is a language not script
It is criminal that Burmese didn't make it.
Georgian deserves a spot
Finally, a video talking about how really cool some scripts are
sorry but at 5:33 what does natural writing system mean? I wanna know
I've been teaching myself some hentai gana recently. the history behind it is really cool and I want to delve into more of the old manyougana poetry that came from chinese educated japanese poets. also funny name.
"you want fries with that?"
me asf in Cherokee: "G"
Georgian is also quite cool. It derived from the Greek alphabet as well!
I'm a sucker for indian and generally central asian area scrips(even though hindi and begali look completely different from tamil and stuff). Also I love cursive scripts like arabic and mongolian(does that count? idk). Also Oghams super cool great choice for number 2
Ogham contrasts so hard against all the cursive scripts that it's hard to not love Ogham.
தமிழ் is so cool and weirdly easy to learn, abugidas are amazing!
Just take a look at knot, butterfly, cow riding a snake, and inductor with a trailer: இ ஐ ஊ ணை, also circles: ஃ
... and then there's kshau: க்ஷௌ
I suggest Malayalam script, you can write almost everything in the script
As someone who has also studied Japanese, I prefer hiragana because it’s more loopy and noodle like and is easier to write in and remember and make look nicer.
you should check out the samaritan hebrew script, it has diacritics that are just arabic letters and a letter called tit
The Georgian script is my favorite
These are good ones, but Tifinagh (also called the Berber or Amazigh script) and Tibetan (basically Devanagari, but 100 times better) are an easy top two for me. Also, Georgian script > every other Greek derived script.
I'm glad that hangul got at least a mention.
I learned about the Yi people and their script is so cool. Impossible to read though😂
I know you sorta glossed over it by mentioning Brahmi script but I think this video needs at least an honorable mention for THAI!
Admittedly the way it functions is lowkey a little dumb, but it looks absolutely beautiful if you ask me
3:12 what do you mean was? It is still the most used writing system in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Abugidas, Abjads and Logographic scripts are my favorites.
you guys should look at old turkic script. you'll gonna love it
I don't know anything about Thai or Hindi other than I really like their letters lol. I also like that smiley-face letter in Japanese.
Aethetically I found Hentiagana to be the most apealing.
𒅴𒂠!
BRUH
Hello, B. Gilson
Your mom
Cuneiform!
Love you
Me also a Japanese learner: Learns hiragana fully in a day and around a hundered kanji in a week
Also me: been studying for 7 months and still only know 2/3ds of katakana...
Thought Georgian and Hangul would've made the list. They're certainly some of the tidiest writing systems out there.
Also, Katakana is only slightly simpler than Hiragana. 😑
Hmm... no love for good ol' fashioned cursive Latin alphabet? I've always really liked that one, and am sad that few people use it anymore.
Few people in America that is. Pretty much everyone else uses it
@@theweirdwolf1877 Side-note, have you ever seen Cyrillic cursive? It's a trip!
my favorite alphabet is Cyrillic, I don't know how to explain it exactly, but the way it sounds, the designs, I don't know, I just know that I like it a lot, so much so that I learned to read it myself (I don't know anything about the Slavic languages or the other languages that use it, and my favorite letter is this one: Д
How is Chinese Hanzi not even mentioned? In my opinion, it is by far the coolest script in history.
5:49 the WHAT gana?
i see by your number one,you're a man of culture as well
I really think Georgian should have had a place on the list. Very cool script, I’ve copied/taken inspiration from it often
I like Tifinagh (See my name? Pretty cool.)
Can’t believe Devanāgari didn’t make the list.
1:57 the Arabic numeral system isn't written right to left like their script is so it would be in the same order as latin and brahmi
I personally really like Hangul, Ge'ez, and Arabic
Maple syrup on naan got me rolling....🤣🤣🤣😂
The coolest is by far Chinese because of its long history and all the meaningful information inside each character.
But seriously, hentaigana is a really beautiful script. Gives that really traditional/archaic feel you know.
Ok ive been makeing a con lang. And got my sounds and all. Then decided to make a writing system. And my writing system looks like ogham.
For me, my favorite writing systems are:
1. Katakana (and Hiragana)
2.Syriac
3.Cyrillic
4.Baybayin (which might be borrowed from Bhrami script)
4:06 I'm pretty sure the letter on 6th row in 3rd column is a Sinhalese letter in the Cherokee alphabet example you used. I checked the original one and the letter was not there. You should've noticed as you even made Sinhala an honorable mention with the exact same letter. Unless this was intentional.
it's the among us letter that was 100% intentional
@@ConnorQuimby Ah, makes much more sense.
It helps when talking about the Cherokee Syllabary to note that Sequoyah was totally illiterate when he decided to create a writing system for the Cherokee nation to use.
I like the Gothic and Elder Futhark alphabets. Wish those would make a comeback. Hell, I wonder what it'd be like if the Norse still used the Elder Futhark into the Viking Age (The Younger Futhark doesn't look as intuitive) but it had developed further apace instead of being supplanted by the Latin alphabet.
Younger Futhark is easier to write and worse to read
@@Arviragus13 Younger Futhark might be easier to write, but you have too many sounds for one letter. Doesn't that get confusing? At least have more letters or diacritic marks on the runes.
@@DarDarBinks1986 They seemed to think it was good enough for a few centuries, then medieval runes happened which fixed a lot of that
@@Arviragus13 On my left arm, I have a tattoo in English directly converted to the Elder Futhark script. It reads "Be gay, do crime". I want to have each rune colored in a different color of the 2021 Progress Pride flag. And I also have a chest tattoo of a Mjolnir in the transgender flag colors.
Sequoyah's Cherokee alphabet has an Amogus for "hi".
5:36 Amogus?
My rank :
10 : Assyrian
It looks like it's ancient and IT IS
9 : Pahlavi script
Keyboard version only , the classical handwriting isn't so special
8 : Brahmi
As you mentioned in the video
7 : Hebrew
Easy to write and beautiful looking
6 : Etruscan
Nice P
5 : Georgian
Pure beautiful
4 : Canadian ( Inuktitut )
based-est alphabet designer
3 : Telugu script
వ
2 : Ge'ez
ፊ
1 : Tibetan
አመሰግናለሁ።
Amharic letters are the most pretty and complete to express any sound. የአማረኛ ፊደል ከሁሉም የቋንቋ ፊደሎች የተሻለ ነዉ
Based
I hoped for glagolithic to be on the list
I love the beauty of Tibetan, Nepali, Arabic, Sanskrit, and other similar writing systems. They're fascinating.
No Cyrillic? SAD!
I already made a cyrillic video
Cyrillic bad
@@professionellerkanal4947 сирилик гуд
@@txdorovaa ارابيك باتار