How The (English) Alphabet Became A Thing, Part Two: Each Letter Has A Story

Summary

Ridiculous History Podcast Summary
Episode: How The (English) Alphabet Became A Thing, Part Two: Each Letter Has A Story
Release Date: December 12, 2024
Host: Ben Bolin and Noel Brown
Produced By: iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction

In the second installment of their deep dive into the evolution of the English alphabet, Ben Bolin and Noel Brown continue exploring the quirky and intricate histories behind each letter. Building upon the foundations laid in Part One, this episode focuses on individual narratives that have shaped the modern English writing system.

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Recap of Part One

The hosts briefly revisit the key points from the previous episode, highlighting memorable moments such as Chaucer's unconventional linguistic choices and their producer Max Williams' voice acting prowess.

Noel Brown [01:19]: "We learned that Chaucer was a saucy boy. He liked butts and then talking funny. And we learned that Max has a real talent for voice acting."

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The Printing Press and Language Standardization

Ben and Noel discuss the pivotal role of the printing press in standardizing English, introduced to England by William Caxton in the late 15th century. They delve into the challenges Caxton and his Belgian assistants faced with inconsistent spelling and the economic incentives that led to elongated word forms.

Ben Bolin [10:11]: "What you need to know, folks, is the Idea of generating what we call modern English. While it is launched by the amazing innovation of the printing press, it is complicated by short-term economic interest of the time."

They explain how the printing industry's payment per line incentivized printers to make words longer, inadvertently preserving silent letters and irregular spellings.

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Evolution of Individual Letters

The core of the episode systematically explores each letter of the English alphabet, tracing their origins from ancient scripts to their current forms and sounds.

A to C

• A: Originated from a symbol representing an ox, inverted to resemble its modern shape.

  Ben Bolin [25:00]: "Originally a symbol for an ox, which translates to 'ox,' it was flipped upside down to become the letter A."

• B: Derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics symbolizing a house, evolving in shape and meaning over millennia.

  Noel Brown [25:55]: "Originally, about 4,000 years ago, the symbol did not represent the sound B. It represented the idea of shelter."

• C: Began as a boomerang-like symbol in Phoenician, later adopted and modified by the Greeks and Italians to form the modern C.

  Ben Bolin [26:47]: "They took it like a hunting stick, a half moon shape."

D to F

• D: Started as a door in Semitic languages, transformed through Greek (Delta) and Roman adaptations.

  Noel Brown [27:03]: "The original meaning was door."

• E: Initially pronounced as an H sound in Semitic languages, later shifted to its current E sound in Greek adaptations.

  Noel Brown [28:41]: "Pronounced more like an H sound."

• F: Evolved from a Y-like shape in Phoenician to the modern F, influenced by Greek (Digamma) and Roman styles.

  Noel Brown [29:34]: "Pronounced more like a wa, like, wow."

G to J

• G: Originated from the Greek Zeta, transformed by Romans to differentiate from I, establishing distinct G and I sounds.

  Ben Bolin [30:32]: "It's similar to how the amazing author Stephen King has what he calls dollar babies."

• H: Represented a fence in Egyptian hieroglyphics, temporarily dropped from the English alphabet around 500 CE before being reinstated.

  Ben Bolin [33:43]: "British and Latin scholars eventually dropped the letter H from the English Alphabet entirely around 500 CE."

• I and J: The letter I served as a stand-in for J until the 17th century when J was formally recognized as a separate letter.

  Ben Bolin [36:34]: "The letter I used to be a stand in for the J sound in ancient times."

K to N

• K: Originated from the Egyptian symbol for the palm of a hand, evolved through Greek (Kappa) and Roman modifications.

  Noel Brown [37:03]: "Given the name Kaf, which translates to palm of the hand."

• L: Began as an upside-down hooked letter in Egyptian hieroglyphics, shaped by Phoenician and Greek influences into the modern L.

  Ben Bolin [42:36]: "Originally looked like a hooked letter, almost like the old hangman game."

• M and N: M started as wavy lines representing water in Egyptian symbols, simplifying over time. N evolved from symbols representing serpents to the modern N.

  Ben Bolin [45:26]: "Originated as wavy vertical lines symbolizing water."

O to S

• O: Began as a symbol representing an eye, transformed through Phoenician and Greek adaptations.

  Noel Brown [46:34]: "Originally represented someone looking at you."

• P: Originated as an inverted V symbolizing a mouth in Semitic languages, evolved through Phoenician and Roman modifications.

  Ben Bolin [47:42]: "Originally represented 'mouth.'"

• Q: Derived from the Phoenician quof, meaning ax, adapted by Romans into the modern Q.

  Noel Brown [48:15]: "Originally meant ax, Z-A-Y-I-N."

• R: Symbolized the profile of a human head in Semitic languages, transformed into the modern R through Greek and Roman influences.

  Noel Brown [49:17]: "Originally the concept behind the letter R was the profile of a human facing left."

• S: Began as a wavy bow of an arch in Semitic scripts, angled into the modern S by Roman standardization.

  Ben Bolin [49:35]: "They named it Sigma."

T to W

• T: Originated as taw in Semitic languages, meaning cross or mark, evolved through Greek (Tau) and Roman adaptations.

  Noel Brown [50:31]: "Called it tau and added the cross at the top."

• U and V: Initially interchangeable in Roman times, differentiated into U (vowel) and V (consonant) around the 1400s.

  Ben Bolin [51:27]: "The distinction between V and U didn't start to appear until around the 1400s."

• W: Emerged in the Middle Ages as a double U, evolving into the distinct W by the 1700s through the influence of scribes like those of Charlemagne.

  Noel Brown [52:16]: "Started as two U's next to one another."

X to Z

• X: Originated from the Greek psi, adapted into the modern X shape by Roman printers.

  Ben Bolin [53:06]: "Used as an integral part of every SoundCloud rapper's MC name."

• Y and Z: Y began as upsilon in Greek, later borrowed by Romans. Z originated from the Phoenician zion, adapted into Greek zeta, and finally established in English post-Norman invasion.

  Noel Brown [55:43]: "The Normans invaded the United Kingdom and introduced the Z sound."

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The Future of Language: Emojis and Beyond

Transitioning from historical letters, Ben and Noel ponder the future trajectory of written language, speculating on the rise of emojis as a universal mode of communication.

Noel Brown [57:06]: "It is fascinating to track whether we're heading towards a future where the written word is being replaced by emojis."

They discuss the potential for emojis to bridge language barriers, despite the loss of nuance, and acknowledge the enduring importance of the written word in human communication.

Ben Bolin [58:23]: "Name check to or shout out to Episode one. Entire novels have been written in emoji as we speak."

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Conclusion

Ben and Noel wrap up the episode by reflecting on the dynamic and often arbitrary evolution of the English alphabet. They emphasize the importance of historical influences and the ongoing changes that shape language.

Noel Brown [59:15]: "Thanks to you, Ben, for putting together this incredible two parter on the history of the English language."

They acknowledge their producer Max Williams and encourage listeners to explore more content, highlighting the collaborative effort behind the podcast.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Noel Brown [01:19]: "We learned that Chaucer was a saucy boy. He liked butts and then talking funny. And we learned that Max has a real talent for voice acting."

• Ben Bolin [10:11]: "What you need to know, folks, is the Idea of generating what we call modern English. While it is launched by the amazing innovation of the printing press, it is complicated by short-term economic interest of the time."

• Noel Brown [25:55]: "Originally, about 4,000 years ago, the symbol did not represent the sound B. It represented the idea of shelter."

• Ben Bolin [33:43]: "British and Latin scholars eventually dropped the letter H from the English Alphabet entirely around 500 CE."

• Noel Brown [52:16]: "Started as two U's next to one another."

• Noel Brown [59:15]: "Thanks to you, Ben, for putting together this incredible two parter on the history of the English language."

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Ridiculous History offers an engaging and humorous exploration of the English alphabet's origins, making complex linguistic transformations accessible and entertaining. Ben Bolin and Noel Brown skillfully blend historical facts with witty banter, providing listeners with both education and amusement.

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For more episodes, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[Ben Bolin]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always, so much for tuning in. This is the second part of our episode on the weird, weird story of how the modern English Alphabet became a thing. So on a personal message, I owe you. And sometimes why our you I owe, you owe me.

[Noel Brown]

No kidding. We owe each other the world. Yes, it's true.

[Ben Bolin]

And that's our super producer, Mr. Max Williams. That's the main man, our pal, Mr. Noel Brown.

[Noel Brown]

Hello.

[Ben Bolin]

They called me Ben Bolin in many parts of the world. And no for anybody who is tuning in. Now, what did we learn in our previous exploration of the English Alphabet?

[Noel Brown]

Oh, boy. Where to even start? We learned that Chaucer was a saucy boy. He liked butts and then talking funny. And we learned that Max has a real talent for voice acting. Those are my two major takeaways.

[Ben Bolin]

Yeah, and those are great things to take away from the first episode and to take with us in the second episode. Fellow ridiculous historians, please, please, please. If you have not listened to part one of how the English Alphabet became a thing, we're going to pause and give you a second to catch up before we dive into modern English. We're going to put some mustard on this one.

[Noel Brown]

Ooh, yeah. Indeed. Hopefully a spicy. That's my favorite kind of mustard. And if you want to listen to the other one after the fact, that's cool too, because we start kind of right on modern English, to Ben's point, which is a spelling system that developed from around 1350 the year onwards.

[Ben Bolin]

CE.

[Noel Brown]

That's right. CE indeed. When after three centuries of the Norman French being in charge, English gradually became the official language of the land that is England.

[Ben Bolin]

Yeah, it became the official language again.

[Noel Brown]

Right.

[Ben Bolin]

But it was like when New Coke got rolled out and then Coca Cola Classic got rolled out. It's not. It's not the same thing.

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Let's go places. The new English language is quite different from everything that happened before about 1066 CE and it incorporated a lot of words from French origin. Later we will call this phenomenon loan words. So for instance, in this situation we see French origin words shout out to the Normans things like battle, beef, button, et cetera. You also see it in modern English with things like boondocks.

[Noel Brown]

Exactly. And I think we already know, all ridiculous historians included, that the printing press was kind of a big deal. I'll tell you what I didn't fully know, or if I did, I maybe only partially knew and then forgot how the printing press not only was a big deal in the proliferation of language and of modern English, but also like the words themselves because some people got paid by the length of words and that kind of stuck around. I thought that was really cool. We'll get to that in a second. William Caxton is who we're talking about today. Of course, the printing press was invented by JOHANN Gutenberg in 1448. But in great Britain, William Caxton was responsible for bringing this technology around in the mid 15th century.

[Ben Bolin]

Oh yeah, bud. He brought it over the channel. It was not a clean process. They found the technology they did not yet have the uniformity or consistency of language. So when our buddy Willie brings the concept or the technology of the printing press to London, it's around 1476. So not too many decades after Gutenberg invents the printing press. Now, our buddy Willie at this point is in a bit of a pickle. He's been living in what we call the continent, continental Europe for more than 30 years. As a result, he does not have an up to the present day grasp of the English spelling system as they would do it over the channel. And further, he brings a bunch of his assistants from Belgium. Those guys also have no clue. They kind of freestyle what they think words should sound like.

[Noel Brown]

Absolutely. I mean, let's not forget language is its own form of technology in a way, and it sometimes requires a little bit of on the fly adjustments to make it work. So let's add to that another little hiccup. As printing developed and then the business of printing sprang up, people started to develop, or rather, you know, companies, organizations, started to develop their own signature preferences. A term that sticks around today known as house styles, which you might hear used for different magazines, for example, or different ad agencies. They might have a house style then you could probably shed a little bit more light on specifically what that means. But my understanding is that has to do with maybe the use of an oxford comma, for example, or like how certain punctuations are used in the house style of say, Vanity Fair versus People magazine. Right?

[Ben Bolin]

Yeah. It's like, is this going to be a U or a V? Right. Cause we're still in that era of development. Also I would like to point out they said house styles instead of signature styles because no one could agree on how best to spell the word signature.

[Noel Brown]

And the houses in question are of course these printing houses. These are literally various shops, you know, like. And so the term house styles gets taken and kind of used for a broader sense, you know, of like the signature style of a different publication or like I said an advertising company to refer to. It can also refer to graphics or it can refer to color palettes or various different things like that. Bibliographies, 100%, how to make citations, how to format footnotes and things like that.

[Ben Bolin]

Yeah, yeah. And that gets in the weeds super easily. What you need to know, folks, is the Idea of generating what we call modern English. While it is launched by the amazing innovation of, of the printing press, it is complicated by short term economic interest of the time. As you noted, Noel, these typesetters at these various different, non unified, not really a union at this point. These typesetters are all trying to make their own proprietary thing. And the blokes who put the blocks in order to, you know, print your local broadsheets, they got paid per line. So they had a hard economic interest in making words longer because it meant they made more money when they did.

[Noel Brown]

So I just had no idea about this detail. And I think it's so fascinating how arbitrary a lot of the evolution of language tends to be. It's like holdovers from people just making decisions that were relevant at the time for very specific and often selfish reasons, but just they just kind of stick around like silent, silent letters and things like that that maybe were left over from Old English. They were just like, you know what, it benefits us to have that silent H or what have you in the middle of the word. So let's just leave it. They were paid, like you said, by the line. That kind of modern equivalent I guess you might think about as sort of the opposite, where if you're putting a personals ad or an advertisement in a newspaper, you pay by the word, you pay more. Exactly. So it behooves you in that situation to err on the side of brevity being the soul of and all of that. So it really is a pickle, like you said, Ben.

[Ben Bolin]

Yeah, it's a real bag of badgers there because we have to exercise empathy. Imagine you're a typesetter back in the day and you say, okay, most other print houses are spelling this word something like through, for instance, they're spelling it T H R E W. What if I spell it T H R O U G H and get a little vigorous. Right. Who am I to argue with the greater good? It's a real bag of badgers. The biggest changes in English, spelling, consistency, they occurred kind of around the 16th century as well, because a guy named William Tyndale translated the New Testament in 1539. A guy named Henry VIII, yes, that King Henry, he said very well, print thy Bibles in English in England.

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[Noel Brown]

A bit of a bestseller it turned out. That old, the old New Testament.

[Ben Bolin]

I mean it's no Harry Potter, but.

[Noel Brown]

You know, it was sort of the Harry Potter of its day. So that led to numerous editions of these Bibles. And it wasn't until I Think we. This is pre King James, right?

[Ben Bolin]

This is when. Oh man.

[Noel Brown]

I just mean in terms of standardization, like we. This, this led to a lot of different variations in print houses because the King Henry basically just, you know, lifted whatever moratorium might have been on printing the sacred word of God. And that led to folks having their own house styles. Even for something as massive as the Bible, 100%, dude.

[Ben Bolin]

The King James translation, it's commissioned in 1604. It doesn't get print until 1611. So before King James, our buddy Henry is saying, look, we need an English Bible in England because as you said, the differing versions or attempts to translate or communicate the Christian Bible, they were all printed outside of England by people who, and I'm not going to be rude about this, they spoke little to no English themselves.

[Noel Brown]

You know, it reminds me of. There's this band that I love, I think you're familiar with too, Ben. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. They do this really cool thing where all of their records, of which they have a gazillion, they make the masters available to anybody who wants to make a version of it. So, like if you are a small record printing company, like LPs and you want to design your own version of a King Gizzard record, that is totally cool. Which leads to this proliferation likely nigh on impossible to track down every version of their records, which is really, really cool. But obviously the record remains the same. In this case, the actual contents were being styled on.

[Ben Bolin]

Yeah, yeah. It's similar to. While we're praising contemporaries, it's similar to how the amazing author Stephen King has what he calls dollar babies. And if you are hearing this, you're an up and coming filmmaker. This is true. This is still a real thing you can do. You can write to Stephen King or more realistically, you can write to his estate and you can say, I'd like to adapt one of your stories for film, one of your short stories. They will charge you one US dollar. Because like King Gizzard and. Or the Lizard wizard, the guy just wants the story to be out there. And that's what people are doing with this concept of the Bible, the story of God and Jesus Christ. A lot of the printers who are making copies, translations of the Bible, they are Dutch. And so being Dutch, they routinely change the spelling of a word to match what makes sense to them as Dutch speakers. And this is why we're going to put you on the game right here. Ridiculous historians. This is why you have so many H's going after G In English. It's not because of English. It's because of those Dutch folks who printed the Bibles like you. You wouldn't say. No, you wouldn't say the H after ghost or after the g and ghost. We do. I do have to admit, we both have a lot of fun saying the H in hup, hup.

[Noel Brown]

Or how would you even say the H in ghost?

[Ben Bolin]

Ghost.

[Noel Brown]

That just becomes another word entirely. A ghast, A gherk. Oh, man, I love American. Actually, I don't. They're kind of gross. But it's funny, though, because all these silent letters, it's something that I've always scratched my head about because it does make learning English difficult. You know, people always say that English is a difficult language to learn to speak, let alone write, and it's because of a lot of these weird spellings. And obviously, of course, there are weird conjugations and things like that that are not present in other languages. But I think that kind of game of telephone that is the English language is largely what leads to that difficulty for maybe new speakers to fully wrap their heads around it. Because sometimes we can't even wrap our heads around. And we've been speaking since we were little children.

[Ben Bolin]

I'm still learning it. I wouldn't consider myself a native speaker.

[Noel Brown]

Right.

[Ben Bolin]

So back in the day, Europe, overall, especially our good friends in England, they got all these weird spellings and they decided to let it ride. They were like, we're cool. What's going on with how there's sometimes a V and sometimes a. It wasn't until the mid 16th century that V and U became different, distinct letters. U became the vowel, V became the consonant. And it reminds me of our earlier exploration this week when, remember how we saw that the first Alphabet. Ish thing only had consonants?

[Noel Brown]

Right? Yeah. Made it very guttural, didn't it? We talked about that as well. That those vowels is really what makes the kind of more flowing quality to language. So in 1604, Robert Cawdrey published the first English dictionary. And what's a dictionary if not an attempt to start to codify some of this stuff by placing it all in a single tome. This was called the Table Alphabetical. And around this time, J was added to create the modern English Alphabet, more or less, that we know today. More, I think. Right. Is it pretty much the exact one?

[Ben Bolin]

It's closer and closer, bro. We're edging toward the letters we know and love. And we see each letter has its own origin story, its own provenance and transformation over Time. And this is true, folks. These individual symbols would change position, they would flip around. In some cases, they got more flourishes. In other cases, they lost flourishes. I propose that we just run down the list for funsies, just to see how ridiculous this is. And perhaps most importantly, to recognize that no matter how static a given Alphabet may appear to be in your current time, they can always change. This episode of Ridiculous history is brought to you by ebay Motors.

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[Noel Brown]

Yeah, why don't we just start at the beginning, huh? With the old letter A. Feel like we're on Sesame Street. The original shape of letter actually inverted. So it looked kind of like the head of an animal with horns and antlers. If you think about it, it kind of looks something like a deer or a bull even, right? It was kind of fitting because in ancient Semitic, back to episode one, of course, the kind of founders of the proto Alphabet, the letter translated to ox.

[Ben Bolin]

Yeah, logograms, right? Or ideograms in some other parts of the world. You see a drawing of an ox, of course it means ox and then they FL upside down and now it's the letter A. If we go to B. The letter B is fascinating because it's borrowed from the pre existing Egyptian hieroglyphics. Again logograms. And the letter was originally resting on what we call its belly. Not to anthropomorphize too much, but in its original shape, it looked like a kid's drawing of a house. And it had a door and it had a roof and it had a room. And kid you not folks, about 4,000 years ago, that symbol did not represent the sound B. It represented the idea of shelter. It was a drawing of a house.

[Noel Brown]

Well, that's really neat, Ben, because we've talked about this idea of hobo code hieroglyphs that traveling folks might use to designate certain features of towns and route and things like that. And a lot of those do look kind of like modern day hieroglyphics or, you know, relatively modern speaking. But there's one in particular that I really dig that represents safe, safe, safe haven. And it is kind of a lot like a sort of stylized bee sometimes with little eyes in the corners. So it's really neat the way this stuff kind of proliferates and changes and gets repurposed you know, in various ways over time. So next, obviously, next thing's next, we should go to the letter C. The letter came from the Phoenicians once again. And it was shaped a lot like a boomerang or something, you know, like some sort of projectile.

[Ben Bolin]

They had no idea what boomerang is.

[Noel Brown]

They certainly didn't. But it was like, you know, a half moon, let's call it as well.

[Ben Bolin]

They call it like a hunting stick.

[Noel Brown]

There you go. The Greeks called it gamma and flipped it to the direction that it's written today, with the Italians giving it bit more of that half moon crescent shape.

[Ben Bolin]

They curved it, they took out the point there. And this is where we get to D. Dalet is the name given to the letter D by the phoenicians around about 800 BCE. It looked like at first a rough triangle. And where you see the curve shape in a written letter D in modern English, what you need to imagine is it's flipped and it's a pointy D facing left. The original meaning of that letter was door. So you would open the door. And then the Greeks adopted again appropriated this Alphabet and they said, let's call it Delta. And then they flipped it. And then the Romans are the ones who said, hey, let's smooth out this point a little bit.

[Noel Brown]

Sure. With the hands. They're doing the hand the whole time. The symbol I mentioned a minute ago, the hobo code for safe harbor, it also looks like a B or a V or kind of an A where the curves are removed and everything is just like a straight kind of triangular shape with much more hard edges. So moving past D, we are now, of course, onto E. About 3,800 years ago, the letter E was pronounced more like an H sound. And that was again in the Semitic language. It looked a lot like a stick figure of a human with two arms, which you can kind of still see in the modern day equivalent for some reason, just had one leg.

[Ben Bolin]

Just the one.

[Noel Brown]

Just the one. And in 700 BCE, the Greeks, once again, they were fans of the old flippity doo. They did just that. And they changed the pronunciation as well to an double E sound, which I guess is like a. Just an E sound, right?

[Ben Bolin]

E. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the way we would say E phonetically sounds like E. This is also fascinating because, Noel, the idea, when you read it, the idea of an E pronounced as an H in Modern English, it feels counterintuitive. But everybody join us together. Say E. Then say E. Then hear that H at the end? That's where they're going, that's the evolution of this. And this takes us to another counterintuitive pronunciation, the letter F, one of my.

[Noel Brown]

Favorites in the whole Alphabet.

[Ben Bolin]

You love F. That's your what? That's your pick.

[Noel Brown]

I love it. It's got a good mouth sound. The letter F was also from the Phoenicians, and it looked much more, in that iteration, like a Y. Shout out.

[Ben Bolin]

To the Welsh because we get it. I was cracking on you guys earlier, but jokes aside, I totally get it.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, 100%. Then it was pronounced to make a sound kind of more like a wa, like, wow. Kind of like how Owen Wilson talks. The ancient Greeks renamed it to D Digamma, I believe, and tipped it over a little bit to where it resembled more of the present day F character. The Romans then made it look even better by giving it a bit more of a stylized geometric shape and then changing the official phonetic sound to a good old yeah, baby, yeah, yeah. Not a raspberry sound, just a hard F. No.

[Ben Bolin]

Yeah. You have to be careful with the placement of your tongue. Any humans tuning in? Now we get to the letter G, which weirdly enough comes from the Zeta of the Greeks. Z, E, T, A we will call it. At first, G looked like an I that maybe hadn't been working out, and the pronunciation made a Z sound. The Romans took again a lot of stuff from the Greeks, and around 250 BCE, they said, all right, let's differentiate this. We're going to take this regular looking eye, we're going to give it a top arm, and we're going to give it a lower arm that later starts to look kind of cradling like a hand. And we're going to give it a G sound. Latin didn't have a Z sound. So in the course of the development of the letter G, those straight lines that were originally created, they become. Become curved again. They. We're seeing a rounding of things. This ends with the present current crescent shape of the capital letter G. And by the way, spoilers, folks. There's an entirely different origin story for lowercase letters.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, yeah, that we got. That's a little outside of the scope, I think, of this conversation because it's sometimes I've always wondered, like, how do they get that from that? And I think that is the question overall. And Ben, this does take a quick pause, make me think of a question, a doc, sort of a dumb question that I've often had. How come if different countries and different cultures and different parts of the world have different Alphabet systems and different languages. How come everybody agreed on the same depictions of numbers?

[Ben Bolin]

Numbers, Arabic.

[Noel Brown]

That's why I get it. But I also, the more I think about it, the more it's like mathematics is a little bit more indisputable. It's sort of based on, at the end of the day, like laws of nature and like, you know, things that are kind of more concrete. Language is something, something that's a lot easier to style on because you don't really. The math doesn't, for lack of a better term, have to work out in the end. So there is a lot more kind of footloose and fancy free styling when it comes to what letters look like and how words fit together. Whereas math, if you couldn't agree on math, and that would cause a lot.

[Ben Bolin]

Of problems, Math is the underlying language of the reality in which this podcast is created, such that if you met an extra dimensional or extra. Extraterrestrial entity, your best bet in communication would be mathematic principles.

[Noel Brown]

That's right. So moving away from math and moving on to the letter H, this one comes from the Egyptians and was used as a symbol for a fence, which you can totally see. It looks like it's right there. It looks like you got the little, the two pickets, I guess, and then the thing, you know, holding them together. And you could just continue to string those together and surround your property to protect you from raiders or what have you.

[Ben Bolin]

Later boffins were total about it. Can I say dicks on air? I'm gonna do it. So they said, look, this makes a breathy sound, an exhalation. And so they said, we find this unnecessary. Yeah, yeah. Like a passive aggressive sigh. So British and Latin scholars eventually for a time dropped the letter H from the English Alphabet entirely around 500 CE. But look at it now, how far it's come. It is the comeback, kid. You need the H, they said, and I don't know, we don't know if they credited those early Dutch printers of the Bible.

[Noel Brown]

Do you know how they say the letter H in the uk?

[Ben Bolin]

How H? Ah, yes, H. Yeah, it's great.

[Noel Brown]

It makes perfect sense. It's a much better indication of what it sounds like. But it always takes me aback when I'm talking with British friends of mine and they say H spelling things. Yeah, I know why I hear it a lot because in the modular synth community, there's something called hp which measures how wide a module is. And so they're always saying hp. Hp, hp.

[Ben Bolin]

And speaking of these strange stories, folks, as you Were hearing us describe the evolution of the letter G, you were probably wondering what happened to I. It's a question that a lot of people ask themselves in the dark of night. The letter I was originally, back in 1000 BCE called YOD and it meant hand and arm. The Greeks later called it Iota and they made it verse, so it used to be horizontal, like a double hyphen. And then the Greeks, you know, they're flipping houses just like reality shows on HGTV. It turned eventually into a straight line around 700 BCE. So G& I become distinct, different sounds.

[Noel Brown]

It's interesting too, because, you know, obviously a lot of this stuff descended from Semitic cultures that we've talked about. And I was wondering where have I heard yah, Yod and some of these other, like, alternate, you know, past versions of these letters. And it's from Hebrew. They still exist, some of these in Hebrew. And Yod in the Bible is actually a symbol of the creator. And in Jewish mysticism, it's a very, very important concept.

[Ben Bolin]

Yes, yes. In Kabbalah and other ancient teachings, we also. I love that you're bringing that up because we're also going to look at the letter J, the letter I.

[Noel Brown]

The new one, right? The new boy.

[Ben Bolin]

Yeah, new kid on the block, alphabetically, on the printing press, on the printer block, typeset block, whatever, we'll keep it. Max. The letter I used to be a stand in for the J sound in ancient times, and it got its shape around the 1400s as a contribution of the Spanish language. It wasn't until about 1640 when the letter J regularly appeared in print. And I want to give a shout out to all our fellow espanol speakers. The best way to say hahaha in Internet discourse is J. A J.

[Noel Brown]

A J A What? I didn't know that. Start pulling that one out in my Internet correspondence. Moving on to the letter K. Another favorite. Good sound, good heart sound when paired with F. You know, you got to lead with an F and end with a K. That's a fun word. It's an old letter and it comes from the Egyptian hieroglyphic system as well. In the Semitic language we were just talking about and giving credit to, it was given the name Kaf, which translates to palm of the hand. Yeah, exactly. And when Ben's doing his hand right now, he's doing a little flippy do of his hand. And in those times, the letter faced once again the other way. And when the Greeks adopted it in 800 BCE it became Kappa. A lot of these words Might be familiar to any folks out there in fraternities or sororities, of course. And they also then flipped it to the right.

[Ben Bolin]

Yeah. And if we move on. You know what? I don't want anybody to take an l here. Ah. So let's explore it together. This episode of ridiculous history is brought to you by ebay Motors.

[Noel Brown]

Picture this. You're in the garage, your favorite room in the house. And you're tuning up your engine with parts you found on ebay. Every piece is just locking perfectly into place.

[Ben Bolin]

You step back to admire your work, hands covered in grease. And because you're committed to driving that thing further than the odometer can even handle, you start thinking to yourself, you know what?

[Noel Brown]

I could probably also use some new brakes, some shocks and struts. This baby deserves a new air filter.

[Ben Bolin]

So you head right back to ebay.

[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bolin]

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[Noel Brown]

Because eBay knows DIY fixes can be major and mods are always intense. So you need to know those parts are guaranteed to fit every time before you dive in. Wrench first.

[Ben Bolin]

And in the off chance you order a part and it doesn't fit, send it back. Simple as that.

[Noel Brown]

You know what you love more than your car itself is driving it. You're serious when it comes to engine maintenance and locked in when you're headed into a.

[Ben Bolin]

And that's exactly why you start with ebay. Minor fix or complete overhaul. You want to get your ride back on the road, and you've got ebay guaranteed fit.

[Noel Brown]

So ebay created my garage, where all you have to do is add your rides info to get the exact parts that fit. When you see that green check, you're a click away from that part, clicking perfectly into place.

[Ben Bolin]

So now that you know all that, imagine.

[Noel Brown]

Imagine standing at that open garage door, looking at that car you love more than anything, knowing that anything is possible. Whether it's keeping it on the road forever or turning it into something that's never been on the road before.

[Ben Bolin]

Because with ebay, your garage just got a whole lot bigger.

[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bolin]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bolin]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bolin]

The present day letter L was once upon a time what we would call upside down. So it looked like a hooked letter. Almost like the way you would draw the old hangman game. Sure. Yeah, yeah. The Gallows.

[Noel Brown]

Yes sir.

[Ben Bolin]

Yeah, it was already called El, which meant, you know, God, the unnameable, the Holy. And the Phoenicians said, all right, first off, we're going to face this hook the other way. They flipped it. They made it such that the hook was facing left. They Straightened the hook a bit. They changed the name to Lamed. And this was entirely just like the earlier story with a boomerang or a hunting stick. This was a goat prod. This was meant to beat the snot out of goats, right?

[Noel Brown]

And then those eventually evolved into the electric versions that we know today. I just. I can't get over. And maybe this is just obvious to everybody but me, but, like. No, it's a little obvious to me, too, but just how so much of this stuff is just a product of somebody making a decision in the moment. Because it seemed like more aesthetically pleasing.

[Ben Bolin]

You know, I would argue also, it might be. It might be one of two factors. Either you have a need to make your mark upon the world, make your mark, literally alphabets, or there was something more convenient or more cost effective to do in terms of time. And then a later civilization comes along, just like the Greeks with the letter L. They call this stuff lambda. And they turn it around again. Now it faces right. The final look of what we call the letter L today, the one with the straight foot at a right angle, that comes to us from the Romans.

[Noel Brown]

Which makes sense, I mean, because it's like. It's also like the most quintessential version of the L I think we all think of and we're picturing it is in that Times new Roman font style 100. The serif being the little. The little. What do you call it, kind of flourish on the end of the foot that you're talking about. And also, I mean, it really resembles kind of like a Roman numeral in a way, too. Moving on, next back to the Egyptians, we've got the letter M. The origin of M was kind of the wavy vertical lines with five peaks that would symbolize water, at least if you're Egyptian, at least. Yeah. We're back with the Egyptians again. In 1800 BCE, the Semites simplified the design a little. Little bit, reduced it to three waves, and then the Phoenicians removed one more of the waves. So by 800 BCE, the peaks were turned into zigzags and then flipped horizontally to form what we know and love today as the letter M.

[Ben Bolin]

And that's why I was saying, as we're getting into it.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, Flew right over my head, bud.

[Ben Bolin]

We could do it. M for the letter N, which is, believe it or not, folks, another Egyptian symbol. It originally looked like a small ripple atop a larger ripple. It did not stand for water, but it stood for something all fans of animals will recognize. Our very fluid reptilian friends the serpent, the snake, the cobra. It was given the N sound by ancient Semites, and they said, you know, scales. This means fish to us.

[Noel Brown]

Well, I mean, fish is a lot less scary. I bet some people with snake phobias might have been spooked by that original version.

[Ben Bolin]

I'm more frightened by big fish than I am by snakes.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, I guess that's true. So around 1000 BCE, just one ripple appeared, and the Greeks decided in their infinite wisdom to name it new. Like new metal. Oh, amazing genre from the 2000s.

[Ben Bolin]

Oh, a letter that also came from the Egyptians as well, originally. All right, this makes sense to everyone. It was called I the Egyptians, and I for the Semites. Pardon the pronunciation there. The Phoenicians took that hieroglyphic, that logogram. They further reduced it, and they just left the outline of the pupil. So that is why the. Why. We'll get to it. That is why the O became the sound it is now instead of the I. But originally, it represented someone looking at. At you.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, exactly. Yeah. Huh. So moving on to P. In the ancient Semitic language, today's letter P looked a lot more like an inverted V. It was pronounced P or pe, maybe, I think P, which meant mouth. And the Phoenicians turned its top into a diagonal hook shape. Then in 200 BCE, the Romans once again, with their flip crazy. These Romans flipped it to the right and closed the loop to form the P, the cap, capital P, that we know today.

[Ben Bolin]

Ooh. And now we're getting into the deep water. It's just like if you are a student of the periodic table in science, you notice that at the end, you get to the real weird ones. This is the end of the Alphabet here. I love this stuff. We'll keep it brief so that our producer, Max, does not kill us. Q. The original sound of the letter Q was like, help me with this one.

[Noel Brown]

Let's see. Quof maybe. I don't know. Like, there's not. It's hard to say because, again, we've got these silent letters sometimes that make a wa or an O sound. I'm gonna go with kof, maybe even. But, yeah, who are we to say?

[Ben Bolin]

If you have a Maryland accent, you would say quail. This translates to a ball of wool or, weirdly enough, a monkey. It was originally a circle that was traversed by a vertical line in roman inscriptions. Around 520 BCE, the letter started to appear as we know it today. Now we gotta get to our buddy.

[Noel Brown]

The letter R. Yes, indeed, the letter R. The profile of a human facing Left with was originally the concept behind the letter R, as written by the Semites. Once again, it was pronounced at that point, resh, which meant head. The Romans once again turned it to the right. Yeah. No way. Yeah, they did it. They did it, those rascally Romans. And they added an inclined foot. So that kind of slanted little. Little guy sticking his little foot out, almost like in a little, I don't know, pirouette kind of gesture.

[Ben Bolin]

Stepping. He's stepping.

[Noel Brown]

He's diaz. It's like he's poking his leg out of his. Showing a little leg out from under the skirt.

[Ben Bolin]

There it is. Look at those gams. We also want to move to the letter S. Our pal Noel mentioned earlier the origin or evolution of the W. The letter S used to look like a horizontal W, but kind of wavy. It was supposed to mean the bow of an arch. The angular nature of the shape comes from the Phoenicians. They gave it the name shin and in their language, that translated to tooth. You're not going to believe it, folks. The Romans flipped it.

[Noel Brown]

How could they, right?

[Ben Bolin]

Unprecedented.

[Noel Brown]

Unprecedented indeed. These Romans, they're just flipping willy and or nilly.

[Ben Bolin]

Yeah, they named it Sigma. A lot of flippy do on their.

[Noel Brown]

Side and ooh, the Gen Alpha kids love the Sigma.

[Ben Bolin]

Oh, gosh.

[Noel Brown]

Skibidi.

[Ben Bolin]

Sigma.

[Noel Brown]

Ohio.

[Ben Bolin]

Shout out. The ancient Semites used the lowercase form of the letter T that you see today T day. They called it taw. And the way that they would pronounce it would sound like T, like golf tea when they. When they spoke it aloud. The Greeks didn't know what was going on, so they called it tau and they added the cross at the top of the letter letter when it's in capital form because they didn't want people to get it confused with the letter X.

[Noel Brown]

Moving on to the letter U and the numeral 2. For any negative land fans out there, the letter U initially looked like Y in 1000 BCE and at that time it was called wow. It was the wow at that point that meant peg, because of course it did under the Greeks. It was called. Called upsilon.

[Ben Bolin]

Big oops. So now we get to. Again, we're getting to the weird stuff at the end of the Alphabet. The Romans in their day, they use the letter V and U interchangeably. This is part of why in episode one, we said V is a weird case study. The distinction between V and other letters didn't start to appear until around the 1400s. That's pretty recent in the grand scheme of things. And this is Where. Where we get to a great note of appreciation for all the folks who figured out this Alphabet beforehand. We could not be able to pronounce the name of our super producer, Max Williams without the work of the scribes of Charlemagne.

[Noel Brown]

Indeed. And now we're finally getting that W, Ben. We took an L early and now we're going for the W, which is also pretty recent because as you can imagine, ridiculous historians. It sort of says what it is, doesn't it? It sort of tells you exactly what it is. It's like two U's side by side, thanks to the scribes of Charlemagne. To your point, Ben, the letter W started during the Middle Ages. It was initially represented with two U's next to one another, separated by a space at the time.

[Ben Bolin]

Like in a moment emoji, like, ooh.

[Noel Brown]

Just so we're gonna get to a little bit of emoji talk at the end here too. At the time, the sound was a little bit closer to what we might think of as a V sound. And the letter then began to appear in print as a brand new, unique letter W. Like we know the W in 1700.

[Ben Bolin]

1700 Common Era AD. This is where we get to. Also, of course, X, the letter psi of the ancient Greeks. The lowercase version was seen in handwrit written manuscripts during medieval times. Not the restaurant.

[Noel Brown]

My favorite. I've never actually been Check it. I just know it from the cable guy.

[Ben Bolin]

It's fun. We should take Eden.

[Noel Brown]

Absolutely.

[Ben Bolin]

It'll be ironically fun. And there's a bunch of printers in the late 1400s. Guys in Italy, they're using lowercase X's. And now I would argue it is an integral part of every SoundCloud rapper's MC name.

[Noel Brown]

Not to mention Ben, you pronounced that that psy version with the silent K on paper. It's KSI. I kind of wonder. Speaking of SoundCloud rapper types, I don't know if you're familiar with this somewhat problematic YouTuber named KSI, who's buddies with Jake, Paul and all those rabble rousers. Bunch of kind of heels they are. But he recently became the subject of some serious Internet roasting with his new SoundCloud rapper Esque song called in the Thick of it, where he says something to the effect from the screen to the ring, to the pen, to the king, something, something, something, something. My bling. You know, it's really, really embarrassing. It sounds like a Backyard against theme song. So I hope that guy's doing okay. He got pretty roasted and he just did the thing you're not supposed to do where he just kept answering the roasts and doubling down and then calling those people big old meanies, and they just didn't understand his genius.

[Ben Bolin]

So are the songs good?

[Noel Brown]

No, no KSI. I hope you. You're okay.

[Ben Bolin]

Here's to the. Here's to the next song. But, you know, there's always an opportunity for improvement, right? Everything has a future, especially the letter Y. We mentioned this earlier, right? Started out as upsilon or upsilon. It was added by the Romans, 100 CE. Now we got to go to Z. Phoenicians back in the day again, as you can tell, ridiculous historians, they were a big deal. They had a letter called zion, and it meant ax, Z, A, Y, I, N. We would spell it phonetically. Now, phoenationally. Now, it first looked like the letter I. And it just had some fancy flourishes, some serifs at the top and bottom, little dealy bops. The Greeks adopted it as zeta, and they gave it the Z sound.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. Zip zippity doo dah.

[Ben Bolin]

Yeah. And it wasn't used for several centuries until. Until the Normans invaded what we call the United Kingdom today. And they said, hey, we have a language that needs the sound of the letter Z or needs the Z sound. And that's how we got Z. Yeah, exactly.

[Noel Brown]

And that's how we wrap up this discussion of the English Alphabet. Man. I kind of teased it, Ben. So I don't want to leave the folks at home without a dope beat to step to. We just talked about a little bit briefly, just how so many of these things were derived initially from. From kind of emoji, like symbols, and then kind of came to be repurposed as phonetic sounds. We have whole cultures that use symbols to represent concepts. And, Ben, you pointed out in your incredible outline here, and I completely agree, that it feels as though we might be heading towards a future where the written word is kind of continuing to be dumbed down and may well be going the way of the dinosaurs in favor of emojis, which, honestly, there's a benefit there because they are universally understandable. And there is dictated, I guess, by the powers that be at Apple, sort of an emoji Alphabet. They decide which ones go in, which ones don't, and which new ones get added. And I've always wondered what the politics of that is. It's got to be fascinating.

[Ben Bolin]

Yeah. Many variables evolved. Now, first good news for every writer and ardent reader in the crowd. The written word never goes away. It may evolve over time. However, the Horse has left the barn. As far as human communication goes, emoji are simple drawings, pictures of anything you might imagine, often used in place of words written in different alphabets to convey ideas visually. Everything we said about writing holds true for emojis. Again, name check to or shout out to Episode one. Entire novels have been written in emoji as we speak. So it is not impossible to imagine a world wherein these symbols become their own kind of language. And the beautiful thing about this, the beautiful thing about the human experiment is that this could unify people. This could reduce friction in conversation. Someone who is a native Mandarin speaker or someone who is speaking Cantonese, they can interact with someone who speaks English. English just through emojis. Now, they're going to miss a lot of nuance. Sure, it's what I mean.

[Noel Brown]

We're not really living in a time of great nuance, though I would argue, unfortunately, things are a little bit more of a blunt instrument in terms of language, you know, for better or for worse though, it is another evolution. And whether you're on board with it or not, it is something that's fascinating to track.

[Ben Bolin]

And with this, we thank. Thank you fellow ridiculous historians so much as always for tuning in. We're at the end of the calendar year, as the humans call it. Shout out to our super producer, Mr. Max Williams.

[Noel Brown]

Max the Phoenician Williams. That's his gangster name. Huge thanks to Christopher Asiotis and Eve's Jeff Coates here in Spirits, Alex Williams.

[Ben Bolin]

Who composed this bangin track. Our fellow rude dudes over at Ridiculous Crime. Check out their show if you like us, you'll love them.

[Noel Brown]

Indeed. Did we say Alex Williams, who composed our theme?

[Ben Bolin]

We did.

[Noel Brown]

Okay, well, that's so rad. We said it twice. That doesn't rhyme, but that's okay. Thanks to you, Ben, for putting together this incredible two parter on the history of the English language. That's no small feat. And you did it with flair.

[Ben Bolin]

Hey, Noel. And also with you. I owe you. And sometimes. Why? I saved that joke for way too long.

[Noel Brown]

I think we made it to the very top. I said we. We owe each other, in fact.

[Ben Bolin]

Get it? Yeah, I'm doing a vowel joke. Aha.

[Noel Brown]

I see. Full circle. I love it. We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[LifeLock]

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[Crisis Counselor]

When a person calls 988, they're connected to a crisis counselor.

[Noel Brown]

Crisis is completely self defined. If you're wondering if you should call, you should probably call.

[Crisis Counselor]

A caller can expect to talk about coping skills, talk about resources and ways to move forward beyond the call. They can call us, they can chat, they can text, and when they come out on the other side, they're feeling better.

[Ben Bolin]

Call or text 988 or chat988lifeline.org can.

[Botox]

Botox onobotulinum Toxin a help if I have chronic migraine? 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

[Savannah Guthrie]

Botox prevents headaches headaches in adults with chronic migraine. Botox is not approved for adults with migraine who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine treatment.

[Botox]

Botox is a prescription medicine injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including als, Lou Gehrig's disease, Myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Talk to your doctor and visit Botox chronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

[Ben Bolin]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bolin]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bolin]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Savannah Guthrie]

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[Noel Brown]

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