Letters

Language geeking - in fact, script geeking - ahead. You have been warned.

Extremely brief script geeking, since i'm in a rush.

This is a collection of links and notes about the evolution of western scripts, and in particular the letters we've lost on the way.

• What i knew was that Etruscan -> Greek -> Latin; what i didn't realise was that Etruscan also -> Alpine (various long-dead scripts) -> Runic. This is cool, because it means that when northwestern Europeans adopted the runic letters thorn and wynn, it was actually getting back letters that had been lost centuries ago (thorn is derived from the same Etruscan letter that gave the Greeks theta; not sure where wynn comes from - sounds like an omega but looks like a rho).
• Also didn't realise that before he invented Cyrillic, St Cyril came up with the Glagolitic script. Whereas Cyrillic is basically Greek with a few extra letters, Glagolitic is almost completely made up, and it really shows - the letters are incredibly complicated. Most of the new letters in Cyrillic are recognisable as derivatives of Glagolitic letters, though. Okay, so it turns out Cyril just invented Glagolitic, and Cyrillic itself emerged later - or something; scholars disagree.
• So, the Cyrillic letter that looks like x is pronounced like a hard H, but it's blatantly a khi that's lost its edge. The letter that looks like an asterisk and is pronounced 'zh' must be derived from khi - it looks like a khi with a line through it, and sounds like a voiced khi (i think - it's not like a western 'zh'). So where does the 'ch' letter (looks like a curvy y or a half psi) come from? Is it another St Cyril special?
• 'Sorting the letter thorn' is about just that, but it gets there through an immense digesssion on the history of western alphabets - i love the story of G.
• English had thorn, wynn, yogh and eth. Thorn is the reason we have the word 'you' instead of 'thou'.
• Icelandic still has thorn.
• Greek had digamma, koppa and sampa.
• Russian had a bunch of wacky letters, if i remember my Unicode tables correctly. Can't recall the details. Crazy Russian letters.
• Is ezh just completely made up what?
• Runes are still cool.
• Ligatures aren't letters, even though we are (or may be) losing them. Even the Dutch ij, Icelandic ae and German ss don't count. Except maybe the German ss, which i understand is now illegal.
• There's a new letter in Cyrillic! It's called palochka, looks like 'I', and has some use in writing various random ancient Caucasian languages which i don't fully understand.

• Unicode - gotta love Unicode. NOW ALL GLYPHS UNTIL THE END!!!!!11111

• If Greek lost digamma and koppa, how come Latin still has the sounds (and the letter, in the case of koppa) - eg Widew/idew/video? I suppose Latin didn't come from classical Greek, but from some earlier form which still had them. Okay, so it seems Latin script came directly from Etruscan, which explains it.
• Christ - Gothic script. Thought that just meant big black-letter Latin.
• Aaaah, good old Ogham.
• In 'On beyond zebra', Dr Seuss describes further letters - yuzz, wum, um, humpf, fuddle, glikk, nuh, snee, quan, thnad, spazz, floob, zatz, jogg, flunn, itch, yekk and Hi. He has drawings of some (all?) of them.