Alphabets Are Fun

[00:00] So on to Googles, right? You got any questions, stuff you want us to answer?
[00:08] So many questions, so many questions. How do you get ID? What do you need ID to
[00:17] get ID? No, it really is true. You've got to have ID to get ID. Yeah, you've got to
[00:28] when you first move into a city you've got to bring, you know, a bill with your
[00:33] name on it, you know. That's right. And your old ID. You should have lived in your
[00:38] house for a month in order to get an electric bill, in order to get an ID, right,
[00:43] so that you can buy a beer in the new state you live in. Good stuff. Okay, but I
[00:54] have a legit under Googles as well. Oh, I thought that was pretty legit. It was
[00:59] quasi-legit. But I'm not going to Google it. I'm just going to complain about it.
[01:11] Oh, we doing under Googles? That was the play of Super Excited. Told us we had to.
[01:22] He said we signed up for it. In the end, it's going to be better and more true than
[01:29] Google can give you. Okay, so we were watching Jeopardy the other night, and
[01:35] obviously there's a lot of news around Jeopardy, so I'm not going to belabor the
[01:41] point. But the final Jeopardy answer was these are the three official language
[01:48] or alphabets of the United Nations. Ooh, do you guys want to guess first before we get
[01:55] to the end? Okay, go ahead. Alphabets. So I'm assuming there's an English
[02:05] language or European, you know? Yep, yep. A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D. And I assume that there's
[02:13] some sort of Eastern Asian, maybe a Chinese script. Oh, sorry, I misspoke. Not the
[02:24] United Nations, the European Union. Oh, that's different. Okay, yep. So European
[02:31] Union. Well, now I don't I got nothing now then. Maybe still Arabic, maybe? Nope.
[02:39] Rocking some Gaelic or something over there. What are they doing? Oh, Gaelic's a
[02:44] good guess. No, it's not. Think origins of Western civilization. Oh, Greek. Mm-hmm.
[02:54] What? That's still an official alphabet? Yeah. Sweet. And the last was Cyrillic.
[03:02] Well, it's one of the official alphabets. And that got me thinking, what is up
[03:09] with the Cyrillic alphabet? I don't know much about it. I know that it looks
[03:14] funny. Like how funny or like funny like a clown? Funny like, I don't know what's
[03:25] gonna happen to me next. I'm reading things in Cyrillic. Yeah, not a good sign. But
[03:31] it's so obviously it's Russians use the Cyrillic alphabet in Russian, the
[03:36] language, right? But then it is also used in other Eastern Bloc countries. I don't
[03:43] know if that's just for Russian or for like Ukrainian and Latvian or whatever.
[03:49] Do they use the Cyrillic alphabet in those languages or whatever? And I'm
[03:55] glad Harper's here because Harper is my go-to guy for everything that's
[03:58] Russian. Except accents, right? Then you ask me. Anything accent-wise, start with
[04:07] Coalson. For me to boop on. I do have so I have a clarifying question. Okay. So what's
[04:17] my own alphabet? So the thing that makes sense to me, I guess, is that all of these
[04:28] maybe Slavic countries or these Eastern Bloc countries were under the USSR and
[04:33] that's why they have adopted the Cyrillic alphabet. But what's our, why is there
[04:45] Cyrillic, where'd that come from? I'm asking the same question. Thanks for
[04:50] clarifying. In my head it was clarifying. It's not at all.
[04:55] Clarifying what an undegoogle is? So what's up with the Cyrillic alphabet?
[05:04] So we want to know, you want to know the origin of it, you want to know its
[05:10] usefulness, you want to know how to speak in Cyrillic. I remember one
[05:16] time I was doing some research for the for there are other podcasts, The
[05:19] Undebeatables, and I had to look up a Russian website and it was all in
[05:24] Cyrillic and so I just looked at the pictures. Well that's another thing, you
[05:29] don't speak in Cyrillic. Cyrillic's not a language as far as I know. At least
[05:33] I've never heard it. You only refer to it as the alphabet. But isn't that
[05:38] spoken? I mean it's just instructions on how to make mouth sounds. That's all an
[05:45] alphabet, right? Sure. I mean I can read Cyrillic or I once upon a time I
[05:50] could read Cyrillic but I was just making words that I didn't know what
[05:54] they meant. Oh so you could understand that you understand that sound of
[05:58] each letter makes, right? Yeah. Okay. I studied Hebrew in college, a similar
[06:06] thing. I could figure out what it sounded like whether I understood what
[06:10] the word was or not. Yeah right. Alphabets are fun. Alphabets are fun.
[06:15] And so do you know Harper of the like how far this goes back? Like
[06:24] obviously these were you know like was it all of the what became the SSR's
[06:31] or whatever were already using the Cyrillic alphabet and it was the common
[06:35] language among the or like there was a common language among the different
[06:39] groups and then there were dialects and all that stuff or whatever? The short
[06:43] answer is no not really. I mean I suspect that like the USSR was such an
[06:47] agglomeration of like weird stuff. I mean okay there were hundreds of
[06:52] languages in the USSR. I mean that that thing spanned like 12 or 13 time
[06:58] zones at its height. Okay. Like it was an absurd place. But my suspicion is that
[07:06] all of this yeah is that yes all the Slavic languages were already using that
[07:11] shared alphabet so they have their own like shared you know tree of languages.
[07:18] Right right okay. And if that is correct then it's got to go back basically a
[07:26] couple thousand years right? Yeah when are we starting to see like civilizations in
[07:35] like what is now the Slavic? I mean it couldn't have been much long after like
[07:41] the Greeks right? I mean they're not that far away. Well so you know based on the
[07:49] Fertile Crescent right? I mean once you cross over the Caucasus Mountains you're
[07:54] you're essentially in Russia right? I mean you're in that Slavic world. That
[08:00] happens very early on. Very early on. It's not that far past the Fertile
[08:04] Crescent when people travel that direction. But yeah I mean I guess what
[08:09] I'm saying is the people that were occupying that space back then were I
[08:13] mean largely nomadic tribes. I mean they weren't sedentary societies right?
[08:19] So they had limited utility for the written language. Right yeah so when did
[08:26] they start writing things down? It was post Rosetta Stone I imagine right? I
[08:31] don't know because the Rosetta Stone is what it's like Arabic and Greek and
[08:36] Latin or something like that or not Arabic. I think Greek and there's
[08:44] definitely Latin probably. And then I is it Egyptian maybe or something? Mmm that
[08:53] sounds like a thing. Yeah yeah yeah. They're like hieroglyphics I guess maybe I don't
[08:58] know. Okay anyway so do we know when people started writing down things in
[09:04] Cyrillic? Do we have a guess? Can we give a ballpark of written
[09:09] language in general? Well do you count like hieroglyphics? Sure yeah why not.
[09:19] Because that's a written language. 4,000 years or something? Okay yeah that
[09:33] seems old but it could be. That does seem old. Because I'm just thinking 2,000 years.
[09:37] It's definitely more than 2,000 years. Oh no I'm oh no you're right no so I'm
[09:43] thinking 2 years. Yes 2,000 pre-Geebus which would be 4,000 years ago so
[09:48] we're good we're on the same. Yeah so I'm on the same I think that's
[09:54] probably about right. I think I think 2,000 BC is probably a fair guess. And I
[10:03] think probably Cyrillic I don't know I'm gonna guess sometime around 500
[10:11] probably. My assumption is just like religion you know what I mean. Okay
[10:15] whether or not that's the first usage of it or that's what just happens to be
[10:19] extant who knows. Right so somebody like the Russian Orthodox Church or
[10:28] something like that. Which is definitely a thing for sure. Sort of foisted this
[10:33] upon all of the other sort of Slavic nation states or whatever. I
[10:40] guess here's where my history of Russia does me poorly. Like so was Russia
[10:46] sort of the dominant state going back you know millennia into the... I mean
[10:56] prior to Peter the Great it was just like I mean it was considered just like a
[11:00] big cultural backwater. Okay and Peter the Great is when he's doing stuff like
[11:07] late 1600s I think. Okay gotcha. And so then he just kind of I mean that's when
[11:16] they you know create a navy and you know start hanging out with Europeans
[11:21] and doing European-y things. Okay right. They definitely had language and such
[11:27] before that but I don't think that there was much... there wasn't a very strong
[11:32] central government it was just like a loose monarchy. Okay okay so now I'm
[11:39] starting to question our whole church. I'm starting to question our two thousand
[11:43] years of writing right because I mean civilization goes back ten thousand
[11:52] years right as we know it sort of right that not not the hunting and you know
[11:58] but like the... Once we have agriculture. Once we have agriculture that's ten
[12:03] thousand years right? Something like that. So why weren't we writing pretty soon
[12:08] after that? I mean I know it's an oral history stuff goes on forever there's
[12:12] you know it's it's it's Homer and telling epics and... Yeah I mean there may
[12:18] have been but like that's the type of stuff that doesn't survive very well
[12:22] over the years right yeah like we're able to we know all the way back to the
[12:28] Greeks because you know we Europeans sort of are direct sort of descendants of
[12:35] that and there's you've had the writings have been preserved and hieroglyphics
[12:39] we know because we found like they preserve things in tombs and etched
[12:44] things into walls okay but as an Asia been writing for like 6,000 years or
[12:53] something like that I feel like they were the first ones to probably have written
[12:56] probably always overlooked yeah yeah China that's going back that's my guess
[13:01] you're probably right. Writing and fireworks. Okay so as far as Cyrillic goes we
[13:07] think that there were random nation-states with a loose monarchy and
[13:15] a big religious push right circa Gebes circa Gebes time is one word I'm gonna
[13:25] go later than that I'm gonna go for 500 okay I'll go like 800 okay like
[13:34] Charlemagne okay all right I like that and then so here's another here's
[13:43] another thing I have a question right so so if there's the romance languages which
[13:49] come from Latin right and we all can you know so once you learn Spanish it's the
[13:56] same roots for Italian and French or whatever right like that's all these
[13:59] are all right they spring from the same thing so Cyrillic springs from something
[14:04] else that's completely different from that right and that's why it has its
[14:10] own alphabet and that's why it's its own thing where does it lots of shared it
[14:16] seems like I mean there's lots of shared characters with the Latin alphabet
[14:24] right okay okay or what we think of it the English alphabet what do we call our
[14:30] alphabet the alphabet because we won I think it's all the worst now I mean
[14:36] that's what I would call it but I don't actually know if that's right the
[14:41] the romantic yeah but it's it's the lat the latin or the Roman alphabet okay
[14:46] gotcha so I assume that there was some branching that took place post Roman
[14:51] Empire right and the Romans exported their alphabet and at some point it
[14:55] just sort of mutated right which is again for what a thousand years right
[15:03] over a thousand years they did that yeah okay so that's on the Roman Empire or
[15:12] something like that correct at one point yeah okay so I'm seeing that Cyrillic
[15:20] is coming from Greek oh it's derived from Greek okay and earliest variance of
[15:31] it existed circa 893 are we post Jesus we're post Jesus yeah at this time but
[15:45] that is the point for that okay it was made official it was made the in Bulgaria
[15:53] in 893 do something like that sure well we never guess Bulgaria we should do
[16:01] that more often I just want to say I'm trying to I'm trying to help out by
[16:06] googling and I have no idea how to spell Cyrillic and so I put in what I thought
[16:12] it was like and it says Cyrilac infant Cheerio milk great it's a it's a great as
[16:21] a snack or a meal similar Nestle Cyrilac Sierra Cilla rack it's not
[16:28] no it's C E L E R a C how do I spell Cyrillic see why I see why I see why okay
[16:40] okay so in the 9th century AD the Bulgarians are Simeon the some mean one
[16:47] the great commissioned a new script the early Cyrillic alphabet to be made at
[16:53] the pres love literary school in the first Bulgarian Empire which would
[17:00] replace the glaggo lytic script produced earlier by Saint Cyril and methodius so
[17:09] that's kind of it's like it was like freaking love areas my boy directed idea
[17:14] like this guy was like we need a new script to distinguish ourselves or
[17:20] so he told some scholars to get it get her done okay what was his name
[17:29] Simeon won the great Simeon the first the great I feel like I feel like he gets
[17:34] to be called the great if he invented a national language that's still going on
[17:37] well he didn't invent anything well I mean he commissioned it I'll give him a
[17:43] great on that sure so if I do if I commissioned you guys to like come up
[17:48] with a language I will call you a Harper the great yeah okay as long as it sticks
[17:53] around and we just come up with a language you know whatever uses it I
[17:57] don't know if you deserve great for that yeah and with the accession of
[18:02] Bulgaria to the European Union in January 2007 Cyrillic became the third
[18:08] official script of the European Union Latin and Greek I'm going to briefly
[18:16] look up when we cross the cock winded people cross the caucus mountains so
[18:24] scholars generally agree that the earliest form of writing was about 5,500
[18:28] years ago in Mesopotamia so mmm Mesopotamia Coalson you are right it did
[18:36] predate even the Egyptians okay I guess I guess the rule is if you can make beer
[18:49] you can make an alphabet so the Sumerians were on that I mean yeah it
[18:56] gets after a couple beers it gets real dicey but gets all glycolytic hey human
[19:10] migration no sweat I'll just read up on this real quick yeah I mean there were
[19:19] of course already people there you're asking when something was exported when
[19:23] some sort of culture was exported is what you're asking no I don't think I'm
[19:29] asking that okay are you sure you're not did you know that Cyrillic was the
[19:38] official script of Mongolia that makes sense okay right there and then all
[19:45] you got all your stans Uzbekistan Kazakhstan Tajikistan kurigurig I can
[19:53] Kyrgyzstan I can always say that one it's cuz it needs some need some vowels
[19:59] yeah Yupik in Alaska why is Alaska using Cyrillic don't know it's really
[20:12] interesting bet that got a little weird during the Cold War Yupik is peoples of
[20:22] Western and South Central Alaska and Northeastern Siberia so strange it's not
[20:33] as if there was a land in the family of the Eskimo Aluit languages yeah and for
[20:42] some reason well I guess it's because it wasn't written okay let's see the
[20:49] earliest efforts at writing Yupik were those of missionaries who with their Yupik
[20:54] speaking assistance translated the Bible into other religious texts into Yupik
[21:00] such efforts as those of st. Innocent of Alaska and so it must have been some
[21:06] Russian Orthodox missionaries basically interesting all right cool thanks y'all
[21:17] okay early Indo-European peoples ancestors of the Armenians entered the
[21:26] Caucasus from Anna Anatolia in the early first millennium BCE so there you go
[21:40] the first millennium BCE so that was later then we had suspected yeah I mean
[21:53] they are the remnants of Iranian nomads who roamed through the Western steep
[21:59] step thank you from the 7th century BC until 4th century yeah I mean they're
[22:07] presumably like the world was pretty well populated okay but what 15,000
[22:15] years ago there's or so okay when did people yeah cross into North America
[22:21] 20,000 years ago and then takes lots of generations for them to get all
[22:28] the way south but yeah yeah so there's just people everywhere but we're trying
[22:35] to yeah got it and then yeah people want to take their land you can see
[22:45] which you have a mountain range in between or oceans in between you see
[22:49] how people would develop differently definitely well nicely done I think we
[22:59] nailed that right totally