Ancient Writing and the History of the Alphabet

Overview

Course No. 20020
Professor John McWhorter traces the evolution of writing systems through:

• 16 lectures exploring writing from cuneiform to modern punctuation
• The linguistic journey of each English letter from Phoenician origins
• How writing systems spread across cultures and languages
• Why alphabets became the dominant form of literacy

Discover how 5,000 years of writing history shaped our 26-letter alphabet.

Video Lessons

Foundations of Writing

1. The Nature of Writing (25 min)
   How writing differs from spoken language
2. Cuneiform (25 min)
   World’s first writing system
3. Egyptian Hieroglyphs (26 min)
   Pictographic writing that never became alphabetic

Alphabet Development

4. Phoenician Alphabet (19 min)
   From hieroglyphs to phonetic symbols
5. Asian Writing Systems (27 min)
   How alphabets traveled east

Letter Origins (A-M)

6. Vowels A, E, O (23 min)
   Building blocks of language
7. The Letter C (24 min)
   Etruscan origins and sound shifts
8. The History of H (32 min)
   Europe’s silent letter
9. I Becomes J (24 min)
   Noah Webster’s influence

Letter Origins (N-Z)

10. Q and Z (27 min)
    The accidental letters
11. The Letter R (22 min)
    Odd sounds and cursive shapes
12. U, V, W, F (23 min)
    Entangled developments
13. The Letter Y (20 min)
    Borrowed from Greek
14. B, L, N, S (17 min)
    Common letters with clear histories
15. M, D, X, T (18 min)
    Interconnected letter origins

Writing Systems

16. Punctuation (28 min)
    How symbols developed to aid reading