WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.839 What if I told you that the most personal word 00:00:03.839 --> 00:00:06.839 in the English language, like the word you use 00:00:06.839 --> 00:00:09.179 to define your very existence every single day, 00:00:09.679 --> 00:00:11.820 actually started out as a doodle of a human arm? 00:00:12.480 --> 00:00:15.460 I mean, it sounds like a surrealist joke, honestly. 00:00:15.759 --> 00:00:18.239 Right. But it is entirely historically accurate. 00:00:18.399 --> 00:00:21.120 The whole foundation of our daily, you know, 00:00:21.280 --> 00:00:24.019 digital and written lives is basically built 00:00:24.019 --> 00:00:27.600 on some truly bizarre ancient accidents. Yeah, 00:00:27.600 --> 00:00:29.579 I'm looking at you sitting across from me framed 00:00:29.579 --> 00:00:33.100 against those massive bookshelves and those ancient 00:00:33.100 --> 00:00:35.340 star charts in your office. And it just strikes 00:00:35.340 --> 00:00:37.880 me how much we rely on symbols to make sense 00:00:37.880 --> 00:00:39.579 of the universe. Oh, absolutely. We're wired 00:00:39.579 --> 00:00:41.320 for it. But then, you know, you look down at 00:00:41.320 --> 00:00:44.420 a keyboard and you see this single vertical stroke. 00:00:44.719 --> 00:00:47.479 the ninth letter of the Latin alphabet, the letter 00:00:47.479 --> 00:00:50.200 I. It is so mundane that your brain probably 00:00:50.200 --> 00:00:52.820 just filters it out completely. It's like invisible, 00:00:53.140 --> 00:00:55.600 hiding in plain sight. But today, we are gonna 00:00:55.600 --> 00:00:58.280 shatter that illusion. We really are. So, welcome 00:00:58.280 --> 00:01:01.119 to today's Deep Dive. If you are that perpetually 00:01:01.119 --> 00:01:03.640 curious learner who loves uncovering the hidden 00:01:03.640 --> 00:01:07.299 universe, inside everyday things, you are in... 00:01:07.280 --> 00:01:09.299 The perfect place. We've got a lot to cover. 00:01:09.439 --> 00:01:12.260 We do. We are taking a massive stack of historical, 00:01:12.540 --> 00:01:15.000 mathematical and linguistic data, specifically 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:17.799 anchoring on the really comprehensive Wikipedia 00:01:17.799 --> 00:01:20.739 entry for the letter I. And we're going to trace 00:01:20.739 --> 00:01:24.120 a sprawling global story because there is no 00:01:24.120 --> 00:01:27.319 such thing as just a letter. Definitely not. 00:01:27.459 --> 00:01:30.299 OK, let's unpack this because our mission today 00:01:30.299 --> 00:01:33.239 is to transform this tiny vertical line you tap 00:01:33.239 --> 00:01:35.599 into your phone. like a hundred times a day, 00:01:35.879 --> 00:01:38.400 into a fascinating historical artifact. So where 00:01:38.400 --> 00:01:40.480 does this actually start? Well, to find the origin, 00:01:40.500 --> 00:01:42.799 we have to travel way back to the ancient Egyptian 00:01:42.799 --> 00:01:45.959 writing systems. The direct ancestor of our modern 00:01:45.959 --> 00:01:48.739 letter I actually began as a hieroglyph. And 00:01:48.739 --> 00:01:51.159 as you mentioned earlier, it was a literal pictorial 00:01:51.159 --> 00:01:53.939 representation of a human arm. I am just trying 00:01:53.939 --> 00:01:56.260 to picture how an arm turns into a straight line. 00:01:56.439 --> 00:01:59.180 It's a stretch visually, for sure. But before 00:01:59.180 --> 00:02:01.980 we even get to the shape, what did that picture 00:02:01.980 --> 00:02:05.540 actually sound like? I assume it wasn't the eye 00:02:05.540 --> 00:02:08.219 or eye sound we use today, right? No, no, not 00:02:08.219 --> 00:02:10.860 even close. Ancient Egyptians attached a very 00:02:10.860 --> 00:02:13.840 specific consonant sound to this symbol. A consonant? 00:02:13.979 --> 00:02:17.680 Yeah. It represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative. 00:02:18.219 --> 00:02:20.759 A voiced pharyngeal fricative. Try saying that 00:02:20.759 --> 00:02:23.419 three times fast. I consider myself pretty well 00:02:23.419 --> 00:02:26.199 -read, but I have absolutely no idea what to 00:02:26.199 --> 00:02:28.599 do with my mouth to make that noise. For you 00:02:28.599 --> 00:02:30.740 and me both, how does that actually sound? It's 00:02:30.740 --> 00:02:32.819 a sound that really does not exist in modern 00:02:32.819 --> 00:02:35.889 English. To make it, you have to restrict the 00:02:35.889 --> 00:02:38.389 airflow way back in your pharynx -like, deep 00:02:38.389 --> 00:02:40.610 down in your throat, and force your vocal cords 00:02:40.610 --> 00:02:43.750 to vibrate. Oh, wow. Yeah, it has this very deep, 00:02:43.849 --> 00:02:46.050 tight guttural quality. In the International 00:02:46.050 --> 00:02:48.310 Phonetic Alphabet, it's actually designated by 00:02:48.310 --> 00:02:52.080 the symbol that looks like a... a backwards question 00:02:52.080 --> 00:02:54.300 mark without the dot. Okay, so we have a drawing 00:02:54.300 --> 00:02:56.759 of an arm that represents a vibrating noise in 00:02:56.759 --> 00:02:59.319 the back of the throat. Exactly. How on earth 00:02:59.319 --> 00:03:01.719 do we bridge the gap between that and the vowel 00:03:01.719 --> 00:03:04.620 we use in words like igloo or ice? Right, so 00:03:04.620 --> 00:03:07.159 we bridge it through this massive translation 00:03:07.159 --> 00:03:10.599 quirk by the Semitic peoples. A quirk. Yeah. 00:03:10.759 --> 00:03:13.960 They encountered this Egyptian hieroglyph, but 00:03:13.960 --> 00:03:17.340 they made a completely practical, localized change. 00:03:17.879 --> 00:03:20.580 In their specific language, the word for arm 00:03:20.580 --> 00:03:23.639 began with a J sound, like the sound we hear 00:03:23.639 --> 00:03:26.259 at the beginning of the English word, yes. They 00:03:26.259 --> 00:03:28.360 didn't care about the original Egyptian throat 00:03:28.360 --> 00:03:30.740 sound at all. They just looked at the picture 00:03:30.740 --> 00:03:33.099 of the arm, thought of their own word for arm, 00:03:33.300 --> 00:03:36.400 and reassigned the symbol to represent that J 00:03:36.400 --> 00:03:39.240 sound. That is essentially the ancient equivalent 00:03:39.240 --> 00:03:42.039 of how we use Oh, that's a great way to put it. 00:03:42.240 --> 00:03:43.919 Like, you take a symbol that was designed by 00:03:43.919 --> 00:03:46.360 some software engineer in California to mean 00:03:46.360 --> 00:03:49.460 one very specific thing, like the fold in hands 00:03:49.460 --> 00:03:52.460 emoji, which was originally coded to mean please 00:03:52.460 --> 00:03:55.060 or thank you in Japanese culture. Right. And 00:03:55.060 --> 00:03:56.800 then teenagers in another country get a hold 00:03:56.800 --> 00:03:59.259 of it, apply their own local context, and suddenly 00:03:59.259 --> 00:04:02.180 it's universally used to mean high five or praying. 00:04:02.580 --> 00:04:04.960 We just, like, repurpose the visual for what 00:04:04.960 --> 00:04:07.259 makes practical sense to our own brains. If we 00:04:07.259 --> 00:04:09.319 connect this to the bigger picture... Written 00:04:09.319 --> 00:04:11.939 language is basically a multi -millennia game 00:04:11.939 --> 00:04:14.419 of historical telephone. A game of telephone, 00:04:14.659 --> 00:04:17.279 yeah. It shifts from a physical object to a deep 00:04:17.279 --> 00:04:20.019 throat consonant and then just gets hijacked 00:04:20.019 --> 00:04:22.360 to represent a J sound purely because of local 00:04:22.360 --> 00:04:24.579 slang. That's wild. And the game of telephone 00:04:24.579 --> 00:04:27.220 just keeps going. The Phoenicians eventually 00:04:27.220 --> 00:04:30.699 inherited this symbol and called it Yod. Yod. 00:04:31.180 --> 00:04:34.279 Then the Greeks adopted a slightly modified form 00:04:34.279 --> 00:04:38.399 of this Phoenician yod, renamed it iota, and 00:04:38.399 --> 00:04:40.740 shifted its purpose again, this time to represent 00:04:40.740 --> 00:04:44.019 the i vowel sound. The classic Greek iota. So 00:04:44.019 --> 00:04:45.839 the straight vertical line is finally starting 00:04:45.839 --> 00:04:48.639 to emerge visually. It is, and then the Romans 00:04:48.639 --> 00:04:51.459 adopted it. But the Romans used this single vertical 00:04:51.459 --> 00:04:54.459 line for both the I vowel sound and the J consonant 00:04:54.459 --> 00:04:57.199 sound. Wait. Yeah. In Latin, those two wildly 00:04:57.199 --> 00:04:59.500 different sounds shared the exact same letter. 00:04:59.639 --> 00:05:02.959 Hold on. They didn't have a letter J. How did 00:05:02.959 --> 00:05:05.240 anyone reading a document know which sound to 00:05:05.240 --> 00:05:07.160 make? Context clues. You just had to know the 00:05:07.160 --> 00:05:09.319 word. That sounds like a nightmare. It kind of 00:05:09.319 --> 00:05:11.600 was. In fact, if you look at the modern letter 00:05:11.600 --> 00:05:15.540 J... It originated as nothing more than a stylistic, 00:05:15.759 --> 00:05:19.560 swooping variation of the letter I. Really? Just 00:05:19.560 --> 00:05:21.959 a variation. Yeah. Scribes would sometimes add 00:05:21.959 --> 00:05:24.360 a little tail to the I at the end of Roman numerals 00:05:24.360 --> 00:05:26.420 just to make it look fancy. They were completely 00:05:26.420 --> 00:05:29.000 interchangeable. Just to be decorative. Exactly. 00:05:29.420 --> 00:05:32.519 It wasn't until the 16th century, like thousands 00:05:32.519 --> 00:05:35.319 of years after the Romans, that linguists finally 00:05:35.319 --> 00:05:37.899 threw their hands up and officially differentiated 00:05:37.899 --> 00:05:41.019 I and J into two completely separate letters. 00:05:41.439 --> 00:05:43.579 I refuse to believe people just tolerated that 00:05:43.579 --> 00:05:46.620 kind of ambiguity for a century. They did. But 00:05:46.620 --> 00:05:48.339 eventually, they standardized it to use and it 00:05:48.339 --> 00:05:50.300 trickles down into the alphabet we use today. 00:05:51.399 --> 00:05:53.660 But it seems to me that while they fixed the 00:05:53.660 --> 00:05:55.800 grammatical function, the physical appearance 00:05:55.800 --> 00:05:58.420 of the letter I became a completely new nightmare 00:05:58.420 --> 00:06:01.279 once human history moved into the era of mass 00:06:01.279 --> 00:06:03.480 printing and typography. Oh, without a doubt. 00:06:03.660 --> 00:06:05.800 The transition from handwriting to movable type 00:06:05.800 --> 00:06:08.079 definitely created a whole new set of functional 00:06:08.079 --> 00:06:10.160 problems. Because you're dealing with rigid blocks 00:06:10.160 --> 00:06:13.610 now. Right. When you are carving tiny metal blocks 00:06:13.610 --> 00:06:16.970 for a printing press, simplicity can actually 00:06:16.970 --> 00:06:19.569 become your enemy. I call this the sans serif 00:06:19.569 --> 00:06:22.230 crisis. That's a good name for it. We all know 00:06:22.230 --> 00:06:24.709 the modern pain of trying to copy a temporary 00:06:24.709 --> 00:06:27.310 Wi -Fi password off a router. You are staring 00:06:27.310 --> 00:06:30.110 at the sticker and there is a straight vertical 00:06:30.110 --> 00:06:33.009 line. You just have to guess. You are squinting, 00:06:33.009 --> 00:06:34.910 trying to figure out the mechanics of the fart. 00:06:35.410 --> 00:06:38.269 Is this an uppercase I? Is it a lowercase L? 00:06:38.569 --> 00:06:41.230 Is it the vertical bar character? Or is it the 00:06:41.230 --> 00:06:43.709 digit one? It's incredibly frustrating. It really 00:06:43.709 --> 00:06:46.410 is. Yeah. In sans serif typefaces, which are 00:06:46.410 --> 00:06:48.750 fonts deliberately designed without those little 00:06:48.750 --> 00:06:50.990 extra strokes on the ends of the letters, the 00:06:50.990 --> 00:06:54.389 uppercase I is often structurally indistinguishable 00:06:54.389 --> 00:06:57.420 from those other characters. I have to ask. Why 00:06:57.420 --> 00:07:00.399 do we continue to tolerate typefaces that make 00:07:00.399 --> 00:07:04.100 i, l, and 1 look absolutely identical if it causes 00:07:04.100 --> 00:07:06.399 so much daily digital friction? It's a brilliant 00:07:06.399 --> 00:07:08.680 question, and it highlights a constant war between 00:07:08.680 --> 00:07:10.879 aesthetic minimalism and functional clarity. 00:07:11.399 --> 00:07:13.699 Serif -ed typefaces, like your classic Times 00:07:13.699 --> 00:07:16.740 New Roman, solve this problem mechanically. The 00:07:16.740 --> 00:07:19.279 capital I gets a baseline serif at the bottom 00:07:19.279 --> 00:07:22.279 and a cap height serif at the top. So it has 00:07:22.279 --> 00:07:25.019 feet and a hat? Basically, yes. It gives the 00:07:25.019 --> 00:07:27.360 letter a firm, grounded footprint, distinguishing 00:07:27.360 --> 00:07:30.100 it entirely from the lowercase L, which usually 00:07:30.100 --> 00:07:32.730 gets a hooked ascender. A hook descender. Yeah. 00:07:32.930 --> 00:07:34.970 OK, break that down for the listener who isn't, 00:07:34.970 --> 00:07:37.410 you know, a massive typography nerd. Sure. It's 00:07:37.410 --> 00:07:39.730 that little curb at the very top or bottom of 00:07:39.730 --> 00:07:41.790 the vertical line, making it look almost like 00:07:41.790 --> 00:07:44.750 an umbrella handle. Got it. Those tiny architectural 00:07:44.750 --> 00:07:47.230 details are highly functional. They aren't just 00:07:47.230 --> 00:07:50.110 decorative flourishes. And speaking of tiny architectural 00:07:50.110 --> 00:07:53.250 details, this brings us to another major typographical 00:07:53.250 --> 00:07:55.589 feature of the letter I that most people don't 00:07:55.589 --> 00:08:00.509 know the actual name for, the dot. Oh. Yes. If 00:08:00.509 --> 00:08:02.449 there is one piece of trivia you keep in your 00:08:02.449 --> 00:08:04.449 back pocket from today's deep dive to impress 00:08:04.449 --> 00:08:08.430 your friends, it is this. The dot over the lowercase 00:08:08.430 --> 00:08:12.149 i has a specific official name. It is called 00:08:12.149 --> 00:08:15.829 a title. T -I -T -T -L -E. It is a phenomenal 00:08:15.829 --> 00:08:18.670 word. It really is. In English and most Latin 00:08:18.670 --> 00:08:21.970 -derived alphabets, the uppercase E does not 00:08:21.970 --> 00:08:25.069 have a title, while the lowercase E does. We 00:08:25.069 --> 00:08:27.810 accept this as a mandatory but ultimately arbitrary 00:08:27.810 --> 00:08:29.649 design choice. Right, it's just how we do it. 00:08:30.029 --> 00:08:32.389 But in other writing systems, the title is a 00:08:32.389 --> 00:08:34.710 load -bearing pillar of the entire language. 00:08:35.110 --> 00:08:36.889 Yeah. Take the Turkish alphabet, for instance. 00:08:37.110 --> 00:08:39.330 Yeah, the Wikipedia source gets incredibly specific 00:08:39.330 --> 00:08:43.009 about this. In Turkish, the dot isn't a stylistic 00:08:43.009 --> 00:08:46.049 choice at all. It is the literal dividing line 00:08:46.049 --> 00:08:48.730 between two entirely separate letters. Exactly. 00:08:49.230 --> 00:08:51.529 The Turkish alphabet features a dotted E's and 00:08:51.529 --> 00:08:54.830 a dotless I. And they represent completely different 00:08:54.830 --> 00:08:57.629 mechanical movements in the mouth. How so? Well, 00:08:57.710 --> 00:08:59.590 the dotted version represents a front vowel, 00:08:59.850 --> 00:09:01.789 meaning your tongue is pushed forward toward 00:09:01.789 --> 00:09:04.269 your teeth when you say it. OK. The dotless version 00:09:04.269 --> 00:09:06.570 represents a back vowel where your tongue pulls 00:09:06.570 --> 00:09:09.429 back toward your throat. Because they are mechanically 00:09:09.429 --> 00:09:11.529 separate letters, they both have uppercase and 00:09:11.529 --> 00:09:14.860 lowercase forms. Wait. Really? Yes! So you have 00:09:14.860 --> 00:09:17.100 a towering uppercase with a dot floating over 00:09:17.100 --> 00:09:21.379 it and a tiny lowercase OO without a dot. An 00:09:21.379 --> 00:09:24.879 uppercase I with a dot and a lowercase I with 00:09:24.879 --> 00:09:27.960 no dot. that would entirely break an English 00:09:27.960 --> 00:09:30.240 speaker's brain. It really exposes our linguistic 00:09:30.240 --> 00:09:33.620 bias. What we view as just font styling is actually 00:09:33.620 --> 00:09:36.159 structural grammar elsewhere. That's fascinating. 00:09:36.340 --> 00:09:39.240 Another stunning example of this is the 1978 00:09:39.240 --> 00:09:42.240 version of the African Reference Alphabet. In 00:09:42.240 --> 00:09:44.899 that extended system, they don't treat the Serif 00:09:44.899 --> 00:09:48.360 I and the Sans Serif I's as just two different 00:09:48.360 --> 00:09:50.659 font choices on a drop -down menu. What do you 00:09:50.659 --> 00:09:53.259 mean? They are codified as entirely different 00:09:53.259 --> 00:09:55.190 uppercase letters. Wait, I need to make sure 00:09:55.190 --> 00:09:56.889 I understand this. You're saying the font style 00:09:56.889 --> 00:09:59.250 you choose actually changes the alphabet you 00:09:59.250 --> 00:10:02.210 are typing in. Yes. The serif uppercase i is 00:10:02.210 --> 00:10:04.990 the designated uppercase counterpart for a specific 00:10:04.990 --> 00:10:07.950 phonetic symbol, the small capital 2. Oh, wow. 00:10:08.190 --> 00:10:10.710 Meanwhile, the sans serif uppercase i is the 00:10:10.710 --> 00:10:13.370 counterpart for the standard lowercase i. They 00:10:13.370 --> 00:10:15.149 carry completely different linguistic weights. 00:10:15.570 --> 00:10:18.110 That is mind -bending. But you know, while the 00:10:18.110 --> 00:10:20.950 physical printed shape of the letter I causes 00:10:20.950 --> 00:10:23.230 all this visual confusion across different fonts 00:10:23.230 --> 00:10:26.230 and languages, the way English speakers actually 00:10:26.230 --> 00:10:28.769 pronounce the letter causes an entirely different 00:10:28.769 --> 00:10:31.230 kind of auditory chaos. Yeah, English spelling 00:10:31.230 --> 00:10:33.889 is nothing if not auditory chaos. Seriously, 00:10:34.289 --> 00:10:36.909 I is the fifth most common letter in the English 00:10:36.909 --> 00:10:39.970 language. Yeah. It is ubiquitous, but it refuses 00:10:39.970 --> 00:10:42.190 to just pick a sound and stick with it. Right. 00:10:42.460 --> 00:10:44.919 In modern English, it represents multiple different 00:10:44.919 --> 00:10:47.639 phones. You've got the short sound, like in the 00:10:47.639 --> 00:10:50.379 word bill. You've got the E -I sound, like in 00:10:50.379 --> 00:10:52.460 the last syllable of the word machine. And then 00:10:52.460 --> 00:10:55.019 you have the sound A, like in the word kite. 00:10:55.899 --> 00:10:58.539 And it is that last one, the A sound in kite, 00:10:59.019 --> 00:11:01.600 that holds the key to why our spelling makes 00:11:01.600 --> 00:11:04.000 absolutely no sense today. Here's where it gets 00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:06.899 really interesting. In traditional English grammar, 00:11:07.120 --> 00:11:09.639 We are taught in elementary school to call that 00:11:09.639 --> 00:11:12.340 sound the long I. Right, the classic long I. 00:11:12.440 --> 00:11:14.059 But if you actually listen to what your mouth 00:11:14.059 --> 00:11:17.000 is doing, it's not a single stretched out vowel. 00:11:17.360 --> 00:11:20.740 It's a diphthong. It is two completely distinct 00:11:20.740 --> 00:11:24.240 vowel sounds gliding together. Ah, and ee. Hi. 00:11:24.860 --> 00:11:27.159 So I have to ask on behalf of everyone who ever 00:11:27.159 --> 00:11:30.110 struggled with phonics. Why do we lie to children 00:11:30.110 --> 00:11:33.190 and call it a long eye if it is mechanically 00:11:33.190 --> 00:11:35.470 a completely different type of sound? Because 00:11:35.470 --> 00:11:38.649 we are victims of one of the most dramatic chaotic 00:11:38.649 --> 00:11:40.870 events in the history of human communication 00:11:41.360 --> 00:11:44.960 The great vowel shift. The term long I is just 00:11:44.960 --> 00:11:47.480 a historical hangover. Hundreds of years ago, 00:11:47.720 --> 00:11:49.840 during the Middle English period, people did 00:11:49.840 --> 00:11:52.379 actually pronounce it as a true long vowel. It 00:11:52.379 --> 00:11:55.120 was a sustained I sound. Just think of the modern 00:11:55.120 --> 00:11:57.919 E sound. Held out longer. OK, let me try this. 00:11:58.100 --> 00:12:00.480 So a word like time. would have been pronounced, 00:12:00.480 --> 00:12:04.539 what, team? Yes, team. But then, the great vowel 00:12:04.539 --> 00:12:07.159 shift occurred. Okay. Over the course of roughly 00:12:07.159 --> 00:12:09.860 two centuries, starting in the 1400s, the entire 00:12:09.860 --> 00:12:12.320 pronunciation system of the English language 00:12:12.320 --> 00:12:14.980 slid around in the mouths of its speakers. Let's 00:12:14.980 --> 00:12:16.820 look at the exact mechanical progression for 00:12:16.820 --> 00:12:19.700 the letter I. Let's do it. It started as that 00:12:19.700 --> 00:12:23.389 middle English long vowel, I. Then, as we move 00:12:23.389 --> 00:12:26.889 into early modern English, speakers started dropping 00:12:26.889 --> 00:12:30.370 their jaws slightly, and the sound shifted to 00:12:30.370 --> 00:12:35.169 I, like, I. Hold on. You're telling me an entire 00:12:35.169 --> 00:12:37.730 country of people just collectively decided to 00:12:37.730 --> 00:12:40.509 change how they moved their jaws over a few generations. 00:12:40.950 --> 00:12:43.350 Why would an entire population alter their physical 00:12:43.350 --> 00:12:46.070 speech patterns like that? Linguists still debate 00:12:46.070 --> 00:12:48.809 the exact triggers, but it likely had to do with 00:12:48.809 --> 00:12:52.049 massive social upheaval. Like what? Well, you 00:12:52.049 --> 00:12:54.289 had sudden mass migration to London following 00:12:54.289 --> 00:12:56.450 the Black Death, which brought different regional 00:12:56.450 --> 00:12:58.370 accents together. Oh, that makes sense. You also 00:12:58.370 --> 00:13:01.029 had the lingering prestige of French pronunciation 00:13:01.029 --> 00:13:04.129 crashing into working class English. People started 00:13:04.129 --> 00:13:06.250 mimicking different vowel placements to sound 00:13:06.250 --> 00:13:09.049 more affluent, and those subtle shifts just cascaded 00:13:09.049 --> 00:13:11.490 through the entire language. So team becomes? 00:13:11.769 --> 00:13:14.769 Team. Right. And then it shifted further, moving 00:13:14.769 --> 00:13:17.429 the tongue lower to an I sound. And finally, 00:13:17.590 --> 00:13:20.090 it settled on the modern English A diphthong 00:13:20.090 --> 00:13:22.289 that you and I use today in General American 00:13:22.289 --> 00:13:25.090 and Received Pronunciation. Time. The spoken 00:13:25.090 --> 00:13:28.409 language underwent this massive, multi -generational 00:13:28.409 --> 00:13:31.820 physical transformation. But here is the critical 00:13:31.820 --> 00:13:34.960 twist. The invention of the printing press happened 00:13:34.960 --> 00:13:38.000 right in the middle of this shift. Oh, it's like 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:40.480 taking a flash photograph of a busy intersection. 00:13:41.120 --> 00:13:43.340 The spoken language kept driving forward, but 00:13:43.340 --> 00:13:45.379 the spelling rules were permanently frozen in 00:13:45.379 --> 00:13:48.639 that one snapshot from 1450. That is a perfect 00:13:48.639 --> 00:13:51.779 metaphor. Our spelling rules and outdated grammar 00:13:51.779 --> 00:13:55.620 terms like long I reflect how English was spoken 00:13:55.620 --> 00:13:58.480 by a guy operating a wooden printing press in 00:13:58.480 --> 00:14:00.740 the 15th century. That is incredible. The vocal 00:14:00.740 --> 00:14:03.860 cords moved on, but the typography stayed stubbornly 00:14:03.860 --> 00:14:05.960 locked in place. It's ironic that the printing 00:14:05.960 --> 00:14:09.179 press froze the spelling of I. because centuries 00:14:09.179 --> 00:14:11.779 before the press even existed, the physical act 00:14:11.779 --> 00:14:14.539 of writing I was already causing massive headaches 00:14:14.539 --> 00:14:17.039 for medieval scribes. It absolutely was. Which 00:14:17.039 --> 00:14:19.120 brings us to the pronunciation of the most personal 00:14:19.120 --> 00:14:22.460 word in our language, the first person singular 00:14:22.460 --> 00:14:26.179 pronoun, I. This is one of the greatest misunderstandings 00:14:26.179 --> 00:14:28.940 in English orthography. I will admit my own bias 00:14:28.940 --> 00:14:33.340 here. I always ask myself, why is I the only 00:14:33.340 --> 00:14:35.399 pronoun we capitalize? It's a fair question. 00:14:35.539 --> 00:14:39.440 We don't capitalize me, you, he, she, or they, 00:14:39.879 --> 00:14:41.320 unless they're sitting at the start of a sentence. 00:14:41.940 --> 00:14:44.940 But I demands a capital letter no matter where 00:14:44.940 --> 00:14:47.720 it sits. I always assumed this was proof of human 00:14:47.720 --> 00:14:49.740 narcissism. A lot of people think that. Like 00:14:49.740 --> 00:14:52.759 the ultimate ego trip of the writer declaring, 00:14:53.039 --> 00:14:55.440 I am the most important subject in this entire 00:14:55.440 --> 00:14:58.139 paragraph. Therefore, I must be physically larger 00:14:58.139 --> 00:15:00.850 than the other words. It is a very natural assumption 00:15:00.850 --> 00:15:03.409 to make. Psychologically, it feels correct. But 00:15:03.409 --> 00:15:06.029 the truth is entirely mechanical. Mechanical? 00:15:06.289 --> 00:15:09.210 Yes. What's fascinating here is, according to 00:15:09.210 --> 00:15:12.110 the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, the capitalized 00:15:12.110 --> 00:15:14.850 I first began appearing around the year 1250, 00:15:15.269 --> 00:15:17.490 primarily in the Northern and Midland dialects 00:15:17.490 --> 00:15:20.370 of England. Okay, 1250. This is the era of monks 00:15:20.370 --> 00:15:22.710 hunched over parchment in drafty scriptoriums. 00:15:23.110 --> 00:15:25.730 Exactly. All manuscripts were handwritten, and 00:15:25.730 --> 00:15:27.830 medieval handwriting relied heavily on vertical 00:15:27.830 --> 00:15:31.970 strokes called minims. Yeah. Letters like U, 00:15:32.129 --> 00:15:36.129 M, and I were all just a series of identical 00:15:36.129 --> 00:15:39.210 vertical dashes. Now imagine you were a scribe 00:15:39.210 --> 00:15:42.549 writing quickly. If you write the pronoun I as 00:15:42.549 --> 00:15:45.610 a single, tiny, undotted vertical dash sitting 00:15:45.610 --> 00:15:49.860 between Two other words, what happens mechanically? 00:15:49.860 --> 00:15:52.000 It just disappears. It looks like a straight 00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:54.029 pen slip. or it accidentally attaches to the 00:15:54.029 --> 00:15:56.970 word next to it. It vanishes entirely. The Chambers 00:15:56.970 --> 00:15:59.289 Dictionary notes that capitalizing the pronoun 00:15:59.289 --> 00:16:02.289 made it visually distinct. It was a practical 00:16:02.289 --> 00:16:05.250 engineering solution to a visual problem. Unbelievable. 00:16:05.389 --> 00:16:08.049 It had absolutely nothing to do with ego, self 00:16:08.049 --> 00:16:10.929 -importance, or narcissism. It was just to ensure 00:16:10.929 --> 00:16:13.649 the word didn't literally get swallowed by the 00:16:13.649 --> 00:16:16.450 surrounding ink. I am genuinely relieved on behalf 00:16:16.450 --> 00:16:18.750 of humanity. We aren't just universally raging 00:16:18.750 --> 00:16:21.070 narcissists trying to dramatically center ourselves. 00:16:21.870 --> 00:16:23.929 to make sure a tiny word didn't get smudged out 00:16:23.929 --> 00:16:25.970 of existence. What's fascinating here is how 00:16:25.970 --> 00:16:29.070 a strictly visual problem in medieval manuscript 00:16:29.070 --> 00:16:31.649 copying permanently altered the grammatical foundation 00:16:31.649 --> 00:16:34.289 of an entire global language. A complete accident. 00:16:35.070 --> 00:16:37.210 Right. Monks trying to make their handwriting 00:16:37.210 --> 00:16:41.250 legible in the 13th century created a rigid capitalization 00:16:41.250 --> 00:16:43.950 rule that billions of English speakers still 00:16:43.950 --> 00:16:46.730 strictly follow today. And what's even more incredible? 00:16:46.879 --> 00:16:49.360 Chambers points out that while this started in 00:16:49.360 --> 00:16:52.620 the North in 1250, this capitalized form didn't 00:16:52.620 --> 00:16:54.779 fully establish itself in the south of England 00:16:54.779 --> 00:16:58.679 until the 1700s. A 500 -year rollout for a spelling 00:16:58.679 --> 00:17:01.679 update. Basically, yeah. But this necessity for 00:17:01.679 --> 00:17:04.420 clarity, this desperate need for the letter I 00:17:04.420 --> 00:17:06.940 to stand out and carry distinct meaning, isn't 00:17:06.940 --> 00:17:09.539 just a relic of medieval monks. Transitioning 00:17:09.539 --> 00:17:12.000 from medieval legibility to modern utility, the 00:17:12.000 --> 00:17:14.599 Wikipedia source dives into how I operates in 00:17:14.599 --> 00:17:17.009 the wild today. Outside of standard language, 00:17:17.230 --> 00:17:20.390 it's deployed globally in math, maps, technology, 00:17:20.549 --> 00:17:22.529 and navigation. It might be the most versatile 00:17:22.529 --> 00:17:24.670 character in our entire typographic arsenal. 00:17:24.890 --> 00:17:26.289 Let's run through the mechanics of this because 00:17:26.289 --> 00:17:28.269 it's doing incredibly heavy lifting. First, you 00:17:28.269 --> 00:17:30.670 have Roman numerals. The uppercase I represents 00:17:30.670 --> 00:17:32.650 the number one. Though we should note the historical 00:17:32.650 --> 00:17:35.630 irony there. The Roman numeral for one originally 00:17:35.630 --> 00:17:38.529 bore zero relation to the letters of the alphabet. 00:17:38.910 --> 00:17:41.650 It was just a single physical tally mark carved 00:17:41.650 --> 00:17:44.509 into wood that, over time, visually converged 00:17:44.509 --> 00:17:47.210 with the letter i until they became indistinguishable. 00:17:47.329 --> 00:17:50.250 Another visual accident. Yep. But then we jump 00:17:50.250 --> 00:17:52.730 into mathematics, where the mechanics get really 00:17:52.730 --> 00:17:56.569 complex. If you see a lowercase italic i, it 00:17:56.569 --> 00:17:59.250 represents the unit imaginary number. I know 00:17:59.250 --> 00:18:01.309 people hear imaginary number of their eyes glaze 00:18:01.309 --> 00:18:05.200 over, but why did mathematicians choose I? They 00:18:05.200 --> 00:18:08.039 needed a symbol to represent a concept that broke 00:18:08.039 --> 00:18:10.519 traditional math, the square root of negative 00:18:10.519 --> 00:18:12.680 1. Right, which isn't possible normally. You 00:18:12.680 --> 00:18:14.480 physically can't multiply a number by itself 00:18:14.480 --> 00:18:17.380 and get a negative result. So they defined i 00:18:17.380 --> 00:18:19.779 to represent that impossible value, which allowed 00:18:19.779 --> 00:18:22.299 them to expand the standard 1D number line into 00:18:22.299 --> 00:18:25.420 a 2D plane. It unlocked the ability to calculate 00:18:25.420 --> 00:18:28.299 alternating currents and quantum mechanics. And 00:18:28.299 --> 00:18:30.819 on the flip side, an uppercase i denotes an identity 00:18:30.819 --> 00:18:33.039 matrix in linear algebra. Which functions how, 00:18:33.039 --> 00:18:36.259 exactly? the number one, but for a grid of numbers. 00:18:36.799 --> 00:18:39.940 If you multiply any matrix by the identity matrix 00:18:39.940 --> 00:18:43.799 I, it remains completely unchanged. It acts like 00:18:43.799 --> 00:18:46.119 a mathematical mirror. From quantum mechanics 00:18:46.119 --> 00:18:48.200 to the physical streets, if you're wandering 00:18:48.200 --> 00:18:50.700 around a foreign city, hopelessly lost, and you 00:18:50.700 --> 00:18:53.440 see a sign with a lowercase i, you don't read 00:18:53.440 --> 00:18:55.720 it phonetically. You instantly know what it is. 00:18:55.779 --> 00:18:58.579 The information point. Yes. It's the universal 00:18:58.579 --> 00:19:00.660 symbol for an information point or a visitor 00:19:00.660 --> 00:19:03.970 center. It entirely transcends language barriers. 00:19:04.210 --> 00:19:06.190 And we can't forget its role bridging the gap 00:19:06.190 --> 00:19:08.829 between human intention and computer architecture. 00:19:09.069 --> 00:19:11.789 Yes, the invisible code. In the NATO phonetic 00:19:11.789 --> 00:19:14.650 alphabet, used by pilots to ensure clear communication 00:19:14.650 --> 00:19:18.049 over static eye, is India. Right. In Morse code, 00:19:18.170 --> 00:19:20.589 it is stripped down to its absolute most basic 00:19:20.589 --> 00:19:24.829 rhythm. Two short dots. Beep beep. But the part 00:19:24.829 --> 00:19:26.769 that really grounds it for me is its digital 00:19:26.769 --> 00:19:29.400 footprint. Deep inside the device you are listening 00:19:29.400 --> 00:19:32.400 to right now, it has specific hex codes inherited 00:19:32.400 --> 00:19:35.160 from the original ASCII standards to modern Unicode. 00:19:35.579 --> 00:19:39.200 Ah, yes. 0x49 for uppercase, 0x69 for lowercase. 00:19:39.450 --> 00:19:42.089 And the reason those hex codes matter is that 00:19:42.089 --> 00:19:43.970 your computer doesn't know what a letter is, 00:19:44.250 --> 00:19:47.150 it only understands voltage. Those hex codes 00:19:47.150 --> 00:19:50.430 are the exact translation manual that turns the 00:19:50.430 --> 00:19:52.829 physical pressure of your finger hitting a plastic 00:19:52.829 --> 00:19:56.430 keyboard into a binary string of ones and zeros 00:19:56.430 --> 00:19:59.849 that the silicon chip can actually process. So 00:19:59.849 --> 00:20:02.269 what does this all mean? When you stack all of 00:20:02.269 --> 00:20:05.730 this up, the letter I has essentially become 00:20:05.730 --> 00:20:08.670 the ultimate utility player of human communication. 00:20:09.009 --> 00:20:11.369 It really has. It subs in for numerical tally 00:20:11.369 --> 00:20:14.250 marks, it carries the weight of impossible 2D 00:20:14.250 --> 00:20:16.970 mathematical planes, it guides lost tourists 00:20:16.970 --> 00:20:19.650 without making a sound, and it acts as the binary 00:20:19.650 --> 00:20:22.170 bridge between human touch and digital screens. 00:20:22.430 --> 00:20:24.990 This raises an important point about human cognition, 00:20:25.230 --> 00:20:27.349 though. What's that? How can a single straight 00:20:27.349 --> 00:20:30.430 line hold so much dense contradictory information 00:20:30.430 --> 00:20:33.329 without completely breaking our systems of understanding? 00:20:33.650 --> 00:20:36.329 That is a good question. We rely entirely on 00:20:36.329 --> 00:20:39.990 context. Your brain instantaneously knows whether 00:20:39.990 --> 00:20:42.349 the vertical line you are looking at is the number 00:20:42.349 --> 00:20:45.190 one, a capitalized ego pronoun, a mathematical 00:20:45.190 --> 00:20:48.369 matrix, or the way to the museum restrooms, based 00:20:48.369 --> 00:20:50.950 entirely on the subtle environmental cues around 00:20:50.950 --> 00:20:55.230 it. It is context all the way down. Which perfectly 00:20:55.230 --> 00:20:57.970 brings us to the end of our journey today. We 00:20:57.970 --> 00:21:00.490 started by looking at a tiny, seemingly boring 00:21:00.490 --> 00:21:02.910 vertical stroke on a keyboard. And what a trip 00:21:02.910 --> 00:21:05.750 it's been. Truly. And we've traced it all the 00:21:05.750 --> 00:21:08.150 way back to an ancient Egyptian drawing of a 00:21:08.150 --> 00:21:10.630 severed arm. We watched it get repurposed by 00:21:10.630 --> 00:21:13.190 Semitic tribes, adopted by the Greeks and Romans, 00:21:13.529 --> 00:21:16.009 and survived the jaw -shifting auditory chaos 00:21:16.009 --> 00:21:18.690 of the Great Vowel Shift. We saw how the invention 00:21:18.690 --> 00:21:22.049 of the title and the seraph solve massive typographical 00:21:22.049 --> 00:21:25.130 crises, and how a medieval scribe's very practical 00:21:25.130 --> 00:21:28.430 fear of a smudged manuscript gave us the capitalized 00:21:28.430 --> 00:21:31.490 I pronoun. It is an absolute linguistic survivor 00:21:31.490 --> 00:21:34.049 that is now working overtime globally. But before 00:21:34.049 --> 00:21:35.970 we sign off, I want to toss it back to you. After 00:21:35.970 --> 00:21:37.569 everything we've unpacked, what is the biggest 00:21:37.569 --> 00:21:39.390 takeaway for you? I want to leave you with one 00:21:39.390 --> 00:21:41.730 final thought to mull over. We just discussed 00:21:41.730 --> 00:21:45.210 how the letter I started as a literal picture, 00:21:45.630 --> 00:21:48.799 a hieroglyph of an arm. Over thousands of years, 00:21:48.960 --> 00:21:51.339 humans worked incredibly hard to abstract it 00:21:51.339 --> 00:21:54.160 into a phonetic symbol, a letter that just represents 00:21:54.160 --> 00:21:57.380 an invisible sound. But today, if you look at 00:21:57.380 --> 00:22:00.019 that tourist map, the lowercase i isn't being 00:22:00.019 --> 00:22:02.619 read phonetically. It is being viewed entirely 00:22:02.619 --> 00:22:06.400 as a visual icon, a picture that means information. 00:22:06.740 --> 00:22:09.380 Oh, wow. So after thousands of years of evolving 00:22:09.380 --> 00:22:11.839 away from picture writing, are we slowly moving 00:22:11.839 --> 00:22:14.619 backward to a hieroglyphic way of reading where 00:22:14.619 --> 00:22:16.900 our letters are functioning as pictures all over? 00:22:16.779 --> 00:22:19.640 The snake eating its own tail, linguistically 00:22:19.640 --> 00:22:22.220 speaking. Love that. Thank you so much for joining 00:22:22.220 --> 00:22:24.759 us on this deep dive. The next time you sit down 00:22:24.759 --> 00:22:26.460 at your desk, before you start tugging that email, 00:22:26.539 --> 00:22:28.279 just take one second to look closer at the keys 00:22:28.279 --> 00:22:30.279 in your keyboard. Underneath your fingertips, 00:22:30.779 --> 00:22:32.779 in the simplest, most mundane little shapes, 00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:35.240 there is an entire universe of human history 00:22:35.240 --> 00:22:37.680 just waiting to be unpacked. Talk to you next 00:22:37.680 --> 00:22:37.839 time.