How did so many languages end up with such similar alphabets?
Most European languages seems to share a very large amount of their respective alphabets. The pronunciation may be different but the symbol is the same.
Since no one answered your question really, except maybe the video I didn't watch, I'll explain a bit.
European languages all use basically the same alphabet - just as they all share a common ancestor (with the exception of Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian and Basque). This was derived from the Phoenician writing system, which was in turn derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics, whose origins are lost to time.
Indeed, aside from the Chinese character writing system, and the Korean hangul writing system, fairly well all writing systems currently in use in the world are related to the one used by European language speakers. Two great unknown, is if devanagari, the system used by many Sanskrit-derived languages, is related was independently created; and if the Georgian wiring systems are similarly related or independent.
As far as I recall, Sanskrit an Indo-European language, and shares a lot of word roots with the Romance and Germanic languages of Europe.
I was told that the Korean writing system was invented by a king to bring logic, phoneticism, clarity and simplicity to replace the complexity of the Chinese type characters they previously used.
When you speak, those in hearing hear your words, and then they're gone. You speak again, and can choose to say things differently. Thus, the spoken word evolves. New phrases, new pronunciations.
When you write, the written text exists and persists, potentially for a long time. At various times in history, writing has been something that took time or expensive materials, so it was less common to do it for trivial or short-lived purposes. It's easy to forget in the modern digital age with the disposable, ephemeral nature of Twitter and text messaging, but by its very nature, writing is designed to last. Therefore, it evolves more slowly.
That brutally simplifies a whole field of linguistic research, but it's an explanation.
English, French, German, Spanish. The main languages descended from Latin. They all have extremely similar alphabets that imo don't resemble Latin characters at all.
You sure you've seen thr Latin alphabet? Maybe you've mixed it up with Greek? I'm not trying to be mean or anything, I'm just really confused... the pronunciation is certainly different but the characters are mostly same
Jajaja I read your comment a few times and only got more confused. Latin actually partially comes from Greek which is why there are several letters in commonEdit: accidentally posted Spanish Wikipedia, my bad
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