Grammar Girl here. I'm In Yon Fogarty, and today we're talking with Danny Bate about his new book,

Why Q Needs You. Danny Bate is a linguist, writer, broadcaster, and podcaster who is fascinated

by the study of historical languages and etymology.

He also has a podcast called A Language I Love Is, dot, dot, dot, where he talks about different languages, everything from the constructed language Navi to old South Arabian.

He has a PhD in linguistics from the University of Edinburgh, and he is talking with us from Prague. Danny Bait. Welcome to the Grammar Girl podcast. Thank you so much. Seriously, thank you so much. It's a great pleasure as a big admirer of what you do. It's delightful and pretty surreal to be talking to you all the way from Prague to the West Coast. So thank you for having me. I know.

Well, it's exciting to have you here because I loved your book. It was fascinating. And you started

out by explaining how we actually got from hieroglyphics to an alphabet and the conceptual leap

that was involved to get there. Absolutely. I mean, it is this landmark in human history. I really feel that in that

at least, I cannot beat around the bush. It is, and it's an incredible piece of technology

that is so successful that we kind of take it for granted today. Our letters are just so familiar.

We learn them at such an early age.

And we, you know, I wanted to write a book that, among other things, is a chance to celebrate

our alphabet. And for the most of us, myself included, as the writer, to re-acquaint ourselves

with the alphabet and where it came from. As you correctly say, it is ancient.

It has this really, really early origins in the Kingdom of Egypt. So anybody who loves their ancient

history out there, there's lots of Egyptians and there's lots of Phoenicians and these people

who are absolutely crucial in getting the alphabet started. Although indeed, when it was happening,

I really think that the people who got the alphabet off the ground may not have fully appreciated

the significance of what they were doing, and indeed it may not have been appreciated by the

society at large. I think it's not too much of a stretch to say that these people that

we can thank for our alphabet are working very much in the shadow of grand Egyptian culture

at that time, probably very humble people, almost certainly they are foreigners, let's say,

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