A country uses three different alphabets for the same letters, and their order never changed

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A country uses three different alphabets for the same letters, and their order never changed

the gist

Georgian is written in three scripts: Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli. They look quite different, but their letters share the same names and the same alphabetical order, and all three run left to right. Mkhedruli became the everyday script and is used for modern Georgian, while the older two survive mainly in Georgian Orthodox Church texts and iconography. The alphabet originally had 38 letters, and five have since become obsolete, leaving 33 in use. Its exact origin has never been firmly established, although its order follows the Greek alphabet, with uniquely Georgian sounds grouped at the end.

how it works

Each script is a set of letter shapes assigned to the same sound sequence. Asomtavruli, the oldest, uses capital-style letters, Nuskhuri is a rounder form used for church texts, and Mkhedruli is the more streamlined shape that later became the everyday hand. Because the letters keep the same names and order, a reader can move between them once the shapes are learned.

so what

Georgia's alphabetic tradition is a living heritage: the living culture of the three scripts was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List in 2016, recognising that writing itself can be cultural identity.

the bigger pattern

Several languages keep multiple scripts for different purposes, such as Serbian with Cyrillic and Latin, or Japanese mixing kana and kanji. Scripts often survive in religious or ceremonial use after everyday writing has moved on.

fun fact

Georgian has its own unique script that is not related to the Cyrillic alphabet used by neighbouring Russia.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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