
Why Are Alphabet Letters Arranged How They Are? - vinnyglennon
https://www.scienceabc.com/social-science/why-are-alphabet-letters-arranged-how-they-are.html
======
letoosh
This seems very low quality. And it ends with:

> the alphabet’s letters are in that order because they have simply __always
> been that way __.

Seriously? Like before the universe?

Quick search leads to Wikipedia (obviously) which actually tries to answer the
question:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet#Letter...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet#Letter_names_and_order)

Interestingly, first sounds and "words" produced by human babies are quite
similar to the sounds the starting letters of most alphabets produce ("baba",
"dada", "gaga" etc): [https://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby-talk-your-babys-
first-w...](https://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby-talk-your-babys-first-
words#1)

So the answer may be in biology / evolution.

~~~
jjtheblunt
The article doesn't seem to mention the "Futhark", which is the Runic
alphabet, which _is_ the same alphabet optimized for carving into grained
wood.

For some reason, the old Scandinavian stylization of this alphabet is not
ordered the same, since "futhark" is, like "alphabet" being the first two
letters in order, "f" "u" "th" "a" "r" "k", no?

------
wsxcde
The answer is because the script evolved and was not designed so letters
appear in somewhat random order.

Brahmi, which is the parent script for most Indian scripts as well as a bunch
of other scripts in the region (Tibetan, Thai, Burmese, Javanese etc.), has a
well-designed alphabet ordering. Simple vowels come first, followed by
dipthongs, followed by constants. Consonants themselves are ordered as velar
first, followed by palatals, retroflexes, dental and finally labial consonants
-- notice the articulation point is moving from the back to the front of the
mouth. Within each group the ordering is unvoiced, unvoiced aspirated, voiced,
voiced aspirated and finally nasal consonant. It's a thing of beauty.

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pabo
"So the order has ancient roots, but where does it come from?

I hate to disappoint you, but we're really not sure. The practice of having
the letters in an established order makes sense: It’s easier to teach and to
learn. Why some ancient people put them in that specific order, though, is
unknown. Whoever did it didn’t leave any record that we know of explaining why
they lined the letters up like that."

[https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/29011/why-are-letters-
ab...](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/29011/why-are-letters-abc-order)

------
ndrake
This doesn't answer the question, but it's a great TMBG song:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRYw-
pqSdKo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRYw-pqSdKo)

~~~
phjesusthatguy3
My kids watched that DVD _so many times_

That DVD taught me how to do the alphabet backwards as well as I can forwards.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
My Dad taught us, around the table after dinner.

------
JackFr
A lot of words to basically not answer the question. Honestly, he doesn't even
come close.

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rammy1234
[https://qz.com/india/965283/a-biography-of-the-tamil-
languag...](https://qz.com/india/965283/a-biography-of-the-tamil-language-
reveals-its-influence-on-sanskrit-and-hebrew/). how hebrew , sanskrit and
tamil related

------
coldpie
Would that this article didn't have dumb impact font memes.

~~~
blazespin
Children use memes these days. The article and website is clearly targeted at
age < 16

It's a good article for its purpose (giving kids a history lesson of our
alphabet), and I imagine effective. But you have to appreciate its audience.

------
Timpy
> English is considered a very difficult language to master due to the
> inconsistencies in it, as well as the different ways you can pronounce any
> given letter.

This is a huge pet peeve of mine. The writer hedges this statement with the
passive voice, and "master" is difficult to qualify, but generally speaking
English is not a difficult language. I'll concede that phonics are a mess, but
it's not riddled with more inconsistencies than most other world languages.

~~~
ddebernardy
> I'll concede that phonics are a mess, but it's not riddled with more
> inconsistencies than most other world languages.

Actually it is. And it's not just a matter of opinion, either. Going by
objective criteria:

1\. English has most of the grammar exceptions of German and French combined,
plus a few others gained from other languages it borrowed words and/or
constructs from -- which is to say more than most if not all other languages.

2\. Phonics are, to echo your thoughts, not just a mess but an utter, complete
mess.

3\. English's lexical similarity with other languages (whether European or
not) is below [0] the typical value you'll find when probing into languages
spoken by neighbors.

4\. Depending on how you define what a word is, English is widely considered
to have the richest set of words to pick from.

It's straightforward to learn International English. But to learn English at a
high level is, in fact, very hard. Consider spending some time with a Modern
English major from a good university if you need any convincing.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_similarity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_similarity)

~~~
Timpy
I'm really not interested in the opinion of an English major on the subject,
unless they're also familiar with linguistics or they've learned a foreign
language to a high level. This is a heuristics issue monolingual English
speakers are susceptible to. I spend most of my time with non-native English
speakers (Italians, Germans, and Japanese people), and they all report that
English is less complex than their native language.

Of course English (and especially the mastery of English) is complex, but it's
not exceptionally complex. Your "objective criteria" is sometimes not very
objective, and sometimes not very good criteria for language complexity.

1\. This point isn't objective. Borrowing grammar from German and French does
not mean that we've accumulated more exceptions in our grammar than any other
language, it doesn't mean that other languages have not also borrowed, and
this does not objectively prove that English has more exceptions than any
other language.

Russian requires you to decline a noun by grammatical number (single/plural),
one of six cases, and one of three genders. Even after you take these three
axises into consideration and find the proper declension in your declension
matrix there's still a chance that it doesn't follow the rules that you
learned. You can either call this a system of 3 different noun types (one for
each gender) with a ton of exceptions, or you can classify it as 18 different
noun types with a ton of complex rules, and nearly no exceptions. English is
like this as well (particularly phonetics, which is related to the next
point). It's hard to be objective about language.

2\. We agree on this point, but I want to point out that Chinese and Japanese
are an order of magnitude more complex when it comes to phonetics. You need to
learn several thousand characters to be considered literate as an adult. I
can't read Chinese, but in Japanese the pronunciation of these characters
changes depending on context. High frequency examples:

上 - 18th most common Kanji used on Wikipedia, 8 different pronunciations (9 if
you consider ショウ and ジョウ different)

生 - 27th most common Kanji on Wikipedia, 12 different pronunciations

3\. Lexical similarities isn't a relevant criteria. The inverse to your point,
nobody would say "Russian isn't a complicated language because it's lexically
similar to Ukrainian." Both can be complex if they're lexically similar, and a
lexically unique language could be utterly uncomplicated. The most charitable
interpretation I can speak to this point is that lexical similarities
definitely help language acquisition, because you get a lot of words "for
free" so to speak.

4\. Again, I don't think vocab size is a great criteria for language
complexity, and it's not very objective. We could inflate this number with a
huge dictionary full of words that nobody uses. Some times words are "buy two
get one free," like "wind, shield, windshield". Many languages have this (必ず
without fail、勝つ victory、必勝 certain victory) and it doesn't reflect complexity
in any consistent way.

------
logfromblammo
Right here is when Tevye jumps in and starts singing "tradition!"

It's because ancestor and cousin scripts used the phonetic glyphs for numbers
as well, and the ordering had to be fixed.

Once Indo-Arabic numerals made it in to the character set, the need for strict
ordering went away. But now that characters have numeric values again (ASCII,
Unicode), they're fixed forever.

------
resplin
If you find this article interesting, you would probably enjoy this great
podcast about the history of English:

[https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/episodes/](https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/episodes/)

He goes into much more detail. He has a separate audiobook that focus on the
evolution of the alphabet.

~~~
lkramer
+1 this is a really good podcast, much better than the lame article.

------
JoeAltmaier
Is it true, or some strange legend, that 'ampersand' used to be at the end of
the Alphabet Song? And it was written 'and per se And' meaning the 'and' sign,
which was considered a letter at the time. And got sung and
mangled/mondegreened into 'ampersand'?

~~~
yesenadam
From etymonline.com:

ampersand. (n) 1837, contraction of _and per se and_ , meaning _' &' by itself
is 'and'_ (a hybrid phrase, partly in Latin, partly in English). An earlier
form of it was colloquial _ampassy_ (1706). The distinction is to avoid
confusion with "&" in such formations as "&c.", a once common way of writing
"etc." (the _et_ in _et cetera_ is Latin for "and"). The letters a, I, and o
also formerly (15c.-16c.) were written _a per se_ , etc., especially when
standing alone as words.

The symbol is based on the Latin word _et_ "and," and comes from an old Roman
system of shorthand signs (ligatures) attested in Pompeiian graffiti...

In old schoolbooks the ampersand was printed at the end of the alphabet and
thus by 1880s the word _ampersand_ had acquired a slang sense of "posterior,
rear end, hindquarters."

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/ampersand](https://www.etymonline.com/word/ampersand)

------
epaga
What a frustrating article to read.

tldr;

"Why Are Alphabet Letters Arranged How They Are?"

Because the Greeks modified the Phoenician alphabet a bit, and used that
order.

"Well...why was the Phoenician alphabet arranged the way it was?"

<no answer>

~~~
adrian_b
The Latin alphabet lost a few Greek letters, but retained "F", which existed
in older Greek alphabets but was lost in newer alphabets. Latin changed the
pronunciation of a few letters and later added letters, at the end of the
alphabet, except for "G" (which replaced an abandoned Greek letter).

Before that, the Greeks took the Phoenician alphabet, which had 22 letters
ending in "R", "S" and "T".

The Greeks lost a few Phoenician letters and added new letters after "T".

The Phoenicians inherited the alphabet from other closely related Semitic
people (very little is known about those), but the Phoenician language was
simplified during time and the Phoenician alphabet lost 5 letters from the
older alphabet, which had 27 letters.

I am not aware of an older alphabet whose order is known, besides the old
27-letter ancestor of the Phoenician alphabet.

Most evidence about the letter order of the old 27-letter alphabet comes from
the Ugaritic alphabet, which was also derived from it, like the Phoenician,
but which replaced the graphic signs used by the older alphabet with cuneiform
signs, nevertheless retaining the names and the order of the original 27
letters. The Ugaritic alphabet added 3 new letters after the original 27
letters.

The names of the first 27 letters of the Ugaritic alphabet can be seen in the
Unicode database (from 0x10380 to 0x1039A).

Many school exercises with the Ugaritic alphabet have been unearthed, so there
is no doubt about the letter order.

~~~
adrian_b
I have forgotten to mention that my point was that all known alphabets derive
their order from an ancient 27-letter Semitic alphabet, so any hypotheses
about the origin of the letter order must discuss the order of the original 27
letters, not the order of the letters of more recent alphabets, which just
copied the original order, then deleting some letters and adding new letters,
usually at the end of the alphabet.

------
tomThom
I recently learned Sanskrit and it was shockinh to find the order being so
scientific.

Guttural palatal <x> dental labial

And in the order aspirated unaspirated

Pretty cool.

------
aalleavitch
Isn't it because in Hebrew (and other ancient languages) the letters are also
numbers?

~~~
adrian_b
Yes, but the numeric values were attached to the letters much later (providing
a means for writing numbers), many hundreds of years after the alphabetic
letter order was established.

------
barnaclejive
Can we stop putting dumb memes in blog post in 2020?

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gpmcadam
They're in alphabetical order.

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Drakar1903
So that singing the alphabet song we learned as a child is more melodic.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
If the letters were indeed arranged in service of the alphabet song, they did
a terrible job. "G" and "P" are too far apart, so the letters L–P have to be
sung really fast for the rhyme to work.

As a very young child, I remember thinking that "LMNO" was one letter, until I
watched a Sesame Street segment which explicitly addressed this misconception.
Since this segment exists, I clearly wasn't the only child who got confused.

~~~
bhrgunatha
I like the backwards variant but it suffers the same problem.

    
    
        my know I now z y x  
        me with sing you won't time next  
        z y x, w  
        v u t  
        s r q  
        p o n m  
        l k j  
        i h g f  
        e d c b a

------
geddy
They probably arranged them that way to match the Alphabet Song.

~~~
kangnkodos
"Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?" \- Steven
Wright

------
mmhsieh
to prevent old mechanical typewriters from jamming

~~~
lkbm
This is about why it's A B C, not why it's Q W E.

~~~
mmhsieh
yes, if it were A B C it would jam all the time. think about it.

~~~
bil7
good bait

~~~
mmhsieh
assuming a particular permutation from the lexicographic order to the standard
three-line typewriter order, anything other than A B C would cause absolute
chaos and many a snagged ink ribbon. think about it.

------
LudwigNagasena
> English is considered a very difficult language to master due to the
> inconsistencies in it

By whom? I don’t think it would be hard for a person who knows a language from
Standard Average European Sprachbund to learn English compared to, say,
Chinese, Arabic or Bengali.

~~~
ilikehurdles
I think you're glossing over an important phrase in your quote: "to master".
English is relatively straightforward to learn to a good enough level where
everyone can understand you. Mastering English is being really good at
internalizing the inconsistencies of the language, of which there are plenty.

Most recent one I encountered was a non-native speaker on a comment thread
saying "childs" instead of "children", and there's really no general rule
about english grammar that would indicate "ren" being the pluralizing
qualifier here. You just have to memorize these things.

How do you pronounce "read"? That depends on if you interpreted the word as
past tense or present tense. How do you pronounce "lead"? That depends on if
you interpreted the word as the heavy metal or the verb meaning taking charge
of an effort. The "o" in lose sounds exactly like the one in choose, but the
"o" in loose sounds nothing like the one in chose.

~~~
LudwigNagasena
Due to Zipf's law of words frequency there is only so much irregularity a
language can handle. And English is not special in this regard.

Irregularities are not hard to master, it is one of the easiest things
actually, it's rote memorization. For someone whose native language is without
articles it would be a struggle to learn a language with them for the first
time. Or, for an English native speaker it would be really hard to learn how
to construct naturally-sounding Japanese sentences.

If instead of being concerned with articles, tenses, relative clause
positioning, noun-verb argreement, topic and focus expression, morphosyntactic
alignment, negative coordination, discourse markers, grammatical mood,
grammatical genders / noun classes, coverbs, preverbs, measure words, etc you
are being concerned with how to pronounce _read_ , it means you learn an easy
language (for you), because, probably, your native language shares lots of
features with English.

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EugeneOZ
Why we've made the Web like this in 2020? It's horrible, we need to fix it and
never repeat these mistakes.
[https://imgur.com/3wX5GmV](https://imgur.com/3wX5GmV) \- screenshot of this
site when I've opened it.

