who/how alphabetized the alphabet for the English language? Is it random or is there some sort of guiding principle I’m unaware of? Bonus points if there’s actually a ‘better’ alphabetical order out there?
In: 4505
The alphabet used for English is based on the Latin alphabet. If you look at the classic latin alphabet that are used since the 1st century BC it has 23 letters compared to the 26 English used today J, U and W is missing
Old and Middle English ade some additional letter like Thorn that was Þ þ.
If you look back at the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet) the Old Latin alphabet hade 21 letters that looked like they do today. Go back and you end up at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Italic_scripts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Italic_scripts) that for example, the Etruscans used, It looks more like runes to us
They are based on the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet) and back further to the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet) We are now around 1000 BC and it’s origin is Egyptian hieroglyphs.
So the shape of the letter is what the Romans used over 2 millennia ago. The order has its origin in the Phoenicians around 3 millennia ago. There might have been a specific reason for the order but you have to ask someone that lived millennia ago.
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