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
any order the Phoenicians used would have become the order of modern letters in (almost) all alphabets.
thats why phonetically (soundwise) the sounds the first letters of each language are prettu much the same.
the order of the Phoenician alphabet comes from the proto sinatic script which is basically random drawings (aleph is an ox head and bet is a house).
Remember how easy it was to learn your ABCs? Thank the Phoenicians. They invented them!
Others have already explained that the order of the alphabet is based on history and has no real meaning behind it. I’ll just offer a new order.
qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm
What if we were to put it into some sort of periodic table form?
You could order all of the letters randomly, and if you were used to it it would feel the same, though a lot of languages go by a similar pattern, so it might be just by pronunciation?
Other people have already covered the history, so, I’m gonna provide an example of what a “better” alphabetical order would look like.
Every consonant sound in the English language can be classified in a bunch of different ways based on how the sound is made. For example:
* M, N, and the “NG” sound are all nasal sounds, because they are made by letting air escape through the nose.
* B, P, and M are all bilabial sounds, because the two lips are the point of contact that makes the sound. For comparison:
* F and V are labiodental, because they’re made using the bottom lip and the top teeth; and:
* W is labial-velar, because although the lips are rounded while making it, the main spot where the sound is made is farther back in the throat.
* B, D, and G are called “voiced” consonants, because of how active the vocal chords are while their sounds are made. They’re made in different places in the mouth, but, this aspect is shared between them. They have “voiceless” counterparts: P, T, and K.
* B, P, D, T, G, and K are what are called “plosives”; they’re made using a full break in the airflow. (That’s why it’s really hard to make a continuous “T” sound.) Meanwhile, S and Z are what are called “fricatives”; the airflow out of the mouth isn’t completely stopped (which is why it’s a lot easier to make a continuous “S” sound than a continuous “T” sound, even though “S” and “T” as sounds are produced in the same spot in the mouth).
The same goes for vowels too; they may all be continuous sounds, but, they’re all made in different spots in the mouth.
So. With that as context, here’s an example of how you could “re-alphabetize the alphabet”, in a way that is based on how the main sounds of the letters are made:
P B M V F T D S Z C J R L N Y K G Q W X H I E A U O
This is how that ordering would work:
* CONSONANTS
* Place of articulation, front of mouth to back: Bilabials, then labiodentals, then coronals, the palatal approximant (represented by Y), then velars, then velars with secondary articulation (secondary articulations also arranged front to back), and lastly the glottal (H).
* Within each place of articulation: voiceless variants before voiced variants; for manners of articulation, it goes plosives, fricatives, affricates (with C placed according to the CH sound, J placed according to the “hard J” sound), approximants, laterals, nasals
* VOWELS
* Front vowels, high to low, then back vowels, high to low (with U placed according to the “OO” sound).
It’s still arbitrary. There’s not really an “objective” reason why I put voiceless consonants before voiced ones, or consonants before vowels. But, it’s an ordering based on a systematic understanding of how the sounds are produced.
This is how it started:
Phoenicians were writing contracts with each other but they didn’t have writing so they made clay balls and inside the balls they put clay representations of what was agreed upon in the contract.
After a while they realized that they could draw the things on the outside of the ball so they wouldn’t have to literally break the contract to review what the agreement was.
Then they realized that they didn’t even need a ball, they could draw on flat sheets of clay.
The first letters were originally things that would be traded. The letter A was originally a symbol meaning “ox.” Over time the letter turned upside down.
So the original order of the letters probably had to do with the importance of those images to contract writing and any alliteration they had to make it so it was easy/natural to recite them in a certain way.
The Phoenicians did 4000 years ago. Most “western” alphabets (essentially most of the eurasian writing systems that developed west of India) were in some way inspired by or based on the Phoenician alphabet, and many alphabets (including Arabic and Hebrew as well as our own Latin alphabet) follow the same basic order of letters, give or take a few.
Fun fact: the Bangla alphabet order is based upon the part of the mouth it is made in. There is actually a logical sequence.
Not answering it directly but..
Where in your mouth English letters are formed
byu/CBSmartCA incoolguides
This shows where the sounds are formed in the mouth..
Standardised chinese pronunciation is arranged in this manner..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin
This could in some way explain why mama and baba / papa are baby’s first words in many cultures..
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/words-mom-dad-similar-languages/409810/
Season 47 episode 13 of Nova, “A to Z: The First Alphabet” was awesome giving the history of the Modern English alphabet and all the other alphabets that derived from the same Phonecian origin. Interestingly, Canaanites adapted Egyptian hieroglyphics and that is the base of most writing systems and brought it to the Phoenicians. For example, the Egyptian symbol for ox was a stylized ox head (an ox head with horns like an upside-down upper case “A”), and the Hebrew word for ox was aleph, so the symbol for the “A” sound was an ox head that was eventually stylized into an upside down A, rotated sideways by the greeks, and then upended by the Romans to become the modern letter A in our alphabet. Originally though it was an egyptian hieroglyph.
Latest Answers