[ExI] A deep question

[BillK]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 11:38 AM, John K Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Why is the alphabet in the particular order that we know of, with A first
> and Z last? Is there some grand historical document that decrees that order
> that I am unaware of? Or is it all the result of that stupid song?
>

That's an easy one.
(very interesting article)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet>

It's a memory aid.

Alphabets originally had no fixed order, but that led to unnecessary
problems with teaching the alphabet. And some alphabets read from
right to left anyway.  :)


Quote:
-------------------------
It is unknown whether the earliest alphabets had a defined sequence.
Some alphabets today, such as Hanunoo, are learned one letter at a
time, in no particular order, and are not used for collation where a
definite order is required. However, a dozen Ugaritic tablets from the
fourteenth century BC preserve the alphabet in two sequences. One, the
ABGDE order later used in Phoenician, has continued with minor changes
in Hebrew, Greek, Armenian, Gothic, Cyrillic, and Latin; the other,
HMĦLQ, was used in southern Arabia and is preserved today in Ethiopic.
 Both orders have therefore been stable for at least 3000 years.

The historical order was abandoned in Runic and Arabic, although
Arabic retains the traditional "abjadi order" for numbering.

The Brahmic family of alphabets used in India use a unique order based
on phonology: The letters are arranged according to how and where they
are produced in the mouth. This organization is used in Southeast
Asia, Tibet, Korean hangul, and even Japanese kana, which is not an
alphabet.

The Phoenician letter names, in which each letter is associated with a
word that begins with that sound, continue to be used in Samaritan,
Aramaic, Syriac, Hebrew, and Greek. However, they were abandoned in
Arabic, Cyrillic and Latin.
-------------------


BillK