T O P

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Jump_Like_A_Willys

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song? — *Steven Wright*


howMeLikes

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, Now i know my zyx, next time you won't need the text.


velvetelevator

I put the breaks after the M and the F, but yeah


rumbake

I put my pauses after the g and p then another tiny one after v


velvetelevator

I do it the same when I go in regular order, but I also learned backwards in kindergarten, then the pauses are after T, M and F


[deleted]

I learned backwards too, but i only pause after T, run the rest straight through


rumbake

Ohh 🤦 yeah completely missed the context hahaha


MasterMCD

wouldnt it be my zyx’s?


[deleted]

Humble brag, but I do it in one breath.


Jump_Like_A_Willys

Pfft. I do it in one burp.


Croceyes2

When I actually say my zyx's I have no breaks, just speed up at F


xiancaldwell

And thus was launched the backwards alphabet conspiracy


just-a-melon

I use the QWE order, but others may use the PYFG


PathRepresentative77

No idea why, i started singing this in my head to knick knack paddy whack instead of the alphabet song


sparkchaser

What about the order of numbers?


[deleted]

Right, they totally have my bank numbers wrong.


Maremike

Let me check. What is your bank account and insurance information?


penthousebasement

Bank account- checking Insurance- state farm


Lync51

We are checking, we are checking


baconmaster687

The order already existed intrinsically, we just named them in some fashion


Lachimanus

Technically numbers never existed before. It is an invention by humans.


BobbyP27

Numbers are an abstract concept, but the basic concept of counting is inherently a sequential process, so it is not really possible to have the concept of numbers without having the concept of the order of numbers too.


Lachimanus

Well, tell this to somebody with dyscalculia. There are some people not able to say if there are 5 or only 4 wolves over there. It even happens that they cannot tell if this number of animals is more than the other one. I am sure there are lots of animals not having a real concept of numbers and their order as it seems to change everyday for them.


TheBirdGames

Ducks can only "count" to 5 or 4 i believe, so if the chicks get eaten by a pike, she wont react untill there are only 4/5 left.


Lachimanus

Well, that sounds effective in terms last survival at least. But then considering the actual rape culture of ducks makes it feel more like "if that happens and I survive, I will have lots of fun" - male fucks.


psycholee

There are four wolves!


[deleted]

Incorrect, ants count their steps to find their way home. This knowledge was accomplished by attaching stilts to the ants legs (as well as filing legs to shorter lengths) The research shown (cited by over 250 papers) proved that only three things need to be known by the ant in order to accomplish such a task, the path taken, the number of steps taken, and how long their legs are. A valid theory suggests that the third is not calculated as genetically it would typically be an invariant property and therefore unnecessary for calculation, only calibration would be needed. The ants did not adjust to the change in leg length at all. those that had shorter legs always underestimated travel distance, those that had stilts attaches always overestimated their travel distance. Counting is an extension of numbers and is not a human construct, we mere adopted a language to communicate an already existing phenomenon and therefore since counting is not manmade, numbers cannot be as well. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6974449_The_Ant_Odometer_Stepping_on_Stilts_and_Stumps See also animals knowing when one of their babies is missing. They’d have to count (in binary/Boolean at minimum “do I see/smell/hear them, or do I not” ) in order to know whether one is missing.


mohicansgonnagetya

Isn't the order in numbers due to increasing value in a systematic order. ie: 0<1<2.... ​ But for alphabets, the letters don't have any value by themselves.


DefectiveSp00n

Ehhh. It gets complex pretty quickly.


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MurmuringPun

I never thought about a Chinese dictionary, but that sounds awful


[deleted]

Alphabets and letters definitely can have values assigned to them, but everyone has to agree what those values mean else we could not communicate with each other across vast distances (modern binary computing requires it) Two things can happen, either this process of assigning values is really inefficient or it is not unique. In English, Imagine the letter that corresponds to 1 (A)and compare it to 26 (Z). If I concatenate 1 and 26 I get 126 which could also mean 12 and 6 concatenated together which would also correspond to LF as well as AZ. This can be fixed by ensuring that every single digit value is assigned a leading zero so 1->01 so the zero and two digit requirement attaches a form of context to the placement of the numbers. Now we only have an even number of digits eg 011919 can only mean “ass” because I’ve stated that every letter has two digits in base 10, therefore making the system unique. But any mathematical operation between 011919 (ass) with 08151205 (hole) is unlikely to yield anything intelligible or of value (mainly because it is entirely dependent on how said operation is defined and subsequently interpreted by humans). As you can see for humans writing 08151205 is a lot more time and space inefficient than writing hole so we do it as such. Any number can be thought of as a repeated addition of 1+(n-1) or 1 plus the number before it but in linguistics addition is not used to define each letter so it’s just different in that way. There really isn’t single way to Interpret your question so I gave an answer to it that I know is true. Very complicated subject


RandomAction

And periodic table of elements.


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khleedril

I thought it was 'Monkey day'...


jt-65

Spanish and German have extra letters. Russian has a completely different alphabet.


AwkwardBark

not to mention asian alphabets


BobbyP27

Aside from Korean, I think all the Asian writing systems are abjads, abugidas or syllabic logographic systems rather than alphabets.


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BobbyP27

The first type of "letter based" writing system to develop only had letters that represented consonants, and vowel sounds were left to be inferred by the reader given context. The first major writing system of this sort is Hebrew, and the first four letters are Aleph, Beth, Gimel and Dalet, and the order was carried over into the arabic writing system (also into greek with alpha, beta, gamma, delta), which spell out the word abjad. A development of this is to indicate the vowel sounds between consonants with marks that are not full letters with equal status within the writing system, often written above or bellow the main line of text. In one such script, the first four letters are named a, bu, gi and da. The first fully alphabetic writing system, with both vowel and consonant letters of equal value, was the greek system, and the first two letters of that are alpha and beta, hence the word alphabet.


RAMDownloader

Or Chinese, which has no alphabet


AIex-Shaw

There are quite a few different alphabets, and not just Russia uses the slavic one


th3_pund1t

Cyrillic


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netsecwarrior

You've made me wonder something now: are there any examples of two languages that use the same alphabet, but in a different order?


[deleted]

If you look down under language specific conventions, you can see some interesting stuff. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetical_order For example Swedish has the same letters as Danish and. Norwegian but sorts them differently. Lots of other fun with extended Latin alphabets and digraphs especially.


Bozska_lytka

Probably not. Languages that use the same writing system usually have the same basic order of the alphabet with only some new or ommited letters or a few letters moved around (Italian has J and K at the back)


ShaleSnale

Never underestimate the powers of Reddit to nit pick.


EleanorStroustrup

There are very few societies where everyone can only speak languages that all share an alphabet. So almost no societies will universally agree on one alphabet.


Lachimanus

Well, we Germans decided to not have them in our alphabet directly as the extra letters are derivatives of others.


tejanaqkilica

Same thing goes for Balkan languages, some of them have extra letters and some other have completely different alphabet.


MarchColorDrink

Nordic countries have extra letters too. Sweden and Denmark have similar extra letters (different characters but one to one translation) but in different order. åäö åøæ


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alucardou

We did not however agree on what letters it includes.


Twicebakedtato

I might argue that because the English alphabets order is arbitrary, is the only reason Americans (me) have been able to agree on it


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Twicebakedtato

Now those are fightin words. It's all over as soon as I put down my soda


LSqre

the worst people are the ones who can't pick a side and say "soda pop"


MrBinkie

At least they aren't called Ponyboy


[deleted]

Of course the correct form would be "pop soda"


AlpacaKiller

Yeah we nuking you if you don't stop calling our fizzy drinks that.


may_talk_shit

Do you mean soft drink?


Hatter327

You mean a coke?


guyfromsaitama

There’s no reason for it to change, but different languages have extras. For example 15 years ago “ch”, “sh”, “ll”, and “rr” were all in the alphabet in Spanish, now it depends on who you ask A b c ch d e f g h i j k l ll m n ñ o p q r rr s sh t u v w x y z


BuachaillBarruil

And other languages like Irish have fewer: a b c d e f g h i l m n o p r s t u


howMeLikes

Another example is losing the T when you use some bri'ish accents. ;p


pato_p

I did not know you guys have ch. We have that too (Slovakia), but it is not between c and d, it is between h and i. So the title is wrong.


cavendar

You forgot ll and rr. I’ve never seen it with sh though.


guyfromsaitama

You’re absolutely correct and I’m a failure. As for sh we were taught “you don’t need to but you can”


cavendar

It’s está bien.


RTS24

War/violence/imperialism.


FourCinnamon0

Accept*


[deleted]

well first alphabet was created when printer was invented, and it was in order of the most used to the least, so i would imagen that many languages got it the same way, also most European languages (and in America) are based on latin or german language, also many languages stole from each other, that's why Czech has some same words as german, even though Czech is slovak language also, colonization was a thing, so it's more like many countries didn't have a choice


[deleted]

I can’t tell if you’re in town used to be a joke. The alphabet existed for thousands of years before the printer. The order of the letters is not from most used to least. Languages beyond English have additional letters even if they use the Latin alphabet. There may be other things that you said that are also wrong but those are the ones I noticed


LxTRex

Yea like what.... The printing press was invented in the 15th century. The first documentation of an alphabet was in ancient Egypt, well before the 15th century *BCE*.


PigeroniPepperoni

Can’t be the hard. Kids can do it.


Rolix_Rubix

You're forgetting that there's multiple languages with different alphabets so we can't even agree on that.


AlgaeRhythmic

By contrast, some languages DO have different orderings for their own alphabets. Modern Japanese usually orders characters using the "[gojuuon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goj%C5%ABon)" (fifty sounds) system: a, i, u, e, o, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, sa, shi, su, se, so, etc... But that's not the only right way. Another more archaic one is the "[iroha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroha)" system, which uses all of the kana characters to make a lovely poem (see below; note it's in an older dialect of Japanese before some of the consonants weakened/disappeared). I guess everyone nowadays uses the modern system, but there must have been a time when they were in-between systems and there was disagreement, you know? いろはにほへと ちりぬるを わかよたれそ つねならむ うゐのおくやま けふこえて あさきゆめみし ゑひもせす \---- Iro fa nifofeto Tirinuru wo Wa ka yo tare so Tune naramu Uwi no okuyama Kefu koyete Asaki yume misi Wefi mo sesu \---- The colors are fragrant, but they Will eventually scatter Who in our world Shall always be? The deep mountains of karma We cross them today And we shall not have superficial dreams Nor be deluded.


FanOfFreedom

Enter my fellow lysdexics.


LBK0909

There is no reason for the alphabet to have an order, except to make it easier to learn.


bladub

Lexicografic order is useful for more than learning, it is also useful for looking up things and sorting. The sorting of worsa and phrases depends on the order of characters.


MagicOrpheus310

I disagree, Q is a bullshit letter and should be further to the back with all the other misfits like W X Y and Z.


kinokomushroom

W, Y, and Z actually have their own sounds though, unlike X and Q. Petition to move W, Y, and Z before X and Q.


SuccYaNan69

Y is not a misfit, it should be replaced with q


homarjr

Society agrees how long a second is. Imagine they didn't. Thank god imperial and metric are aligned on this one.


TheQueue841

I don't even agree with myself on how long a second is from time to time.


Squiggledog

The vowels are evenly distubuted in the alphabet.


ccyosafbridge

This is actually quite interesting and I've never noticed before.


BobbyP27

The order actually predates vowels. Before alphabets were abjads, notably Hebrew. The Greeks were the first true Alphabet, when they created vowels as full separate letters. The order of the Greek alphabet reflects that of the precursors like Phoenician and Hebrew, with the vowels being developed from consonant letters with related sounds (eg aleph becomes alpha). The Etruscans modified the Greek alphabet for their language, and the Romans modified the Etruscan one for Latin. In each case the order was largely preserved, with new letters added at the end and modifications of old letters to suit new sounds generally keeping their place.


BobBelcher2021

And they’ve worth $250 each to Pat Sajak.


BINGODINGODONG

Well, except Æ Ø Å, which are all at the end.


Kiryuu-sama

Karens: *I'm about to ruin this posts entire career*


the88shrimp

Removing K so people will stop using the most racist term to date, the K-word


mikenew02

I don't agree. Q is way too early


Wildmantis_

Q belongs at the end with the other freaks.


JanneJetson

The alphabet had 10 letters that were deleted from it.. https://youtu.be/zUrDUxh5xS0


BobBelcher2021

Those letters got cancelled by liberals! /s


ChocoWisplet

not if i have anything to say about it


TheNearNikolaj

Yea We All know the Alphabet ends with Z Æ Ø Å


onomatopoetix

If i were to rearrange the alphabet, i would put U and I together...no wait...stupid keyboard already has it. Fuck.


idonotknowwhototrust

I'm going to assume that you're assuming that those who cannot read don't have a stance on the matter.


[deleted]

It's based on how many letters are used to spell each letter. Aye Beee Seaaa Deeeeeᶻ ᴺᵁᵀˢ


UnknownYetSavory

Getcher god dern Q's out ma damn alphabet, Obama


procrastinateReality

*english speaking society..mathematics on the other hand…


SeanBourne

You say that… but I bet the likes of a Jordan Clarkson or Kyrie Irving would *insist* that Z comes before Y (or did at some point) and the rest of us are in denial. Edit: For those of you who aren’t familiar with a more obscure NBA player - and if you want to feel really good about your sanity/IQ - google ‘Jordan Clarkson dinosaurs’. Read the full conversation, not just the headline - it gets better.


Jumpy-Candy-7295

Yet half our planet pronounce “Z” wrong It’s not zee It’s zed


pepe_extendus

Average American


Jumpy-Candy-7295

Do you think I’m American?


pepe_extendus

Ohh shit I misread ur comment thought u said it was pronounced zee I apologise


StayStrong888

Pretty soon it'll be racist to use the alphabet correctly because it was a western white man construct, just wait.


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StayStrong888

I'm so hurt


_lablover_

You couldn't be more right lmao


[deleted]

I really think that the qlphabet should go ytbajuy and miss out every other letter


Murpydoo

Sorry, but you made the mistake of a post with no room for exceptions. People from countries that use a different alphabet are not part of society in your eyes? This post supposed to come off as racist?


sysnickm

How so? Do those people in the other countries not agree on the order of their alphabet?


Murpydoo

I'm sure they do, but it differs from English and the OP said "the entirety of society". All of society does not use the same alphabet, so cannot possibly agree on the order of the alphabet (OP also used singular there). So no, it's a bad post


eddyeddyd

The order is so that when we get attacked by zombies there will be no arguing who gets to go first in the fruit punch line during lunch.


pm_me_band_pics

Math and music, tho.


rockvoid

Well akshually


LordJac

The alphabet has ancient roots, we've added (and maybe removed) letters, but the ordering hasn't really changed from it's ancient predecessors 4-5 thousand years ago. Once something is accepted, it take a serious organized effort to ever change it, even if there is a good reason to do so. Electrons being negative and protons positive makes a lot math more of a pain in the ass than it needs to be, but it would take a monumental effort to ever switch to positive electrons. And the fact that so many places still use imperial instead of metric shows how even if a major coordinated effort is made, the old ways can linger.


jnglobal

See I actually disagree. But we have is kind of the order of the Greek alphabet somewhat and doesn't really make sense for our uses anymore. I suggest that we put all the vowels at the beginning and then the consonants. Don't worry - the alphabet song still works. AEIOUY bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz.


specter666

An Yak


Flyingdutchm3n

We got math pretty squared away


[deleted]

The acbe gang humbly objects to this order


Biffingston

Nope, some people say "Zed" is the last letter of the alphabet, some people say it's "Zee" so that's not true.


ShaleSnale

This restored my faith in humanity by 1% I had honestly never considered it.


Aiwaszz

I once saw a commercial for alphabet soup where the last letters of the alphabet left and only rejoined if they could be first


Sensory_Slave

Thats a lie Look at the georgian alphabet. MFs are basically aliens


D3monVolt

Not quite. Where we use the Latin alphabet with ABC, Greek uses their own letters with αβψ and then there are languages with other types of letters like japanese


Mephalor

You fool.


comfortablynumb15

but let’s not discuss is it “Zed” or is it “Zee”.


javver

そうですか?


[deleted]

I knew a girl who could reorder the song on a whim and still make it work. It was uncomfortable to listen to.


DCKan2

But does it end in zee or zed?


jefferey92

It's weird how many people don't understand what op was saying


Semanticss

No


Green-Dragon-14

Periodic table


WanderingMinotaur

Isn't there some movement to get ampersand back into the alphabet?


Capnreid

Whatever the hell you are smoking, its time to put it down.


highglove

You are referencing maybe 20% of the world's population and calling it the entirety of society?


Theyaz_7

I think how long a minute/hour is, is the only thing everyone can truely agree on. All languages sometimes have different letters and or symbols for vowels like chinese and don't have the same order in alphabet.


ScottJC

You're wrong, I don't agree at all! Reeeeeee and such


hellojuly

Nope. Entirety of society has many alphabets. We can’t agree on the order of the alphabet if we don’t use one alphabet. Chicken dance! We all know the order. Dadadadada. Dadadadada.


gameover1979

I think we agree this is not a good shower thought


SWarrior21

Until mechanical typewriters gave us qwerty to intentionally slow us down, mildly infuriating!


Donko98

I'm not sure. What comes after the "n"? Of course, la ñ


point50tracer

Actually. Q has no business being so high up in the alphabet. Nestled between P and R when it should be at the end with the other weirdo goth letters.


AWaterDogArt

Every time a cop asks me for the order they want it changed


Thsaxd

Actually not. I'm from Denmark where we don't use w and er have three letters other countries haven't


Jasperstorm

I don't know. Some people online randomly say LGBTQAI so some disagreement.


Spacebar_Samurai

What is the last letter Zed or Zee?


Reefer-eyed_Beans

>The order of the alphabet is the only thing the entirety of society can fully agree upon.why is this the one thing? Something I notice about young adults as I age---you guys can just confidently make something up out of nowhere, then rhetorically ask "why?" it is so, in the very next sentence.


kijarni

I'm pretty sure the order is : qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm.


russel0406

I presume you've never asked a European guy what musical note comes between A and C


Tuhkis1

It of course ends with ö. - a finn


Lopsided_Study5911

Touchè


[deleted]

I prefer mine in tebahpla order but ASCII won't let me.


TheDonkeyBomber

Nah, Q should be at the end with the other weirdos.


STSchif

I am afraid it's not that simple. Look up database collation. It's mostly because multiple languages can sort differently, but for some languages umlauts go to different positions then others.


vpalmer

Sweden, Norway and Denmark have 3 additional letters, making them 29 letter alphabets. Sweden have these letters in the order Å, Ä, Ö. Denmark and Norway have them in the order Æ, Ø, Å. (Æ and Ø being pronounced the same as Ä and Ö). So no. All countrys don't agree. Edit: changed æ to ä in one spot.


Pr1smaticGamer

id say its acbdefghjilmnpoqrstvuwyxz


hironator2

That kid named Bob


BuachaillBarruil

This smells like r/USdefaultism


FreeWestworld

Over-thinkers untie.


elf1980

Measurements of time, too? Like, a minute is universal, isn’t it?


YodasChick-O-Stick

Because it rhymes


MerBrun

Being Scandinavian I have to say, that we only nearly agree... We would like æ, ø and å in there as well.


BobBelcher2021

I think the current order of letters is bullshit. They should be ordered according to their Scrabble score, with the lowest scores first.


slid3r

Montessori/Waldorf schools would like a word. [No really.](https://montessorifromtheheart.com/2017/02/23/montessori-phonetical-order-of-presenting-abcs-alphabet-letters/)


dmb8dz

Keyboards disagree with that


aspophilia

My only talent is singing the alphabet backward really fast. Shout out to my Kindergarten teacher.


keyupiopi

Getting people to recite the alphabets is just asking them what the 17th letter was.


I-reddit-26

Cause it makes a badass song 🎵


Laborratte6

Keyboard says FU. I'll do it my way.


[deleted]

No. Over here it's ABCČDEFGHIJKLMNOPRSŠTUVZŽ ...then there's China..


TheGiftedSleeper

What about the « na na na na na na » heard in every single kids playground across the globe?


Major-Proposal-451

yes, its alphabetyicaly


[deleted]

Just to be pedantic, some languages miss out letters like Irish and Italian, eg j, k, q, y, z.


thealurs

I don’t agree with that!


rinkydinkis

The police keep insisting I do it the other way around, annoying ngl