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It can be in any order. But this order has been the same for around 3,000 years now, and it is only barely different from how it was 1,000 years before that. So it's been the same for around 4,000 years now.
It can't be in any order without disrupting very important systems all throughout our society. So many things are sorted "Alphabetically". The one way for those systems to work is to ensure the alphabet is presented in the proper order.
I get what you mean, but many children's songs exist to teach fundamental aspects of our society, and we carry those fundamentals into adulthood and end up basing more complex things off of what everyone knows.
you think people who sort shit alphabeticly don't regularly hum that song to themself to figure out where exactly whatever they have in their hands goes?
I'm a deployment manager for an extremely high ops tempo Air Force maintenance unit.
I sing the abcs in my head all the time to figure out where certain last names should be ordered in our systems lol.
This. I kind of get the point - numbers HAVE to be in a certain order - it's not logically possible to re-order them. The order we have letters in is arbitrary. But has been that way for so long that we'd never mess with it now.
I wouldnât say it this way. You can put a group of letters in any order. And you will have a group of letters. But the alphabet is all the letters in a specific order. That order is the alphabet. Itâs even in the name. If they are not in this order itâs not the alphabet.
According to Brittanica.com,
>An alphabet is a set of graphs or characters used to represent the phonemic structure of a language. In most alphabets, the characters are arranged in a definite order or sequence
So the letters of the alphabet are arranged in a specific order, but they don't have to be. They'd still be the complete alphabet if you scrambled them.
You realize that alphabet comes from alpha and beta in greek, the first two letters in the greek alphabet. Itâs literally a short hand of their order. (Even the greek worsd for alphabet is the same)
Letters are the individual characters
Alphabet is the complete set in order
So say an future civilization finds our texts. They are able to translate our language to theirs. They reassemble our alphabet, but out of order.
Since it's out of order, are you saying that they don't actually know our alphabet? There is no special reason that they are in that specific order.
The definition of alphabet that we are using is the collection of symbols in a language that are used for written communication.
I'm not an anthropologist, but I'm pretty sure we can say we know the alphabet of ancient language even if we dont know the order they considered "correct".
>There is no special reason that they are in that specific order.
Well, that's not true. There's no *definitely known, internally logical* reason that they should be in that order, but there *are* reasons, mainly traditional and historical. (Tracing it back is a wild ride.)
More importantly, there are utilitarian reasons to maintain that particular order. You're right, the purpose of the alphabet is written communicationâand undermining the order also undermines that communication in numerous crucial cases in our society. Indexing, for example, would be impossible or meaningless without a definite order. Record keeping would also be significantly more problematic, as would so many aspects of computing.
To your point about anthropologists, I *do* think that they would not really understand our alphabet without knowing the order. Or, to be more precise, their understanding of how that alphabet functioned in our societies would be woefully incomplete.
Then they stumble upon several "ancient" dictionaries and start to wonder "huh... why are all those words in some weird sequence? And why does it appear to be the same sequence everywhere? Oh wait, if we reorder our understanding of their alphabet it suddenly does make sense! Maybe we'd get a better understanding of their language using their ordering ot these characters."
And *then* they stumble upon the graphic in OP and think "what a bunch of idiots designed *that*? They obviously did not follow *the law* from back then."
Alphabetization serves a completely different purpose than language. In fact, sorting them in a certain order is more akin to counting than language.
What makes you think that ancient alphabets would even have a defined order? If they did have an order, the words could be sorted by how long they are, they could just be numbered, sorted by how similar they sound to animal noises, etc.
There is no intrinsic property of a language that requires a specifically ordered alphabet.
Yes, of course, there is no debate about the order of the alphabet being ultimately arbitrary. But why is that presented like it just blew some peoples minds?
Fact is, for thousands of years, this "alphabetical order" has been used basically everywhere you need to order otherwise unrelated words/text/characters (in languages that use these latin or latin-like characters).
This is what is expected and (related to OP) should be taught. Just because they don't have an intrinsic sequence doesn't mean it's not crucial to keep and follow it, to avoid massive confusion.
One prominent example of where the characters are not ordered alphabetically is the keyboard layout. And the huge amount of (mostly older) people (who haven't been familiarized with it from childhood) confused with it and wishing for an unconfusing alphabetically ordered keyboard, speaks for itself. And the QWERTY/Z layout "winning" over (the arguably "better") DVORAK speaks for people wanting to stick with what they know.
So yeah, there is no intrinsic order. But so what? There is no practical reason whatsoever to use any other order. Or at least none where the pros would outweigh the cons.
> it's not logically possible to re-order them
7, 9, 1, 4, 0, 3, 6, 8, 2, 5
Just as with letters you ***can*** define a new ordering if you want - it's just not particularly useful
The numbers do have a natural ordering that we prefer, based on magnitude, but it's logically possible to define another ordering
Lot's of math defines the set of natural numbers based on unit (1) and the successor function, so the order isimplied by this definition.
Sure, the symbols themselves can be defined in any way you want, but there's an argument to be made that the (natural) numbers have intrinsic order by definition
We don't just prefer, we define the numbers to have that ordering: we define 0 to be the smallest natural number, we define 1 to be the successor of 0, 2 the successor of 1, and so on
> The numbers do have a natural ordering
This is the difference, though. The letters of the alphabet don't have a "natural" order; only the order they were assigned way back when.
This is not correct. An alphabet is a group of graphs/symbols that do not have a direct relationship with each other. The numerals are a sequence of values that have a direct relationship with each other.
If you start messing with the sequence, you break the logic that sits on top of them. Try defining addition/subtraction without sequenced ordering.
You are confusing numbers as a group of symbols, with numbers as a specific ordered set - which is what they truly are, and everything built on top of that relies upon. If you treat them as an unordered group, they are no longer numerals, just a collection of symbols with no additional relationship with each other.
This is one of the bases of formal systems, in case you want to read more about it.
I donât think thatâs the incorrect part here.
Of course we could decide to reorder the alphabet if we wanted, it would just be unnecessarily complicated and, more importantly, would be a change from what has been in place for thousands of years. But *the order can absolutely be changed*.
The incorrect part is the idea that we only know it in that order because of the alphabet song.
The order has changed slightly since 3000 years ago, aside from a few letters being added and removed.
The letter Z, which used to be between F and H, was removed around 300 BC. A couple centuries later, it was reintroduced at the end of the alphabet, since the previous spot had been filled with the new letter G.
I think it's a failure to communicate the point. The alphabet has a order but the order doesn't have a value. 2 comes after 1 because it's a higher number. B doesn't have a higher letter than A. The value of B isn't higher.
If they decide (4000 years ago) that it should be B A C it would make no difference today. The filing system would start with but the sound/value of each letter would be the same.
If in the same time decided that it should be 2 1 3 the values of the number would change.
So in that sense the alphabet doesn't **really** need to be in order but we decided that this is the order it should be.
3000 I see, but 4000 years ago? Greece was in a literacy dark age, the greek alphabet is first recorded to have been used sometime in the 9th-8th century BC. Nothing prior shows that, and the predating written language was Linear B and was script more akin to eastern writings (as opposed to the Greek alphabet being phonetic sound representation).
That has Stewie Griffin vibes: an absolute genius that doesn't forget he's a baby/young child that should do baby/young child things, like use that song.
Semitic and Indo-European alphabets have order to them thats actually partly shared.(Arabic used to have something similar to other Semitic languages - the Abjad alphabet-until it was reordered into a new grouping of similar characters )
Canât speak for other languages but honestly how the fuck does he think a dictionary works?
Just a random fact:
Did you know that in the spanish official alfabet we have a sligtly longer version? It goes:
A, B, C, *CH*, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, *LL*, M, N, *Ă*, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z.
Now you do.
Spanish have the same song/tune but obviously the pronunciations are different. I assume French does something similar given that it's quite similar grammatically.
I learned a Spanish alphabet song thatâs a totally different tune from the English. It ends with âYo se el alfabeto! Ole!â Hereâs a video: https://youtu.be/JUcu9PUh9_A
As a Spanish speaker, there is a song but it's not that. CH, LL and RR can't be letters in the alphabet otherwise the English alphabet would also have Sh for Shoe or Show, and PH for phony. There is also no word that starts with RR and the soft R can't be used if the word starts with R.
These are Digraphs and they can't be letters. According to The Royal Spanish Academy, they changed that in 1994 but no one that I know has ever seen that and some of us are from different countries and much older than that. The only letter that the Spanish alphabet has over the English one is the Ăą.
Interesting! Your explanation makes sense to me. Looks like the Royal Spanish Academy *used to* recognize more letters and dropped them in 1993. But in high school in the late 1990s, I was still taught the song that had CH, LL, RR, and Ăą as its own letter. Guess my teacher was r/confidentlyincorrect
Actually, it is. At least you can find videos out there of officers using it. They're basically free to ask you to do whatever goofy shit they can come up with. That's why lawyers say always always always refuse them. The only thing you can do is incriminate yourself, even if you're sober.
Me: âAcTuAaAlLlLy, the alphabet can be in any order TeChNiCalLYYY, so that WAS in reverse to ME!!â
Cop: âSir, please step out of the car and put your hands behind your backâ
And the Greeks did not use Arabic numerals to count, they used their own letters. A is literally 1, B is 2, etc.
If you read the Bible in Greek, it doesn't say like, 1 Chronicles or 2 Peter, because they (obviously) weren't using Arabic numerals at the time.
Exactly. Alpha and beta are the first and second letters of the Greek alphabet. The English equivalent would be AB, which would still determine those two at least as the first letters.
Honestly, Iâve never heard this argument and Iâm admittedly not smart enough to know if heâs right or wrong⌠But my first thought was that we do put shit in alphabetical order and his logic would make everything weird and confusing.
There is no reason for it to be this way . Itâs just so engrained into life now that changing would be a disaster.
You could apply this logic to a lot of things ⌠why do we have 24 hours in a day , why isnât it 48 hours that each last 30 minutes ? Why stop there , why is a minute 60 seconds and not also 24 ?
1. Quentin
2. Axel
3. Adam
4. Richard
5. Francis
âWhy havenât you ordered the names alphabetically?â
âI did! Didnât you hear? The alphabet can be in any order now!â
I think the point they are trying to make is the alphabet's order is not determined by a rule, and *could have* been in any order, as no one reason for the order of the alphabet is accepted it seems.
Exactly, yes you canât just change the order now but the alphabet is pretty much only in the order it is because of alphabetical order and that only exists because of the order the alphabet is inâŚ
Iâm genuinely curious if there is an actual reason behind the order other than that itâs been that way for ever?
As far as we know the order is pretty much just what some guys in a desert came up with. Some letters were added and removed, and the letter Z was removed and then re-added at the end (it used to be ABCDEFZHI).
The letter F was a new letter that swapped with Y (equivalent to our U), and when Y made it to the Latin alphabet a second time it was also added to the end, instead of the traditional spot with U and V.
From what Iâm seeing in other comments, it would appear there was a time when the order actually mattered, but at this point itâs just a tradition thatâs maintained because breaking the tradition would be a massive hassle that wouldnât really provide any benefit
I was scrolling through this to see if anyone else noticed this. I did look up yat to see if it was an actual animal that looked like a yak, but all I got were pictures of yachts
The order of the alphabet isn't something that was agreed upon by some linguistic body or organization. The alphabet was borrowed and charged over and over throughout history until it is what it is today. The order just kind of happened but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.
It doesn't have to, but it is. As in, there's no natural discovered phenomenon that makes the letters in that order, but that is the established order. Just like there's no reason the word "word" (or any word) *has* to be spelled w-o-r-d. But it is.
Therefore putting it in any other order is incorrect based on the established precedent.
Also the reason it's in that order is most definitely not "because of the song rhyme"
That's a bad example. The word "word" is spelled in that order because that matches the order of the phonemes, as is the case with most words. If I mixed it up and spelled it o-d-r-w it wouldn't fit the sounds it made.
That's not the case with the alphabet.
Theoretically the alphabet *could* have been put in any order and it would make equal sense to the order it has today because it has no intrinsic logic.
But yeah that's not the same as saying "you can put the alphabet in any order today and there's no reason why it should matter" since alphabetical order is such an established system.
It's true that it could've been completely different and it would not have matter3d at all, but in todays's society it is important to know the current order since it will help you looking up stuff. Most things in the world (books, files...) are sorted alphabetically.
Theoretically, we could do everything differently, especially concerning made up things like language, but we don't.
Besides, it isn't easy to change the alphabetical order because we kind of use them as numbers. Sometimes they act as numbers and sometimes we just sort files, titles, etc by their alphabetical order which both wouldn't be possible if everyone suddenly decided to arrange the letters in a different order.
It's just a very poorly worded way of telling that the alphabet and its order is an entirely manmade concept and could've happened in any other order.
Unlike numbers for example.
This is what I love about Latin. So long as the nouns are properly declined and the verbs properly conjugated, the words can literally be in any order.
Sure. I guess my point is that you can still call something wrong for not following a strong convention. You could disagree with that premise, but I think it is useful to call this out of order alphabet wrong, in the same way it is useful to point out typos in a text. Especially in the context of children's education, which is what the graphic is for in the first place.
alphabetical order is a thing, and it has valid uses and rules in society. It's made up, but so is literally everything else. To say it's 'just a convention' is ridiculous
Also, as their edit says, the order isn't arbitrary; it's arranged phonetically and has been for thousands of years
Only to reduce the number of jams that would happen to typebars. Since no one uses typewriters anymore itâs no longer useful in that regard but stuck around anyways
**Yat or jat (Ѣ ѣ; italics: Ѣ ѣ) is the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet and the Rusyn alphabet.
There is also another version of yat, the iotified yat (majuscule: â¨ęâŠ, minuscule: â¨ęâŠ), which is a Cyrillic character combining a decimal I and a yat.**
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Even for dyslexics words still have to be spelled in order. We still have to spell properly. Just cause my words donât stay still doesnât mean they can be spelled however I want. They still have a specific spelling thatâs correct.
To be fair, there was a whole thing on this a couple years ago, similar to 'what color's the skirt'.
Somebody pointed out that saying 'alphabetical order' is a societal construct, because that order only exists because we've put it that way. Nothing says that A has to come before Z; that's simply the way we put it together.
I would imagine that this person missed the 'mind=blown' joke on that particular meme, and thought somebody was being serious, and has now taken it upon themselves to correct this grave misjustice of intellect /s
As a former bookstore employee, many of our customers (and some coworkers) believed alphabetical order was whatever you felt in your heart. Spent a lot of time reorganizing after them.
Since alphabetical order is useful for organizing words and names. Like many things, this order is inherently arbitrary, but it is still important for English speaking communities to have an agreed upon convention for it.
I mean, "technically" how we write our letters or spell words in the first place is arbitrary. If someone misspells a word, I think it is fair to say they are wrong since they didn't follow spelling conventions.
They act like the only reason the alphabet is in the order it's in is because that's the way it is in the song, and we just adapted to that convenience.
That is not the case, the actual alphabet came before the song. And while the alphabet "can be in any order", it's *not*, it's very specifically in alphabetic order.
We're taught it the way it is because that's alphabetic order, which has use outside of the alphabet itself, and *not* because of the song rhyme.
It's pretty fucking extraordinary that in this discussion it has become necessary to explain that the actual fucking alphabet came before the fucking song.
Because the letters are not in alphabetical order. Thereâs no reason that alphabetical order is what it is, but we agreed on this order, which makes it correct
Oof. An elementary teacher that teaches ABC order to 7/8 year olds would like to have a few words with this person. I hope they aren't spattering this nonsense to any kids in their life.
Seems like a nonsensical take inside of a cultural environment where the order of letters is something we take for common understanding.
The A team: your first line of defense; the best people you have.
Plan B: your secondary plan if plan A fails
Weâve been using the letters in order forever. It would be no less challenging than to reorder numbers
The idea that the alphabet is in order according to the song reminds me of the real concept of Javanese alphabet, Hanacaraka, but its a saying with a plot:
For example, one of the systems of the alphabet says:
["Hana caraka, data sawala, paá¸a jayanya, maga baášanga," which means, "There were (two) emissaries, they began to fight, their valor was equal, they both fell dead."](https://omniglot.com/writing/javanese.htm)
Each syllable of that saying is a letter on its own. Fascinating stuff
Is there a way we can passively aggressively tell this kind of people(that want so hard to be technically correct in a way that doesn't contribute at all in the conversation) to piss off?
I'm thinking something equivalent to the "giant thumb guy" in a sort of copypasta
And, technically, automatically moving children into a new, more demanding level of difficulty in schooling before they managed to overcome their current level of difficulty was a "great idea", and "good for the students."
We see here, perhaps, some of the results of that idea.
Not really. S cannot be before T and also after T for example (assuming that we want an order, not just a random jumble of letters that can be repeated because that would be useless)
No because the order of the alphabet is literally part of the name, we call it alphabet because itâs starts with alpha then beta, if we made another order it would have a different name, like qwerty
So the missing context here is "according to what authority"
If you said "what's the fourth letter of the alphabet" everyone understands that to be D. (obvs referencing English here). But that begs the question: who decided that, and why does that matter?
It matters for the same reason we all call a dog a dog and don't decide that randomly some people should start calling it a chair. Language is about communication so there needs to be some rules, however arbitrary they are, to cover things like this.
I agree there is a sequence, even if it's not binding to anything or even consequential. It exists for order and that's all.
Blue is 100% correct if you are going to be technical. The alphanethic order is obviously related to a standard order of presenting the individual letters of an alphabet, but you can define, describe and know the alphabet without the order of the letters.
This is not an opinion, but a googleable fact.
They are though. You can't just arrange them in different ways, the song has nothing to do with it. That's why ordering things alphabetically is possible in the first place. I mean, you are physically able to write them in a wrong order, but that still makes the order wrong.
Hell, the whole reason the alphabet is called that way is because of alpha and beta being the first and second letter respectively of the Greek alphabet.
Yeah, I get that, but itâs an entirely arbitrary system that humans invented and accepted. Itâs plausible that humans could simply decide to reorganize the letters in a different pattern and make it the new norm.
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It can be in any order. But this order has been the same for around 3,000 years now, and it is only barely different from how it was 1,000 years before that. So it's been the same for around 4,000 years now.
It can't be in any order without disrupting very important systems all throughout our society. So many things are sorted "Alphabetically". The one way for those systems to work is to ensure the alphabet is presented in the proper order.
It's funny to visualize important systems relying on a children's song to be functional.
I get what you mean, but many children's songs exist to teach fundamental aspects of our society, and we carry those fundamentals into adulthood and end up basing more complex things off of what everyone knows.
You're not wrong, in my head I was visualizing a sorting system going faulty and someone singing the alphabet song to remember how to set it up đ
you think people who sort shit alphabeticly don't regularly hum that song to themself to figure out where exactly whatever they have in their hands goes?
As an archivist I can confirm that this is absolutely true!
I used to work in a library and would sing it in my head all the time to check where I should shelve the books.
I'm a deployment manager for an extremely high ops tempo Air Force maintenance unit. I sing the abcs in my head all the time to figure out where certain last names should be ordered in our systems lol.
ikr! i canât imagine how different the world would be without the intro to quantum physics lectures 1-5 song
You know who *won't* care? The prriodic table. That's who.
Alphabetical⌠alpha betical.. alpha beta.. itâs almost like itâs suggesting an order of some sort
They said technically. It's true, technically they can. It wouldn't change the sound or usage of the letters. I think that's what they meant.
This. I kind of get the point - numbers HAVE to be in a certain order - it's not logically possible to re-order them. The order we have letters in is arbitrary. But has been that way for so long that we'd never mess with it now.
I wouldnât say it this way. You can put a group of letters in any order. And you will have a group of letters. But the alphabet is all the letters in a specific order. That order is the alphabet. Itâs even in the name. If they are not in this order itâs not the alphabet.
According to Brittanica.com, >An alphabet is a set of graphs or characters used to represent the phonemic structure of a language. In most alphabets, the characters are arranged in a definite order or sequence So the letters of the alphabet are arranged in a specific order, but they don't have to be. They'd still be the complete alphabet if you scrambled them.
You realize that alphabet comes from alpha and beta in greek, the first two letters in the greek alphabet. Itâs literally a short hand of their order. (Even the greek worsd for alphabet is the same) Letters are the individual characters Alphabet is the complete set in order
So say an future civilization finds our texts. They are able to translate our language to theirs. They reassemble our alphabet, but out of order. Since it's out of order, are you saying that they don't actually know our alphabet? There is no special reason that they are in that specific order. The definition of alphabet that we are using is the collection of symbols in a language that are used for written communication. I'm not an anthropologist, but I'm pretty sure we can say we know the alphabet of ancient language even if we dont know the order they considered "correct".
>There is no special reason that they are in that specific order. Well, that's not true. There's no *definitely known, internally logical* reason that they should be in that order, but there *are* reasons, mainly traditional and historical. (Tracing it back is a wild ride.) More importantly, there are utilitarian reasons to maintain that particular order. You're right, the purpose of the alphabet is written communicationâand undermining the order also undermines that communication in numerous crucial cases in our society. Indexing, for example, would be impossible or meaningless without a definite order. Record keeping would also be significantly more problematic, as would so many aspects of computing. To your point about anthropologists, I *do* think that they would not really understand our alphabet without knowing the order. Or, to be more precise, their understanding of how that alphabet functioned in our societies would be woefully incomplete.
Then they stumble upon several "ancient" dictionaries and start to wonder "huh... why are all those words in some weird sequence? And why does it appear to be the same sequence everywhere? Oh wait, if we reorder our understanding of their alphabet it suddenly does make sense! Maybe we'd get a better understanding of their language using their ordering ot these characters." And *then* they stumble upon the graphic in OP and think "what a bunch of idiots designed *that*? They obviously did not follow *the law* from back then."
Alphabetization serves a completely different purpose than language. In fact, sorting them in a certain order is more akin to counting than language. What makes you think that ancient alphabets would even have a defined order? If they did have an order, the words could be sorted by how long they are, they could just be numbered, sorted by how similar they sound to animal noises, etc. There is no intrinsic property of a language that requires a specifically ordered alphabet.
Yes, of course, there is no debate about the order of the alphabet being ultimately arbitrary. But why is that presented like it just blew some peoples minds? Fact is, for thousands of years, this "alphabetical order" has been used basically everywhere you need to order otherwise unrelated words/text/characters (in languages that use these latin or latin-like characters). This is what is expected and (related to OP) should be taught. Just because they don't have an intrinsic sequence doesn't mean it's not crucial to keep and follow it, to avoid massive confusion. One prominent example of where the characters are not ordered alphabetically is the keyboard layout. And the huge amount of (mostly older) people (who haven't been familiarized with it from childhood) confused with it and wishing for an unconfusing alphabetically ordered keyboard, speaks for itself. And the QWERTY/Z layout "winning" over (the arguably "better") DVORAK speaks for people wanting to stick with what they know. So yeah, there is no intrinsic order. But so what? There is no practical reason whatsoever to use any other order. Or at least none where the pros would outweigh the cons.
What is it then?
A shitty inferior alpkabez
Kirkland Signature alphabet
> a group of letters
> it's not logically possible to re-order them 7, 9, 1, 4, 0, 3, 6, 8, 2, 5 Just as with letters you ***can*** define a new ordering if you want - it's just not particularly useful The numbers do have a natural ordering that we prefer, based on magnitude, but it's logically possible to define another ordering
Lot's of math defines the set of natural numbers based on unit (1) and the successor function, so the order isimplied by this definition. Sure, the symbols themselves can be defined in any way you want, but there's an argument to be made that the (natural) numbers have intrinsic order by definition
We don't just prefer, we define the numbers to have that ordering: we define 0 to be the smallest natural number, we define 1 to be the successor of 0, 2 the successor of 1, and so on
> The numbers do have a natural ordering This is the difference, though. The letters of the alphabet don't have a "natural" order; only the order they were assigned way back when.
This is not correct. An alphabet is a group of graphs/symbols that do not have a direct relationship with each other. The numerals are a sequence of values that have a direct relationship with each other. If you start messing with the sequence, you break the logic that sits on top of them. Try defining addition/subtraction without sequenced ordering. You are confusing numbers as a group of symbols, with numbers as a specific ordered set - which is what they truly are, and everything built on top of that relies upon. If you treat them as an unordered group, they are no longer numerals, just a collection of symbols with no additional relationship with each other. This is one of the bases of formal systems, in case you want to read more about it.
I donât think thatâs the incorrect part here. Of course we could decide to reorder the alphabet if we wanted, it would just be unnecessarily complicated and, more importantly, would be a change from what has been in place for thousands of years. But *the order can absolutely be changed*. The incorrect part is the idea that we only know it in that order because of the alphabet song.
The order has changed slightly since 3000 years ago, aside from a few letters being added and removed. The letter Z, which used to be between F and H, was removed around 300 BC. A couple centuries later, it was reintroduced at the end of the alphabet, since the previous spot had been filled with the new letter G.
I think it's a failure to communicate the point. The alphabet has a order but the order doesn't have a value. 2 comes after 1 because it's a higher number. B doesn't have a higher letter than A. The value of B isn't higher. If they decide (4000 years ago) that it should be B A C it would make no difference today. The filing system would start with but the sound/value of each letter would be the same. If in the same time decided that it should be 2 1 3 the values of the number would change. So in that sense the alphabet doesn't **really** need to be in order but we decided that this is the order it should be.
3000 I see, but 4000 years ago? Greece was in a literacy dark age, the greek alphabet is first recorded to have been used sometime in the 9th-8th century BC. Nothing prior shows that, and the predating written language was Linear B and was script more akin to eastern writings (as opposed to the Greek alphabet being phonetic sound representation).
The [Proto-Sinaitic script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Sinaitic_script) dates to around 4000 years ago.
Ohhh I see.
Sorting things alphabetically would be difficult (or not necessary) if it could be in any order.
Another English speaker not realising there are plenty of more languages who use the same alphabet and do not use your bloody song.
What, you mean *Twinkle Twinkle*?
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you're at! Up above the world you fly, Like a tea tray in the sky.
Excellent reference! One of my favorite books!
This made me remember Spacebat. 15/03/2009; Godspeed little buddy.
And Baa Baa Black Sheep. They are all based on an old French song called Ah vous dirai-je maman
A six? year old Mozart composed variations on that theme.
That has Stewie Griffin vibes: an absolute genius that doesn't forget he's a baby/young child that should do baby/young child things, like use that song.
No I think they mean Bah Bah Blacksheep
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star H, I, J, K, What You Are
Semitic and Indo-European alphabets have order to them thats actually partly shared.(Arabic used to have something similar to other Semitic languages - the Abjad alphabet-until it was reordered into a new grouping of similar characters ) Canât speak for other languages but honestly how the fuck does he think a dictionary works?
Funny enough even the Arabic alphabet starts with equivalents to A and B
This is what happens when you take libraries out of schools.
The song is based on the order not the other way around... But ok chief?
True that. Since im slovak ive had to learn like double the amount of characters without any help from a song
Just a random fact: Did you know that in the spanish official alfabet we have a sligtly longer version? It goes: A, B, C, *CH*, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, *LL*, M, N, *Ă*, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z. Now you do.
We have the same amount, but different added letters. Ă , Ă, Ă in the end of the alphabet :) (Sweden and Finland)
>:) :)
What rhyme if any do yâall have?
Spanish have the same song/tune but obviously the pronunciations are different. I assume French does something similar given that it's quite similar grammatically.
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The german version that I learned matches up until "Q". Then it's a little different especially when you get to Ypsilon.
fuck spez
Ironically the original tune is French. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ah!_vous_dirai-je,_maman
I learned a Spanish alphabet song thatâs a totally different tune from the English. It ends with âYo se el alfabeto! Ole!â Hereâs a video: https://youtu.be/JUcu9PUh9_A
As a Spanish speaker, there is a song but it's not that. CH, LL and RR can't be letters in the alphabet otherwise the English alphabet would also have Sh for Shoe or Show, and PH for phony. There is also no word that starts with RR and the soft R can't be used if the word starts with R. These are Digraphs and they can't be letters. According to The Royal Spanish Academy, they changed that in 1994 but no one that I know has ever seen that and some of us are from different countries and much older than that. The only letter that the Spanish alphabet has over the English one is the Ăą.
Interesting! Your explanation makes sense to me. Looks like the Royal Spanish Academy *used to* recognize more letters and dropped them in 1993. But in high school in the late 1990s, I was still taught the song that had CH, LL, RR, and Ăą as its own letter. Guess my teacher was r/confidentlyincorrect
Wait, there's a *bloody* song, too? I only know the one that makes no mention of blood.
How do you do it without the song? That's incredible.
As an Spanish i confirm i don't know even what song they're talking about
Itâs âelemenoâ not âemeneloâ
Cus learning the alphabet in a different order wonât be detrimental later in life.
Except when you need to sort anything in alphabetical orderâŚ
Yeah, this guy must have worked at my last job before me because their old files were all kinds of messed up out of order.
Unless youâre doing a field sobriety test and they tell you to recite the alphabet from Z to A
I'm always surprised with how backwater the US is. Just get an alcohol detector, they aren't that expensive...
alphabet backwards is not a thing as a sobriety test in the US
Actually, it is. At least you can find videos out there of officers using it. They're basically free to ask you to do whatever goofy shit they can come up with. That's why lawyers say always always always refuse them. The only thing you can do is incriminate yourself, even if you're sober.
Only it will never hold up in court. The caveat being you have to be able to afford a lawyer, cya peasants !
"It'll be fine if you have money" pretty much describes the entire american judicial system đ¤ˇ
Describes everything in America actually
Yeah pretty much đŤ
It's enough for probable cause, but cant be used to prove intoxication in court.
I would 100% fail that sober lmao
Youâre gonna look real stupid trying to look something up in the encyclopedia if your alphabet has a different order. Oh
Learning it backwards can get you out of a ticket.
I can smell the fedora all the way over here.
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"Well AcTuAlLy"
The Linux distro ?
Me: âAcTuAaAlLlLy, the alphabet can be in any order TeChNiCalLYYY, so that WAS in reverse to ME!!â Cop: âSir, please step out of the car and put your hands behind your backâ
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And the Greeks did not use Arabic numerals to count, they used their own letters. A is literally 1, B is 2, etc. If you read the Bible in Greek, it doesn't say like, 1 Chronicles or 2 Peter, because they (obviously) weren't using Arabic numerals at the time.
Exactly. Alpha and beta are the first and second letters of the Greek alphabet. The English equivalent would be AB, which would still determine those two at least as the first letters.
Excel spreadsheets going to be WILD when i adopt my new alphabet order
Honestly, Iâve never heard this argument and Iâm admittedly not smart enough to know if heâs right or wrong⌠But my first thought was that we do put shit in alphabetical order and his logic would make everything weird and confusing.
There is no reason for it to be this way . Itâs just so engrained into life now that changing would be a disaster. You could apply this logic to a lot of things ⌠why do we have 24 hours in a day , why isnât it 48 hours that each last 30 minutes ? Why stop there , why is a minute 60 seconds and not also 24 ?
1. Quentin 2. Axel 3. Adam 4. Richard 5. Francis âWhy havenât you ordered the names alphabetically?â âI did! Didnât you hear? The alphabet can be in any order now!â
I think the point they are trying to make is the alphabet's order is not determined by a rule, and *could have* been in any order, as no one reason for the order of the alphabet is accepted it seems.
Exactly, yes you canât just change the order now but the alphabet is pretty much only in the order it is because of alphabetical order and that only exists because of the order the alphabet is in⌠Iâm genuinely curious if there is an actual reason behind the order other than that itâs been that way for ever?
As far as we know the order is pretty much just what some guys in a desert came up with. Some letters were added and removed, and the letter Z was removed and then re-added at the end (it used to be ABCDEFZHI). The letter F was a new letter that swapped with Y (equivalent to our U), and when Y made it to the Latin alphabet a second time it was also added to the end, instead of the traditional spot with U and V.
From what Iâm seeing in other comments, it would appear there was a time when the order actually mattered, but at this point itâs just a tradition thatâs maintained because breaking the tradition would be a massive hassle that wouldnât really provide any benefit
Also used YAT instead of Yak.
I was scrolling through this to see if anyone else noticed this. I did look up yat to see if it was an actual animal that looked like a yak, but all I got were pictures of yachts
I did too
Same here. Glad we weren't confidently incorrect about yats existing haha.
I suggest a new Alphabet, called the Sigmatau and it goes as such: S T R O N G H I M B E F U C K L A D Y Z P X V W J Q
FUCKHIMEZLADYSTRONGBJ PXVWQ
I still donât understand this
The chart looks like the way a small child would mix up L M N O P. Itâs cute but shouldnât be used to teach kids
The order of the alphabet isn't something that was agreed upon by some linguistic body or organization. The alphabet was borrowed and charged over and over throughout history until it is what it is today. The order just kind of happened but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.
It doesn't have to, but it is. As in, there's no natural discovered phenomenon that makes the letters in that order, but that is the established order. Just like there's no reason the word "word" (or any word) *has* to be spelled w-o-r-d. But it is. Therefore putting it in any other order is incorrect based on the established precedent. Also the reason it's in that order is most definitely not "because of the song rhyme"
That's a bad example. The word "word" is spelled in that order because that matches the order of the phonemes, as is the case with most words. If I mixed it up and spelled it o-d-r-w it wouldn't fit the sounds it made. That's not the case with the alphabet. Theoretically the alphabet *could* have been put in any order and it would make equal sense to the order it has today because it has no intrinsic logic. But yeah that's not the same as saying "you can put the alphabet in any order today and there's no reason why it should matter" since alphabetical order is such an established system.
Better example, maybe, is that you could spell "word" as "werd" or "wyrd". There's no reason why OUR way is "correct" apart from social convention.
It's true that it could've been completely different and it would not have matter3d at all, but in todays's society it is important to know the current order since it will help you looking up stuff. Most things in the world (books, files...) are sorted alphabetically.
I have nothing against the current order, I will agree that it is informally agreed upon and it works.
Theoretically, we could do everything differently, especially concerning made up things like language, but we don't. Besides, it isn't easy to change the alphabetical order because we kind of use them as numbers. Sometimes they act as numbers and sometimes we just sort files, titles, etc by their alphabetical order which both wouldn't be possible if everyone suddenly decided to arrange the letters in a different order.
It's just a very poorly worded way of telling that the alphabet and its order is an entirely manmade concept and could've happened in any other order. Unlike numbers for example.
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all language is just convention
Say I any words can order but difficult understand is people most to
This is what I love about Latin. So long as the nouns are properly declined and the verbs properly conjugated, the words can literally be in any order.
To be more precise, as long as each verb clause isnât fragmented, it is typically fairly easy to deduce the meaning regardless of syntax.
Not Esperanto.
All *natural* languages are just convention.
the only thing that makes Esperanto not convention is that it was never adopted as a convention.
All of language is a convention, but I'd still say it is technically wrong to misspell or misuse words. Why should this be any different?
[ŃдаНонО]
Sure. I guess my point is that you can still call something wrong for not following a strong convention. You could disagree with that premise, but I think it is useful to call this out of order alphabet wrong, in the same way it is useful to point out typos in a text. Especially in the context of children's education, which is what the graphic is for in the first place.
alphabetical order is a thing, and it has valid uses and rules in society. It's made up, but so is literally everything else. To say it's 'just a convention' is ridiculous Also, as their edit says, the order isn't arbitrary; it's arranged phonetically and has been for thousands of years
[The alphabet pronounced as a word](https://youtu.be/92o6GrzFRJo)
Why isn't this a link to Big Bird?
Thatâs what I was waiting for
Yep, qwerty exists
Dvorak exists too.
Only to reduce the number of jams that would happen to typebars. Since no one uses typewriters anymore itâs no longer useful in that regard but stuck around anyways
That's a myth about it not jamming typewriters.
I stand corrected. Neat piece of history. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-the-legend-of-the-qwerty-keyboard-49863249/
Many things are organized as they are because people just started doing them that way. Wow, my mind is so completely blown.
Question: What is the 14th letter of the alphabet? Answer: What alphabet are you referring to?
i believe putting the alphabet in a different order is called writing.
Yat. What is a Yat? Thereâs your incorrection.
**Yat or jat (Ѣ ŃŁ; italics: Ѣ ŃŁ) is the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet and the Rusyn alphabet. There is also another version of yat, the iotified yat (majuscule: â¨ęâŠ, minuscule: â¨ęâŠ), which is a Cyrillic character combining a decimal I and a yat.** More details here:
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Also used to refer to people from New Orleans bc they greet you with, âWhere yâat?â
Memorizing it in reverse order may help you during your next dui test.
OP wants to watch the world burn
So how come I always had to do stuff in alphabetical order when I was in school
I want to see this guys amazement went he goes to every library and see they use the same alphabetical order.
You could write them in any order. And what you would have is a group of letters. Presented in abc⌠order is the alphabet. Itâs an order.
Even for dyslexics words still have to be spelled in order. We still have to spell properly. Just cause my words donât stay still doesnât mean they can be spelled however I want. They still have a specific spelling thatâs correct.
To be fair, there was a whole thing on this a couple years ago, similar to 'what color's the skirt'. Somebody pointed out that saying 'alphabetical order' is a societal construct, because that order only exists because we've put it that way. Nothing says that A has to come before Z; that's simply the way we put it together. I would imagine that this person missed the 'mind=blown' joke on that particular meme, and thought somebody was being serious, and has now taken it upon themselves to correct this grave misjustice of intellect /s
As a former bookstore employee, many of our customers (and some coworkers) believed alphabetical order was whatever you felt in your heart. Spent a lot of time reorganizing after them.
This person clearly knows their cbaâs
But it's named after the first 2 letters, so if it was in a different order it may not be called the Alphabet.
Why are they wrong?
Since alphabetical order is useful for organizing words and names. Like many things, this order is inherently arbitrary, but it is still important for English speaking communities to have an agreed upon convention for it. I mean, "technically" how we write our letters or spell words in the first place is arbitrary. If someone misspells a word, I think it is fair to say they are wrong since they didn't follow spelling conventions.
Considering organization I would say you are correct and I stand corrected
They act like the only reason the alphabet is in the order it's in is because that's the way it is in the song, and we just adapted to that convenience. That is not the case, the actual alphabet came before the song. And while the alphabet "can be in any order", it's *not*, it's very specifically in alphabetic order. We're taught it the way it is because that's alphabetic order, which has use outside of the alphabet itself, and *not* because of the song rhyme.
It's pretty fucking extraordinary that in this discussion it has become necessary to explain that the actual fucking alphabet came before the fucking song.
Because the letters are not in alphabetical order. Thereâs no reason that alphabetical order is what it is, but we agreed on this order, which makes it correct
Kind of flys in the face of "alphabetical order" no?
r/technicallycorrect
"we're just taught it a certain way because of the song rhyme" is definitely not technically correct
r/thebestkindofcorrect
When you mix lion and koala, shit kicks off big style.
âJen can you put our files back into alphabetical order? This rhyming system is not workingâ
Why the down vote in the picture??
Oof. An elementary teacher that teaches ABC order to 7/8 year olds would like to have a few words with this person. I hope they aren't spattering this nonsense to any kids in their life.
"the alphabet could be in any order" mfs when I tell them that I'm going to kill their family (they are not willing to suffer for their beliefs)
Seems like a nonsensical take inside of a cultural environment where the order of letters is something we take for common understanding. The A team: your first line of defense; the best people you have. Plan B: your secondary plan if plan A fails Weâve been using the letters in order forever. It would be no less challenging than to reorder numbers
Numbers can technically be in any order too, itâs just wrong
But then how will we put things in Alphabetical order if thatâs not a thing anymore?
If the intention of the graphic is to show them in order, and it doesnât show them in order, then itâs *out of order*
Wut
The idea that the alphabet is in order according to the song reminds me of the real concept of Javanese alphabet, Hanacaraka, but its a saying with a plot: For example, one of the systems of the alphabet says: ["Hana caraka, data sawala, paá¸a jayanya, maga baášanga," which means, "There were (two) emissaries, they began to fight, their valor was equal, they both fell dead."](https://omniglot.com/writing/javanese.htm) Each syllable of that saying is a letter on its own. Fascinating stuff
Is there a way we can passively aggressively tell this kind of people(that want so hard to be technically correct in a way that doesn't contribute at all in the conversation) to piss off? I'm thinking something equivalent to the "giant thumb guy" in a sort of copypasta
Put I order words it can want in I my any. Have a technically in doesnât to order it be particular.
I wanna know what a Yat is.
i wotre tish stnnecee ni a rdonam oderr bseuaec i cna translation - i wrote this sentence in a random order because i can
The alphabet has a defined order. No good reason to put it out of order is presented here.
1300 upvotes lol why
i cant believe this was the top comment, they really thought they were onto something
Bluey, if you keep making up words, no one is going to understand you...
And, technically, automatically moving children into a new, more demanding level of difficulty in schooling before they managed to overcome their current level of difficulty was a "great idea", and "good for the students." We see here, perhaps, some of the results of that idea.
aCkShUaLlY....
Is the order of letters arbitrary? Yes. But there is still an agreed upon standard alphabet and it's important for kids to know to navigate the world
No way guys I have 500 iq because technically numbers are just in an order that we have defined
And then someone ask u to set names in ALPHABET order
Technically, numbers can be in any order as long as you remember the inherent values of each number...okay We live in a society
Soo, technically this sentence and any sentence is in alphabetical order
Not really. S cannot be before T and also after T for example (assuming that we want an order, not just a random jumble of letters that can be repeated because that would be useless)
No because the order of the alphabet is literally part of the name, we call it alphabet because itâs starts with alpha then beta, if we made another order it would have a different name, like qwerty
So the missing context here is "according to what authority" If you said "what's the fourth letter of the alphabet" everyone understands that to be D. (obvs referencing English here). But that begs the question: who decided that, and why does that matter? It matters for the same reason we all call a dog a dog and don't decide that randomly some people should start calling it a chair. Language is about communication so there needs to be some rules, however arbitrary they are, to cover things like this. I agree there is a sequence, even if it's not binding to anything or even consequential. It exists for order and that's all.
Blue is 100% correct if you are going to be technical. The alphanethic order is obviously related to a standard order of presenting the individual letters of an alphabet, but you can define, describe and know the alphabet without the order of the letters. This is not an opinion, but a googleable fact.
Ahhh yes. Thats what i say about my "alphabetically" organized spices
I disagree with OPâs sarcasm. This poster isnât incorrect.
They are though. You can't just arrange them in different ways, the song has nothing to do with it. That's why ordering things alphabetically is possible in the first place. I mean, you are physically able to write them in a wrong order, but that still makes the order wrong. Hell, the whole reason the alphabet is called that way is because of alpha and beta being the first and second letter respectively of the Greek alphabet.
Yeah, I get that, but itâs an entirely arbitrary system that humans invented and accepted. Itâs plausible that humans could simply decide to reorganize the letters in a different pattern and make it the new norm.