How was the order of the english alphabet decided?

by Serenatycompany
dolphinboy1637

The order of our alphabet has a longer history than most of us realize.

One theory comes from a series of discoveries in 1929, of a collection of tablets containing texts written in the Ugaritic language, of 14th-12th century BCE, were found in what is now modern day Syria. This discovery shows us the extremely early examples of an alphabet that mirrors the form our contemporary English alphabet uses.

The theory contends that this alphabetical order was passed on to the Phoenicians, and then to the Greeks, and then to the Etruscans and Romans. This is an awesome animation by the University of Maryland showing the consistency between the different alphabets over the years.

Whether or not the development of Ugaritic cuneiform was an independent invention or springing from other languages in the region such as Egyptian or Sumerian, is still a matter of historical debate. (As far as I know).

In terms of the why of the order, that's a larger historical mystery. Dr. Steele, as part of her new research into early writing systems says this about the order:

"The answer cannot be purely linguistic. There must have been considerable social importance attached to the idea of the alphabet having a particular order. It matters who was doing the writing and what they were using writing for."

But really, we just don't know. Whether or not there was a function for the specific order of the alphabet is a big question in this area of research. We can trace the historical lineage of the alphabet and the existence of a common order relatively far back into human history, but the why is still up in the air.

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