A-B-C all the way to Z

Why Are the Letters in ABC Order?

Contents:

  • Top 10 Ways to Teach the ABCs
  • Navigation menu
  • Learn German Easily
  • Pronouncing the Alphabet | Pronunciation | EnglishClub

    • In the s, archaeologists found a dozen stone tablets used in a school in Ugarit, a city in what is now Syria, that are from the fourteenth century BC and preserve two orders of the Ugaritic alphabet. One, the "Northern Semitic order" is related to the Phoenician and Hebrew alphabets and features bits and pieces of an order familiar to Modern English speakers: As the alphabet traveled around the world, those who adopted it did very little to change the basic order.

    Looking at this animation from the University of Maryland, you can see how things have remained largely the same between the Phoenicians and Latin. Long strings of letters, like abcdef , remain untouched for thousands of years. I hate to disappoint you, but we're really not sure. The practice of having the letters in an established order makes sense: Why some ancient people put them in that specific order, though, is unknown.

    Scholars have plenty of hypotheses about the order, relating to everything from astrology, musical scales, numbers, and poetry.

    Top 10 Ways to Teach the ABCs

    Here are some of the ideas that have floated around among alphabet academics:. Early users strung the letters together to correspond to the words of a mnemonic sentence or storyline. There is some appearance of phonetic grouping in the order of the letters of the North Semitic alphabet, but this may be accidental. New additions to an adopted alphabet always seem to get added to the end of the line, leading to x , y and z bringing up the rear.

    Navigation menu

    Letter A Song Video for Kids (Preschool | Kindergarten. Product description. The best-selling Abby Monkey Preschool All-In-One Learning A to Z Buy Preschool All-In-One Learning A to Z - Letters and Alphabet School Adventure (ABC Flash Cards, Tracing, Alphabet Lowercase Letters; Great way to teach children letter recognition, association of words with their beginning.

    When the Greeks borrowed the Phoenician letters, they added their own homemade letters to the end, like the ancestral X. The sing-songy order lends itself to music so well that some have asked if the letters were arranged that way to fit the alphabet song. But the ancient order was only first set to the tune and copyrighted in the mids.

    COLLECTIONS

    Some sources have the original title as "The ABC: Simple as ABC For all the adaptations and mutations, the alphabet's order of letters has been relatively stable. So the order has ancient roots, but where does it come from? Generally, the absent zee -rhyme is not missed, although some children use a zee pronunciation in the rhyme which they would not use elsewhere. Variants of the song exist to accommodate the zed pronunciation.

    One variation shortens the second line and lengthens the last, to form a near-rhyme between N and zed:.

    Learn German Easily

    Another alternate Zed version: Note that the third line is lengthened and the fourth line is shortened, to compensate for the Dutch pronunciations. A French-language version of the song is also taught in Canada, with generally no alterations to the melody except in the final line that requires adjustment to accommodate the two-syllable pronunciation of the French y. Because the English language has 40 sounds and only 26 letters, children and beginning readers also need to learn the different sounds phonemes associated with each letter.

    Many songs have been written to teach phonemic awareness and they are usually referred to as alphabet songs. There are also songs that go through the alphabet, making some of the letters stand for something in the process.

    Pronouncing the Alphabet | Pronunciation | EnglishClub

    A newer example of this is from the musical Matilda. Comedian Soupy Sales released a song in called "Backwards Alphabet" which contained the reverse alphabet in lyrical style. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

    For the song by Drake, see Alphabet Drake song. For other similarly named songs, see ABC song disambiguation. For other uses of "A.

    • Ragged Dick, Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks!
    • Redesigned: Off the Subject #2!
    • Thorn.
    • Findo’s Mousetrap.
    • 245: Grief Journal Prompts.

    For other uses, see ABCS. This article needs additional citations for verification.

    • Top 10 Ways to Remember the ABCs.
    • Ozma of Oz: The Oz Books #3 (FLT Classics Series) (The Oz Books: FLT Classics Series).
    • German Alphabet ABC.
    • Forever (Who Loves Me Book 4);
    • Enseigner les faits religieux : Quels enjeux ? (Débats décole) (French Edition).
    • La feuille qui ne tremblait pas: Zo d’Axa et l’anarchie (Au fil de lhistoire) (French Edition).
    • Why Are the Letters in ABC Order? | Mental Floss!

    Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.