| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 299.1 | | VIRTUE::RAVAN | | Mon Jan 05 1987 10:04 | 11 |
| Ah, yes; one of the great mysteries of the universe. As Stephen
Wright asks so pointedly, "Why is the alphabet in that order? Is
it 'cause of that song?"
I *think* I remember reading that it was indeed the Greeks (alpha,
beta, etc.) who insisted on a consistent order for the letters,
but I've no idea whether they filed things that way or just used
it as a memory device to remember the alphabet. I'll check my
"Connections" book - sounds like something that would be in there.
-b
|
| 299.2 | The weight of the world upon me | VENTUR::PREVIDI | Go # sand | Mon Jan 05 1987 14:36 | 5 |
| Hmmm. If the order of the letters were changed, could it still be called
the alphabet? Suppose the first two letters corresponded to the English
equivalents of the Greek omega and lambda? Would we call it the omegalambd?
_______________________Christ, I hope I can sleep tonight!
|
| 299.3 | speculation | CACHE::MARSHALL | hunting the snark | Mon Jan 05 1987 17:05 | 9 |
| maybe its due to the Greek use of the same symbols for both letters
and numbers. Thus one actually put the 'letters' in 'numerical'
order to create the alphabetical order.
/
( ___
) ///
/
|
| 299.4 | partial answer | JON::MORONEY | May Fortune favor the foolish. | Mon Jan 05 1987 19:55 | 17 |
| re .0:
Good question. A partial answer that can explain the relative positions of
some letters is as follows:
Many of the original Greek letters were "split", producing more than one letter
where the Greeks had one. These were kept pretty much together. Examples are
<IJ> and <UVWY> [don't know why x came before y]. When the Romans borrowed the
Greek alphabet, the Greek zeta (and several other letters) were determined to
be unnecessary, and dropped. Zeta (Z) was later determined to be useful, so it
was added, but placed at the end to avoid messing up the new order. The
Cyrillic alphabet was also based on the Greek, and this adding at the end is
more common, they have 10 (used to be 13) glyphs added after the last one they
took from the Greeks. The Cyrillic alphabet also "splits" several Greek letters
as well.
-Mike
|
| 299.5 | It's obvious | ECLAIR::GOODENOUGH | Jeff Goodenough, IPG Reading-UK | Tue Jan 06 1987 08:43 | 2 |
| ... that they were sorted according to their ASCII code values
|
| 299.6 | The Answer | REGENT::MERRILL | If you've got it, font it. | Tue Jan 06 1987 13:52 | 10 |
| re: .5 That's right! Caesar Augustus decreed that everyone would
report for a census. He also decreed that the listings would be
in alphabetic order as proposed by one of his nameless software
consultants (who was 1960 years ahead of his time!). Note that
it was a US census that prompted Hollerith's develoment of the punched
card.
Rick
Merrill
|
| 299.7 | It's an old habit | GOBLIN::MCVAY | Pete McVay, VRO (Telecomm) | Tue Jan 13 1987 13:49 | 5 |
| Alphabetic order predate Greece and Rome. Clay tablets with Sumerian
script (one of the earliest written languages) have been found with
practice letters, written by students. The letters/glyphs are in
a consistent order, which indicates the semi-alphabet used in Sumerian
also had an alphabetic order.
|