How was alphabetical order determined?

Question

I have a feeling that "alphabetical order" does not originate from English, but how was it determined which letters come in which order? Is there any rhyme or reason to it?-Chris

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[nq:1]I have a feeling that "alphabetical order" does not originate from English, but how was it determined which letters come in which order? Is there any rhyme or reason to it?[/nq]
Your sixth word pretty much answers the question.

Ross Howard

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[nq:2]I have a feeling that "alphabetical order" does not originate ... which order? Is there any rhyme or reason to it?[/nq]
[nq:1]Your sixth word pretty much answers the question.[/nq]
The order was pretty much set by the the time the Greeks got it from the Phoenicians. Sampson says
What has not been explained is the ordering of the letters of the Semitic alphabet. This has been fixed from the beginning, and allowing for certain losses of letters and addition of new letters is the order of our Roman alphabet today; but no phonetic logic is apparent in it, and there are no theories about how it was originally settled up.
Writing Systems , 1985, p. 81.
This last seems like a strange claim (Who ever heard of a question linguists didn't have theories on?) but it seems to be backed up by the fact that none of my other books on writing systems (DeFrancis, Coulmas, Daniels and Bright, Nakanishi, Jackson, Gaur) put forth any.

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[nq:2]I have a feeling that "alphabetical order" does not originate ... which order? Is there any rhyme or reason to it?[/nq]
[nq:1]Your sixth word pretty much answers the question.[/nq]
Chris, I think Ross is trying to point out that "alpha" and "bet" or "beta" were the opening letters in an older alphabet that is, that the order has been around for a very, very long time.

I've got a book on the role of the alphabet in western civilization, I'll dig it out... The Alphabet Effect by Robert K. Logan, 1986. It says,
The very first alphabet was invented over 3,500 years ago in the near East by the Canaanites, a Semitic people, and contained only twenty-two letters. It became the model for hundreds of other phonetic alphabets... The Greeks improved on the Semitic alphabet by adding vowels. They also added a small number of new consonants to represent special sounds in their spoken language. In fact, each of the cultures that adopted an alphabetic writing system invariably added new letters to represent the unique sounds of their spoken language.
The order of the letters of modern alphabets is more or less the same as that of the original one...
Later in the book, he confirms what we found in a discussion here a couple of years ago that ****, putting words, names, and ideas in the same order as the sequence as the alphabet, did not become common until the days of the printing press (Renaissance). Logan says it is possible to find some examples in ancient times (Hebrew scriptures, Pliny's Natural History, some glossaries) and medieval times. Alphabetizing beyond the initial letter only began to show up around 200 AD.
Logan points out that the first-known English dictionary had to explain the concept. From the on-line edition of that work:

ROBERT CAWDREY'S
A TABLE ALPHABETICAL (1604)
If thou be desirous (gentle Reader) right-
ly and readily to vnderstand, and to profit
by this Table, and such like, then thou must
learne the Alphabet, to wit, the order of the
Letters as they stand, perfecty without
booke, and where euery Letter standeth: as
(b) neere the beginning, (n) about the mid-
dest, and (t) toward the end. Nowe if the
word, which thou art desirous to finde, be-
gin with (a) then looke in the beginning of
this Table, but if with (v *) looke towards
the end. Againe, if thy word beginne with
(ca) looke in the beginning of the letter (c)
but if with (cu) then looke toward the end
of that letter. And so of all the rest. &c.
Which is reminder, in case anyone needs it, that it is possible to learn to read yet not know the order of the alphabet (or even the names of the letters).

Best Donna Richoux

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[nq:1]I've got a book on the role of the alphabet in western civilization, I'll dig it out... The Alphabet Effect by Robert K. Logan, 1986.[/nq]
Thank you. I knew I had a book that discussed the history of alphabetization, but I couldn't think of it. Now if I could only find my copy.
[nq:1]It says, The very first alphabet was invented over 3,500 years ago in the near East by the Canaanites, a ... The order of the letters of modern alphabets is more or less the same as that of the original one...[/nq]
Which is pretty remarkable, when you think about it. Somebody over three millenia ago came up with a standard, and while the shapes of the letters have essentially changed beyond recognition, the direction of writing has changed, new letters have been added, the script has been changed from a consonental system to an alphabetic one, and the alphabet's descendents have been shoehorned into writing hundreds of languages completely unrelated to the original (and with different phoneme vocabularies), the original standard is still readily recognizable in (at least parts of) the modern order. I can't think of anything that old that's still so recognizable in something that's in everyday use.
And still nobody seems to know why they chose that particular order. Perhaps they didn't see themselves as establishing an order at all. Somebody wrote it down in whatever order came to mind, others learned from copies of the scroll, and it just stuck, as nobody could think of a good reason to change it.
[nq:1]Later in the book, he confirms what we found in a discussion here a couple of years ago that ... (Renaissance). Logan says it is possible to find some examples in ancient times (Hebrew scriptures, Pliny's Natural History, some glossaries)[/nq]
Hebrew writing, in particular, was fond of embedding words in alphabetical order, often as acrostics. In Psalm 119, for example, the first eight lines all begin with aleph, the next eight all begin with beth, etc., for a total of 176 lines exhausting the entire 22-letter alphabet.
http://tinyurl.com/359kt

[nq:1]and medieval times. Alphabetizing beyond the initial letter only began to show up around 200 AD.[/nq]
I had thought that it was a fair bit later than that.

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[nq:1](the origins of the alphabet) And still nobody seems to know why they chose that particular order. Perhaps they didn't ... from copies of the scroll, and it just stuck, as nobody could think of a good reason to change it.[/nq]
"Stuck". That's a good one. I thought everybody knew that alphabetical order was designed to minimise the chance of typewriter keys sticking. Or was it to maximise it? I can never remember.

Mike Barnes
Cheshire, England

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Mike Barnes filted:
[nq:2](the origins of the alphabet) And still nobody seems to ... nobody could think of a good reason to change it.[/nq]
[nq:1]"Stuck". That's a good one. I thought everybody knew that alphabetical order was designed to minimise the chance of typewriter keys sticking. Or was it to maximise it? I can never remember.[/nq]
Steven Wright's suggestion: "Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?"
..r

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[nq:1]Mike Barnes filted:[/nq]
[nq:2]"Stuck". That's a good one. I thought everybody knew that ... Or was it to maximise it? I can never remember.[/nq]
[nq:1]Steven Wright's suggestion: "Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?" ..r[/nq]
'This is Greek and how they spelt her
Apha, Beta,Gamma,Delta..'
anyone know how the rest goes.

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[nq:1]Steven Wright's suggestion: "Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?"[/nq]
I'm reminded of an ancient "Born Loser" cartoon, where Wilberforce, looking at the alphabet printed on a blackboard, asks his grade-school teacher, "How come all the letters are different?"

Ray Heindl
(remove the Xs to reply to: (Email Removed))

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[nq:1]Shouldn't Gamma come after Delta? Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon, Gamma Kappa, Pi, Psi, Omega.[/nq]
I admit it. That's too esoteric for me. I don't get the reference.

I can find the first four in that order
http://dir.jayde.com/profile11822053.html
(which is worth a look) but that goes on "eta, tau, zeta", and the first five a few places, but I don't understand the whole list.

Or is this another one of those things like "QED" and students don't get shown the Greek alphabet these days, either?

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[nq:2]Your sixth word pretty much answers the question.[/nq]
[nq:1]The order was pretty much set by the the time the Greeks got it from the Phoenicians. Sampson says What ... that none of my other books on writing systems (DeFrancis, Coulmas, Daniels and Bright, Nakanishi, Jackson, Gaur) put forth any.[/nq]
There is some evidence that the proto-Sinaitic alphabet (precursor to Phoenician) derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs as an ad-hoc system that could be learned easily - having just 20 or so consonants rather than hundreds. (Full story in John Man's alpha beta 2000, my notes here http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/chapters/alphabet.php)

If this were so, then either the ordering would have emerged arbitrarily as the alphabet was taught/passed down through generations, or it may have followed some order from the section of hieroglyphs it was derived from - assuming hieroglyphs had an ordering in order to facilitate teaching them.

How was alphabetical order determined?

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