A, B, C, D, R, K, Z, V, M?
July 30, 2007 4:00 PM   Subscribe

Why is the English alphabet in the order it is?

Why is the alphabet in its order from A to Z and not in a different order, like our QWERTY keyboards? Who, if anybody, made the decision?
posted by C17H19NO3 to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Been covered pretty precisely previously.

 
Check out this thread.
posted by waterlily at 4:02 PM on July 30, 2007


That previous thread also had a fine example of how animated GIFS can add to a thread.
posted by ericb at 4:04 PM on July 30, 2007


The Straight Dope
posted by sveskemus at 4:08 PM on July 30, 2007


BTW, it's not the "English" alphabet, it's called the Latin or Roman Alphabet.
posted by oneirodynia at 4:33 PM on July 30, 2007


Neat evolution of the Latin alphabet: http://www.wam.umd.edu/~rfradkin/latin.html
posted by zackola at 4:40 PM on July 30, 2007


Actually, it is the English alphabet if you're speaking specifically of the 26 letters used in the language. It's considered a variety of the Latin alphabet. The Hawaiian alphabet, which is also made up of letters from the Latin alphabet, is in a different order than English.
posted by katemonster at 5:26 PM on July 30, 2007


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