I was wondering how the English alphabet’s order came to be, and why languages like Greek have a “G” sound as the thrid letter? And yet, there is much agreement across the rest of the alphabets, IIRC. - Jinx
See Professor Robert Fradkin’s website on “Evolution of Alphabets” at http://www.wam.umd.edu/~rfradkin/alphapage.html. It doesn’t fully answer your question, but there is a pretty cool graphic if you click on “Latin character set.”
[sub]fixed URL - DrMatrix[/sub]
Basically, the oder goes back to the original semitic alphabetic. As far as the specific question asked, well when Latin borrowed the Greek aphapbet, it is not altogether clear how the third letter was sounded. Eventually it is was divided and a hook was added to one to distinguish it. Meantime, the Romans had little or no use for a Z sound and dropped that letter. This left a hole in the alphabet which was used (by the Greeks) for counting (alpha = 1, beta = 2, gamma = 3, the 11th letter was 20 and the 21st was 200 and they somehow expaned the alphabet to 27 letters to get up to 900) and, in the early days by the Romans (before Roman numerals). So they filled the hole with the G, the hooked C. Later on, the Romans had borrowed so many Greek words that they needed the Z after all and added it back. But by that time, the place had been taken and so was added at the end. Other letters split too. I split to make J and U to make V, W, and Y.
… and this kind of information is available in almost any encyclopedia, under “alphabet”, amazingly enough.
The Council of Nottingham in 1772 made the decision to put the English alphabet in the order it is now in. Until that time, every town and village had its own order. Most of them started with A and B, in deference to the Greek, but after that, it was all determined locally. This caused great confusion in commerce and day-care, because children would learn one song from their home village, but then move to a different village and be beaten soundly by their peers for having the wrong order. Clerks enjoyed the prestige and power, because information filed alphabetically by one clerk could not easily be retrieved by a clerk with different alphabetic background.
Finally, in the late 1700s, the situation became so bad that the King (“Good King Saurkraut”) demanded a council establish and set alphabetical order once and for all. He also demanded that they settle the question of measurement – a “foot” was the length of the king’s foot, and this caused confusion when the King had corns. Thus, the king is remembered in song: “Good King Saurkraut, look out! on your feet uneven.”)
The council came to its decision in 1772, and were wildly applauded by all English-speaking peoples. However, the American colonists objected to the final letter being “zed” rather than “zee”, and stamped their feet in outrage (and in sympathy with the king’s corn.) This was called the Stamp Act and was a leading cause of the American Revolution.
Hope that helps.
Um… brianmelendez, the URL in that link is broken. Take the period off the end to make it work. When you get there, nifty animated graphics!