Who was it who decided that the alphabet should proceed as it does (or did when the decider did the deciding)? I know a good number of alphabets are ordered, so it sounds like they thought it a good idea at the time they decided to do such, but who decided in each one on order?
Incidentally, are there any non-ordered alphabets in existence?
I’ll bet it’s because of the song.
Yeah, but the song only covers A through Z. Beyond that, you have to consult Dr. Seuss, which is of course difficult nowadays. Some say you can get help from John Edwards, although I’m not sure a centuries-dead Puritan preacher will be of much help either.
Less seriously, though, I don’t know if you’ll get a good answer to your question. We might be able to trace the origins of the alphabet, but I’m not sure we know exactly who came up with it, but there’s no doubt someone, probably a well-respected council or literary figure did come up with it.
It’s likely that we may know of who decreed that a specific ordering was to be standard, but if what you want is a history of that ordering itself, it might be hard to find, as the origins are over 3000 years old
Here’s a brief history : http://www.historian.net/hxwrite.htm
You might try to find a cold of “The Alphabet Effect” by Robert Logan.
Briefly, the order of letters probably dates back Hebrew (there doesn’t seem to be an alphabet of letters that doesn’t have a usual order). This scheme was also used by Phoenicians. When the Greeks needed an alphabet, they preserved the order of the Phoenicians. And it’s pretty much stayed that way ever since.
Alphabetization came later and was used at the library at Alexandria, though it fell into disuse until past the Middle Ages, when it became necessary to orgaznize documents.
Logan makes the interesting point that having an alphabetical order is an important tool in the creation of civilization. Anyone can find something merely by knowing the alphabet. In contrast, a ideographic language like Chinese creates problems with filing and such simple things as dictionaries (what word comes first?). And the lack of a simple system for organization meant a powerful bureaucracy in China, since they were the only ones who could find necessary documents.