# Why doesn't H come before G in the alphabet? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 21, 2014, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656 "2014-07-21T12:00:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/61 "2014-07-23T20:54:20Z")
Some people look at the world as it is and ask “why?” Some people look at it as it never was and ask, “why not?” And some people get pissed off about nearly everything. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/62 "2014-07-23T21:33:29Z")
Yes, the ordering of the earliest ancestor of our alphabet is either arbitrary, or the reason is not known, and so it might as well be arbitrary. Can we discuss spelling reform? There is no need for the letter “C”, we have “S” for soft C and “K” for hard C. That leaves C useless. So make C the character to represent the sound we currently represent with the digraph SH. Also, X is useless. If we want to represent that sound, use “Z” in things like “Xavier”, or “KS” in things like “fox”. Yay, an unused character. It can go back to its original use as “chi” and represent the CH. Also Q is useless. Let’s use it for ZH–you know, the ZZJJJH sound in “azure” and “pleasure”. I mean, it’s a sound we hardly ever use, but we don’t even have a standard digraph for it, and Q is useless, so there you go. Aaaand we’re bringing back Þ and Ð for TH and TH. Plus that upside down e, also known as schwa, that’s every other vowel in dictionary pronunciation keys. You know, ə? How about we use that? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/63 "2014-07-23T21:42:41Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > My reasoning is that if alphabetic order is completely arbitrary (and I couldn’t tell if it was), then it’s sometimes a good idea to just recognize that, as it would be with a lot of other things. So it’s party a rhetorical question, more than anything. (And I’m not stringing anyone along–I just have work to do IRL, so I can’t post a lot.) > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > What in the world is this supposed to mean? I am equally puzzled. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/64 "2014-07-23T21:46:21Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Can we discuss spelling reform? There is no need for the letter “C”, we have “S” for soft C and “K” for hard C. That leaves C useless. So make C the character to represent the sound we currently represent with the digraph SH. How would we distinguish ‘Rice’ from ‘Rise’? How would we spell ‘Cherry?’ In any case, English spelling reform will only make sense in a subset of English dialects, and would be a horrible mess to the others. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/65 "2014-07-23T22:44:55Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > How would we distinguish ‘Rice’ from ‘Rise’? Riis and Riiz. We can handle vowel reform as well. Long vowels and doubled, short vowels are single. Or fuck, we put a hat on long vowels. By the way, “silent e” is hereby abolished. [Sorry Tom Lehrer fans.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gHPaVxkdPA) > [@](#): > > How would we spell ‘Cherry?’ Xerry. X=Chi. > [@](#): > > In any case, English spelling reform will only make sense in a subset of English dialects, and would be a horrible mess to the others. As long as it works in my dialect–newscaster american english–that is, english the way Jesus spoke it–I’m OK with that. We all have to make sacrifices sometimes. And by “we” I mean “you”. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/66 "2014-07-23T22:58:05Z")
> [@bup](#): > > I love that story. That’s just charming. I have no idea what’s happening. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/67 "2014-07-23T23:27:04Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I am equally puzzled. Yes, it’s annoying as all hell. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/68 "2014-07-24T07:39:48Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Riis and Riiz. Those read as Rees and Reez in my dialect. > [@](#): > > Xerry. X=Chi. Reads as Kzerry. > [@](#): > > As long as it works in my dialect–newscaster american english–that is, english the way Jesus spoke it–I’m OK with that. We all have to make sacrifices sometimes. And by “we” I mean “you”. Exactly 😉 Spelling reform is like fitting wheels to a tomato. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/69 "2014-07-24T09:39:32Z")
Many years ago, I was customizing the pronunciation dictionary for the speech board on my wife’s computer. There were some words that it was pronouncing kind of funkily (I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what any of them were, but they may well have been proper names). Anyway, in the course of my activities, I discovered that given the phonemes necessary to make a speech synthesizer voice the letters “y” and “w,” there is no good reason to consider them to be consonants. The mystery of why they ARE so designated strikes me as far more compelling than the one in the OP. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/70 "2014-07-24T10:34:07Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > What in the world is this supposed to mean? Apparently the OP thought he/she had found a way to get the rest of us to recognize the essential arbitrariness of alphabetic order. He/she picked a pair of consecutive letters at random, and in asking us why they are ordered the way they are, hoped we would notice this arbitrariness and comment on it. ---
**Author:** ![Double\_Foolscap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85e7bf/32.png) [@Double\_Foolscap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Double_Foolscap)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/71 "2014-07-24T10:54:54Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Double Foolscap writes: > > \> He reasoning was that G is a heavier letter than H so should be lower down the > \> order. > > Does he have synesthesia? That sounds a little like it. People will think that letters have weights and such, mixing together various senses like vision and perception of weights. Eh, maybe, but I haven’t seen it expressed anywhere else. I always think people’s voices have colours, but that could be less synaesthesia and more that I watched a lot of TV and played a lot of games with colour-coded subtitles when I was young 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/72 "2014-07-27T23:05:07Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > Apparently the OP thought he/she had found a way to get the rest of us to recognize the essential arbitrariness of alphabetic order. He/she picked a pair of consecutive letters at random, and in asking us why they are ordered the way they are, hoped we would notice this arbitrariness and comment on it. Yes, I guess that’s sort of the idea. I apologize for being oblique. But for me a larger theme is that we often just assume that the things we take for granted have some kind of well-reasoned basis, when they don’t, and alphabetical collocation is one of the most ubiquitous systems by which we organize ourselves. The G things are always coming before the H things, but there’s no natural basis for it. Lexical collocation is kind of the same, but it’s one of the most fundamental ways that we “sense” native-like use of language. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/73 "2014-07-27T23:30:37Z")
Are we to learn something from this, then? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/74 "2014-07-27T23:41:21Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **guizot** : > > My reasoning is that if alphabetic order is completely arbitrary (and I couldn’t tell if it was), then it’s sometimes a good idea to just recognize that, as it would be with a lot of other things. So it’s party a rhetorical question, more than anything. (And I’m not stringing anyone along–I just have work to do IRL, so I can’t post a lot.) And yet, your OP had the effect of making it look like you were the one person who _didn’t_ just recognize that it was arbitrary, with your insistence that G before H was a “mistake”. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2014, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/75 "2014-07-28T00:09:28Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > Are we to learn something from this, then? Probably not, but feel free to ridicule the whole notion, if you wish. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2014, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/76 "2014-07-28T00:44:02Z")
Guizot: why does g come before h? Everybody else: no reason, it’s arbitrary. Guizot: seems to me there’s a reason. Everybody else: nope it’s just arbitrary. Guizot: gotcha! I was just trying to show you how arbitrary it is! ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2014, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/77 "2014-07-28T03:00:19Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Anyway, in the course of my activities, I discovered that given the phonemes necessary to make a speech synthesizer voice the letters “y” and “w,” there is no good reason to consider them to be consonants. > > The mystery of why they ARE so designated strikes me as far more compelling than the one in the OP. They are called consonants because people are to lazy to extend the classification of letters. ‘w’ is a full semi-vowel, in that its only real functions WRT enunciation are to modify the attack of a vowel and to form true diphthongs (where it precedes ‘r’, it is basically just a silent appendage). ‘y’ is a full semi-vowel that can also stand alone as a vowel. ‘h’ is a partial semi-vowel (it does not really form true diphthongs that significant modify vowel sounds) and a lenition adjunct (where it modifies consonant sounds). ‘g’ also lenites ‘n’ to form a sound that kind of blends the two but it not really derivative of either. Some even go so far as to classify ‘r’ as a semi-vowel, though, like ‘h’, it does not significantly modify the preceding vowel (in non-rhotic dialects). Then we come to the ‘dark l’, at which point, if you were not already, you start screaming for me to stop. ---
**Author:** ![dogbutler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dogbutler/32/428_2.png) [@dogbutler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dogbutler)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2014, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/78 "2014-07-28T03:27:45Z")
Because there’s no such thing as a scary hgost story. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2014, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/79 "2014-07-28T06:30:32Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > But for me a larger theme is that we often just assume that the things we take for granted have some kind of well-reasoned basis, when they don’t, and alphabetical collocation is one of the most ubiquitous systems by which we organize ourselves. Please account for the following in your OP then. > [@guizot](#): > > … somewhere along the line it seems to me someone messed up. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2014, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656/80 "2014-07-28T07:08:13Z")
> [@White SIFL](#): > > Please account for the following in your OP then. Satire. Next time I promise to put in a smiley face. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-h-come-before-g-in-the-alphabet/693656.md?page=5)