The Alphabet Song

Have you thought about the alphabet recently?  Of course not.  The only time it even rises up into our consciousness is when we have to either teach it or learn it. Therefore, I didn't realize there was so much to be said about those 26 English letters until I read Michael Rosen's book Alphabetical, How Every Letter Tells a Story.

The book is structured with each chapter representing a letter.  Rosen traces the history of each letter, then does a somewhat whimsical few paragraphs of what each letter sounds like when paired with other letters, and how those sounds have evolved over the centuries.  In modern English many of these sounds are a result of the 'Great Vowel Shift', a 200 year period (1350 - 1550) when the modern sounds of the letters were mostly established.  The bulk of the book, however, are about topics that are loosely related to the alphabet.

Ever wonder how old the alphabet is?  Well, it goes back mostly to the Phoenicians at roughly 1100 BCE.  Those were the people who sailed around the Mediterranean trading with everybody.  When Rosen reproduced the Phoenician alphabet in his book, there are more than a few recognizable letters.  The Greeks adopted and changed it and then the Romans changed it even more.  It also surprised me early printers using moveable type designed what most of the letters we take for granted look like today especially they lower case versions.

There are even a few letters older than the Phoenician alphabet.  Care to guess the oldest?  Well, it's "B", 4000 BCE years old from an Egyptian hieroglyph meaning shelter.  Surprisingly, "K" is also from an Egyptian hieroglyph and goes back to 2000 BCE.  (It meant the palm of the hand.)  "J" by contrast isn't really used until the 1500's.  Samuel Johnson in the 1700's still regarded it as a variant of 'I' and unnecessary.  And poor "H" doesn't have an etymology (history) at all.

Some of Rosen's chapters are more interesting than others.  I thought one of his the best chapters was "K".  He discusses deliberately designed alphabets created in their entirety rather than evolving over a long period of time.   Rosen tells us about the Korean King Sejong who in 1446 commissioned the design of a 28 letter alphabet, so 'his subjects could have a simple way to write him their grievances'. Was I floored! Think about this.  Two really progressive ideas encapsulated in an alphabet:  Everyone should be literate, and a king should be responsive to those he rules.  In the United States, the most famous designed alphabet was  by Sequoya, who devised the Cherokee alphabet in about 12 years in the early 19th century  It's still in use today, and you can get a Cherokee keyboard.  "Q", "P" and "W" are also really interesting.  "Q" was about typewriters and why qwerty came into existence.  "P" is about shorthand writing, and "W" was about dictionaries.

The conclusion of the book was the author's opinion the uses of the alphabet which have held sway for more than 1000 years are fading due to the world wide web.  Alphabetized card catalogs?  Gone. Telephone books?  Gone.  Dictionaries with their little finger dimpled alphabet tabs?  Gone.   Paper maps with alphabetized street indexes?  Gone.  And the real culprit in all this alphabet bashing?  The smart phone.  If you are interested in a fascinating book with lots of interesting ideas, which can be picked up and read a few pages at a time read Alphabetical.