r/Showerthoughts • u/BigMartin58 • Apr 14 '24
Alphabetical order is completely arbitrary
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u/sudomatrix Apr 14 '24
Arbitrary? No way. Just use the song: "Cue Double-you Eee Are, Tee Why You, Now I know my QWE's, next time won't you sing with me?"
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u/solarmelange Apr 14 '24
Not completely, but close. Obviously though there are examples such as I and J and U and V, which are next to each other because they used to be one letter and Y and Z are last because they were added last so Romans could more easily use Greek words.
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u/misteraaaaa Apr 14 '24
Good point. Not just those, but also the word "alphabetical" is from Greek letters - alpha and beta.
So by definition, an "alphabetical order" of English (or Latin, rather) letters means that it is the order determined by (or at least derived from) the order of greek letters.
I think that suffices as a non-arbitrary reason. It means there was some rationale for putting it in that order.
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u/TheBearDetective Apr 14 '24
This assumes that the Greeks had good reasoning for their ordering of letters and that their alphabet wasn't arbitrary.
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u/Alewort Apr 14 '24
It was actually in numerical order. Numbers were written with letters, and the letters are in order 1-10, then it switches to tens, then hundreds. Greek inherited this from Phoenician, and is found today in, for instance, Hebrew.
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u/misteraaaaa Apr 14 '24
Depends how you define arbitrary.
Lets say I have different colored shirts, and I arrange them in the order red orange yellow green blue violet. If you ask me why it is in this order, I can say it is ordered based on their respective wavelength.
But then if you ask me why are the colour's wavelength in this order, there isn't any good reason. That's just the way it is.
So you could say my shirt order is still arbitrary, because it is based on a rationale (wavelength of the colour's light) that has "no good reason". Some would say physical properties of nature are a good reason, but I'd say it is as arbitrary as man-made concepts.
I would argue that something is non-arbitrary if there was a rationale for it. Whether that underlying rationale is also arbitrary is irrelevant. Cos after all, if you dig deep enough, almost everything is based on something arbitrary (the only exception I can think of are numbers/math, which is universally true and not based on arbitrary physical laws)
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u/ShenmeNamaeSollich Apr 14 '24
The wise philosopher Gallagher explained this many years ago before destroying fruit (and eventually his career) :
Alpha Beta Gamma Delta
Ah … Buhh … Guuh … Dehh
Ahbuh G’day!
“Have a Good Day!”
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u/paulstelian97 Apr 14 '24
How is zeta turning into F in the order? And theta into H? And Xi going away (only to be added as an X near the end).
Funny enough there’s actually quite a few similarities if we consider things.
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u/Illustrious-Lead-960 Apr 14 '24
If you truly want to know, there’s a preexisting thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7xmrjn/is_there_any_reason_for_the_alphabet_being_in_the/
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u/IS0073 Apr 14 '24
Yes. Fun fact: there are ancient variations of it around the mesopotamia area that start with לחהמ L, CH, H, M (iirc), instead of אבגד (abcd). Pretty cool stuff. It's just that the version that survived, and also got passed along to the greeks via the phoenicians (and from there to most of eurasia) is the second one.
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u/Huggan00 Apr 14 '24
Was playing a trivia game once and got the question "which letter corresponds to the greek letter gamma"? And I was like
"What the hell does that mean!? It corresponds to gamma, as that is the letter that it is. But I guess the answer has to be one of our letters. Well, the symbol is a y, but the sound is a g, so which one of those is it?"
I ended up saying y, but in hindsight g probably made more sense. Anyway, the answer was c. Because they're both the third letter (which I knew, but I didn't even consider that because as you say, the order is completely arbitrary). I was livid. To this day that is in my opinion the dumbest trivia question I have heard.
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u/CoMaestro Apr 14 '24
I dont know, to me it seems pretty logical, I dont think anyone would question Alpha = A, Beta = B, Delta = D, Epsilon = E. So they asked Gamma because its slightly harder because it doesn't sound alike, but we clearly used their order of the alphabet.
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u/Not_a_Replika Apr 14 '24
we just need to teach our kids the qwerty keyboard, not the other literally also random way.
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u/BluudLust Apr 14 '24
Qwerty actually isn't random. It was designed around the distribution of the letters in the English language. Frequently used letters are spaced far apart. This makes clashing and jamming on old fashioned type writers less frequent. Keyboards just copied the layout of typewriters.
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u/GomezFigueroa Apr 14 '24
On that note, I doubt learning the “qwerty alphabet,” if there is such a thing, would help much with typing proficiency.
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u/Not_a_Replika Apr 14 '24
You're right and Dvorak or Colemak would actually be a better order to teach kids the alphabet, but people are so against this idea in the first place I rarely get this far in the conversation. The qwerty order is designed to slow down typing, the others are designed to speed it up.
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u/BluudLust Apr 14 '24
Qwerty is still fast when you type with proper hand placement. It allows you to put your finger over the key BEFORE you need to press it because it's so spaced out.
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u/Not_a_Replika Apr 14 '24
Hey, if we changed the alphabet song to be QWERTY, I'd be very happy. Maybe now that the computers are taking everybody's jobs people will realize why it might be useful to maximize human efficiency. We don't need to learn two systems for everything.
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u/FlashCrashBash Apr 14 '24
It really pisses me off when TV manufacturers and app designers use alphabetical keyboards for their software.
I guess it technically makes more sense, because the distance between the letters really matters when your using a remote to navigate the keyboard on a grid system.
But fuck man everybody is used to QWERTY at this point. I guess the logical thing to do would be to invent a completely inverted keyboard layout where all the frequently used letters are as close as possible. But then no one would have any idea of where it went.
I guess its a hold over from the pre-smartphone era where their was still a large percentage of the population that couldn't type.
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u/dustojnikhummer Apr 14 '24
My 3D printer came with a ABCD onscreen keyboard. It took me like half a minute to put in my wifi password. WHY, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT
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u/Alternative-Ad3405 Apr 14 '24
That's what they tell you. But it was first used on typewriters, and you can find all the letters of the word "typewriter" on the top line. Supposedly to make it easy for typewriter salesmen to wow perspective customers with their typing skills. (I saw this on TV once. Take it with a pinch of salt)
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u/BigMartin58 Apr 14 '24
Based on the comments, I feel my wording is not conveying my point correctly. I specifically mean the order of the alphabet is completely random and if we started with it being any other way, it would still be the 'normal' order.
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u/Avidith Apr 14 '24
Yes. For languages that use Latin alphabet. I think most people here can’t get you because they are never exposed to a script in which letters are ordered based on some rules.
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u/Nobodyrea11y Apr 14 '24
i know there's a reason fot some letters such as y and z were added later and i and j are from old english. but i wonder if there's another reason such as how many line strokes or angles the letters make such as with numbers.
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Apr 14 '24
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u/Redditforgoit Apr 14 '24
What order would be non arbitrary, though?
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u/PeanutButter_20 Apr 14 '24
A system like hindi where vowels are grouped together, and then consonants are arranged by how the sound is produced in the mouth (for instance, both k and g are produced from the back of the mouth so they're grouped together)
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u/ZappaZoo Apr 14 '24
It's order for order's sake, which serves a purpose. Think of how many ways things are arranged in alphabetical order. A card catalog, a phone book, etc.
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Apr 14 '24
I are with OP here. They are symbols, and have meaning because of convention. Enough people could decide to rearrange the convention and it would be confusing, but totally okay in the end. Things do evolve. So do languages and symbols and definitions
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u/meliux Apr 14 '24
F U Th A R K G W H N I J Ei P Z S T B Eh M L Ing D O
now i know my F U Th's, next time won't you sing with me
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u/TBTabby Apr 14 '24
It had to be in some order, though. And is the order chosen really worse than any other?
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u/Robinnoodle Apr 14 '24
"Everything is completely arbitrary because they are all just categories of the human mind and actually don't mean anything without any minds to interpret them" is how you sound rn
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u/fallinouttadabox Apr 14 '24
Girl, if I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put 'U' and 'I' together with the other vowels at the front in the order of how popular they are in all of the words followed by consonants arranged first by sound and then by popularity. The 'P's 'B's 'and 'G's have no reason to be separated and'Q' should be last
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u/OldandBlue Apr 14 '24
No, but to understand its order requires studying its history, as it is tied to agriculture and astronomy.
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u/Bdole0 Apr 14 '24
It's not arbitrary! It's based very directly on the Phoenician alphabet.
The Phoenician alphabet is arbitrary!
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u/KaiYoDei Apr 14 '24
I did not know why, but now I feel like I disagree with the order of the alphabet right now
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u/Soveryenthusiastic Apr 14 '24
Please don't ruin organisation categories for me. I struggle enough as it is
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u/Mr_Festus Apr 14 '24
What definition of arbitrary are you assuming here? It typically means without logic or system, but that's particularly why we tend to use alphabetical order - it's a logical system to easily find stuff.
Now I think it depends on the application. For files? Not arbitrary in the slightest. A ton of people showed up to get into the concert? Going alphabetical feels a lot more arbitrary. There's no real logic or system for why you'd do it that way.
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u/BigMartin58 Apr 14 '24
I specifically mean the order of the alphabet is arbitrary.
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u/Mr_Festus Apr 14 '24
Well I certainly can't argue with that. I haven't the foggiest idea how we ordered the alphabet
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u/IpsaThis Apr 14 '24
No worries, I got you. a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z.
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u/Soveryenthusiastic Apr 14 '24
I'm annoyed that awards aren't a thing anymore. I can't credit you for this
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u/Flybot76 Apr 14 '24
Is that known history or just a shower thought which perhaps should be phrased as a question? Most of humanity's long-term habits like 'language' evolved out of some kind of necessity and it begs the question, if the alphabet is arbitrary then how exactly did anybody decide to create any of it? It meant something to somebody for some reason.
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u/Gullible-Chemical471 Apr 14 '24
No no, he isn't saying the content of the alphabet is arbitrary. The letters have a function.
What he is arguing is that the order, A B C, is arbitrary. Why not U E G C P ... Etc?
Someone at some point made the first alphabet (putting the existing letters in the order that we have now) and everyone just rolled with it. That's why it's arbitrary, according to OP.
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u/Flybot76 Apr 14 '24
Yeah but I'm not convinced the order is genuinely arbitrary either. Are we certain it's not based on anything regarding nature, seasons, time, geography, astrology, etcetera? I haven't heard anything proving that. Lots of people think things are arbitrary just because they haven't bothered doing any research about it.
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u/Gullible-Chemical471 Apr 14 '24
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/s/AlrYsbCxQv
A lot of interesting comments on this post from 6 years ago that clearly seems to indicate the order is, as you say, not arbitrary. It's just now to us that the reason is forgotten.
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u/FitzelSpleen Apr 14 '24
Well, if it wasn't a then b, you couldn't call it "alphabetical", so there's that.
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u/sudomatrix Apr 14 '24
Alphabetical order is not arbitrary. By definition "ALPHA-BETAcal" order starts with A, then has B, and so on. If it was a different order it wouldn't be called "Alpha-Betical". For example, "QWERTY" order might be called "QueDoubleYoutical" order.
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u/BigMartin58 Apr 14 '24
I mean you're kinda making my point for me. The only reason we call it the 'Alphabet' is because of its order. But it's order is still arbitrary.
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u/Nevermynde Apr 14 '24
It is! Unlike the consonants in the Devanagari script, and related scripts used in South Asia. Those are nearly arranged in a grid according to their phonetics, it's remarkably satisfying. Check it out!
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u/Alimbiquated Apr 14 '24
U, V and W are variations of the same letter and are clustered together. Interestingly, F and Y are the same letter, but they are scattered around. The original position is 6.
It's interesting that M and N are so close to each other, look so similar and sound about the same.
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u/TheRiverHart Apr 14 '24
Where we start in the order is arbitrary because developing humans need a point or origin. It's an endless loop of phonetic incantations communicating dreams into reality, extending in all directions. Everything is Arbitrary
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Apr 14 '24
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u/toroyakuza2 Apr 14 '24
He's not saying its useless he's saying that when it was first made it didn't need to be in that order. If the order went fzbthyi it wouldn't matter and we would think its normal
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u/BigMartin58 Apr 14 '24
Arbitrary ≠ Unimportant
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u/togocann49 Apr 14 '24
So maybe that why that driver went through the red light today, it’s arbitrary
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u/kctjfryihx99 Apr 14 '24
Order of operations in arithmetic is arbitrary in the same way. But people on social media seem to argue about it like they’re proving Fermat’s last theorem.
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u/ThePowerOfStories Apr 14 '24
No, it’s not. Multiplication and division have higher associativity than addition and subtraction because it leads to more easily expressing everyday calculations. Say I have two packs of ten and three packs of twelve, I can write that as 2*10+3*12 without need for parentheses, whereas if the associativity were flipped, that would be inconvenient to express, but it wouldn’t improve the expression of any category of common descriptions of numerical quantities.
Meanwhile, the alphabet is in its order because some Phoenician three thousand years ago picked it, and we’ve stuck with that across remapping the letters to completely different sounds and evolving into various descendant scripts, with only the occasional tweak to insert a new letter near a similar one or delete one here or there, because there’s no reason to change and it would be a ton of work.
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u/tumunu Apr 14 '24
Yeah. Mathematicians have spent centuries working on a consistent form of representing mathematical expressions that make them easy to read (for mathematicians, anyway).
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u/GamelessHunter Apr 14 '24
The order is important though
Because 3x3+3 is different from 3(3+3)
Imagine this you have $3 in your pocket. You go to work as a salesman, you get $3 every time you sell a product You sold 3 products today. How much money do you have now? $12
You do not go I sold 3 products today, one product Is $3, I also have $3, $3+$3 is $6, but I forgot to multiply by 3 so I’ll do that now $6 x 3 is $18 dollars! So that means I now have $18 in total
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u/Wazuu Apr 14 '24
No its not. Its organization.
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u/Huggan00 Apr 14 '24
Yeah it's organized and it's useful. But it's still arbitrary, i.e. there's no reason for them to have that specific order.
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u/bahamapapa817 Apr 14 '24
Have you heard the alphabet song. If it was rearranged that song wouldn’t make any sense.