Alphabet's - Structured or Chaos?

Have you ever wondered when the tradition of celebrating Birthdays began? Who decided there has to be a birthday cake? Why do we blow out candles? Allegedly, it was the Egyptians who came up with the concept of celebrating birthdays and the Germans who featured a birthday cake embellished with candles (Kinderfest). Facts like these have always fascinated me, especially as a child. I vividly remember in kindergarten, when we were all trying to grasp the concept of colors, numbers, and alphabets. A familiar tune followed, ABCDEFG… and all the students sang in sync. Since then, I had always been very curious about the origin of alphabets. So here I am, 23 years later, trying to decode the meaning and taking you along the journey with me.

We come across words and alphabets daily - in newspapers, books, instruction manuals, well, you’re reading alphabets right now. But where did these originate from? Who decided the order? How did this become a script we have all adhered to? How has this script evolved over generations? Who decided on the 26 alphabets? Why does R sound like an R and look like an R?

While we expect the writing system to be in attendance since the first day of our civilization, it actually began back in Mesopotamia, the oldest civilization in the world. Towards the end of the 4th millennium B.C, the Sumerians invented the Cuneiform script - which was initially used on soft clay and started out as pictograms. Using pictures to describe certain things or ideas has its own advantage because it breaks language barriers, allowing people to communicate, irrespective of their dialect.

The Egyptians also developed a similar system of pictographs, known as Hieroglyphics. The word for mountain, for example, initially existed as a simple pictorial representation of a mountain. In time, these pictures of things came to represent not only things but sounds. It was initially believed that the inception of alphabets could be traced to the Phoenicians. However, the discovery of two inscriptions (graffiti) in Wadi el-Hol, Egypt, in 1999 revealed that the early Semitic alphabet was instead developed by the Semitic-speaking people living in Egypt. Their language consisted of about 22 letters which became fluent all over the Mediterranean. The Semitic script was read from right to left (like Arabic and Urdu) as opposed to how letters are read in the 21st century. The Proto-Sinaitic script by most research studies is considered as the first alphabetic writing system.

After a few decades, as the Greeks came about, they built on the Phoenician alphabets by adding vowels to the 22 consonants. The language was read from left to right. It was later appropriated by the Latins (later to become the Romans). In the early centuries, Europe, Northern Africa, and the Near East was dominated by the Roman Empire which continued expanding, conquering Britain. The Romans then combined the Greek alphabets with Etruscan characters (emerged from the Etruscan civilization in the Italian Peninsula) and involved letters like ‘F’ and ‘S’. Once the Roman alphabets evolved, they looked very similar to our Modern English. It’s also derived that the pronunciation of the alphabets is based on the shapes of the letters. For example, vowels are softer on the mouth, whereas consonants have harder sounds. When you say vowels out loud (a, o, i), your mouth is slightly open, and your lips don’t touch. Meanwhile, for consonants, your lips are closer or pressed together (p, b, t).

For years, various theories have been put forth to explain the origin of the Alphabets. The Greeks and Romans filtered it to 5 different people as feasible architects of the alphabets - the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Cretans, and Hebrews. Basically, every country around the Mediterranean had been circled out for the honour. Despite the many theories, the scholars concluded that the inventor or the inventors of the alphabetical system were undoubtedly influenced by Eyptian scripts, maybe also by other writings. It is highly probable that those who invented the alphabets were familiar with the East Mediterranean area at that period. It’s now agreed that the Northwest Semitic linguistic group, consisting of the Canaanites, Phoenicians and Hebrews, were the pioneers of the Alphabetical system.

Our current alphabetical system is based on 44 sounds and 26 letters. This is why children and beginners learn sounds pertaining to each letter. Songs, typically known as Alphabet songs, have been written to create phonemic awareness for many years. On the other hand, acrostic poems foster understanding by giving each letter a pertinent word or phrase. The “School Song” from the musical - Matilda could serve as a good example. Musical notes also have an interesting structure, similar to alphabets; ‘Do Re Mi’ is a tune that’s used to teach the order of notes in the Solfege scale. Similarly, other languages have their own alphabetical systems. The Shiva Sutras (sivasutras) in Sanskrit are catalogues and groupings of sounds that form the language. Interestingly, an article published by Paul Kiparky of Stanford University even correlates how the construction of the Sivasutras is largely motivated by the fundamental principles of the economy.

Over the years, our English language has been categorized into 3 parts: Old English, Middle English, and Modern English. Most of the old English included all our present letters, except j, u, w (&v). Old English is still taught to literature majors, as well as in high schools when we were forced to grapple with things like Beowulf. Middle English came around the 13th century, and a few letters were changed. Even though it is still a little difficult to comprehend for an average reader like us, it is still easier in comparison to Old English. Modern English, is quite recent and became standardised after the introduction of the printing press in the 15th century. During the Mid 16th Century, V & U were split into 2 letters, and the alphabet J was added, and the rest is history (or, the present?)

So why are the alphabets in the order that they are? Everyone has their own interpretation of this, and the history of alphabets is not a linear progression. Some say it’s easier to memorize; others say they were clubbed together as a rhyming song because it has a rhythm that is a bop to every toddler out there. Well, no one knows for sure. We’ve created a façade of order from the chaos around us. A capricious collection of foolish sounds. The human tendency of curating order from chaos has yet again brought out structural practices. Had our ancestors organized it differently, we’d have a completely different familiarity to this. Just like every decision we make, possibilities are endless.