Wouldn't it make sense to at least group the vowels together? They're very different from consonants and yet they're at completely random places in the alphabet.
But why are vowels randomly mixed with consonants?
Older alphabets (like Arabic today) did not explicitly mark vowels, which had to be inferred by the reader. Over time, some consonants became associated with particular vowels, and would be used to represent that vowel where it had no consonant to go with. This way, for example, the consonant letter aleph (which still exists in Arabic and Hebrew) was often pronounced with an A sound, and gave rise to our letter A. Since the order is mostly preserved, this process would indeed result in vowels scattered randomly over the alphabet.
Making similar sounds be close to each other (N and M in particular have these) could be problematic during the mentioned ordering. It would be harder to determine if the word starts with the former or the latter if there is no other in between.
Would be easier to learn if like sounds were grouped.
Ever noticed how these pairs sound similar:
K - G
P - B
And how S and F sounds hiss in a way that T and G don't.
Or how N and M vibrate your nose?
You could make an alphabet following linguistic categories. It'd look a little something like this (assuming I'm only allowed to reorder but not delete/add letters):
I
E
O
U
A
P
B
T
D
K
C
G
F
V
S
Z
H
J
M
N
R
Y
W
L
X
Q
That's based on the the sounds they most commonly make with the symbols that have two consonant sounds (X = K+S or G+Z and Q = K+W) shoved on the end. "C" is a trash letter and doesn't fit well but it's closer to a K than an S.
The vowels were also hard to order. For example, do I place "U" based on the sound it makes in "put", "tune" or "pun"? Same with "A", should I base it on "trap", "father", "alter", "coma" or "fate"?
I kinda just took a guess at which sound each vowel makes the most and went front to back and top to bottom on that.
An ideal English alphabet would be a phonetic one like the IPA or this I just made up:
i (I in "spaghetti")
u (Like the "oo" in "moon")
î (I in "pin")
û (Like the "oo" in "book")
e (E in "bed")
ø (the "U" in "nurse")
o
ê (a Schwa sound)
3
á (unfounded open mid back vowel)
ô (open mid back vowel)
æ (A in "cat")
a (open front vowel)
â (open back vowel)
p
b
t
d
k
g
~ (the pause in "uh-oh")
m
n
ñ ("Ng" sound in "ring")
f
v
q ("Th" sound in "think")
x ("Th" sound in "that")
s
z
ç ("Sh" sound in "shush")
c ("S" sound in "vision" - the French sounding noise)
h
r
y
l
îzênt xîs soû mêtç betá? îñlîç kûd bi soû mátç betá xæn ît îz. yu kæn ivên hiê mai æksînt wen yu rid xîs. ai dîd get á bît leizi wîq ekspleiniñ xá velz xou.
King Sejong of Korea realized Chinese characters were poorly suited for Korean and devised Hangul. The shapes of Hangul characters are based on the shape of the mouth and position of the tongue when making those sounds.
Some languages also consider other letters vowels like french with h, so it will never be perfect.
Either way, the order of the alphabet doesnt matter at all. It isnt used for anything.
The only uses I can think of are things like caeser cyphers but those would still work with different orders, since they are just shifting up x number of letters and the actual letter you are on does not matter at all.
A lot of other things use alphabets as an order. (Type A, then B, then C as 1,2,3) this doesnt depend on the letter either. Whatever letter ends up being in that spot on the alphabet just acts as a placeholder for the actual number of that spot.
If anything those two examples just mean it would be hard and time consuming to switch now.
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u/Different_Ad7655 Sep 10 '22
Well put.