Why is it abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz?

Answer 1

The content and order of the current English alphabet is the result of gradual changes over the centuries and millenia.

Only a few hundred years ago there were other letters in the alphabet that we don't use now, such as the 's' which looked like an 'f' but had a much smaller crossbar, e.g. "And the Lord ſaid unto Moſes... Thou ſhalt ſpeak all that I command thee .... " (Bible: Exodus ch VII ); "Maſter William ſhakeſpeare" etc.

And the j is a relatively recent addition, created to represent the 'dg' sound as in 'edge' / 'ej'. (Compare 'Madge' with 'Majesty'), and to more clearly distinguish it, and the sound, from the i and the y.

The first written 'English' language used runic letters, introduced about 1500 years ago by the Anglo-Saxons. We now call that style and alphabet 'Anglo-Saxon "futhorc"'.

In due course, about 1300 years ago, the futhorc letters slowly began to be replaced by near-equivalent latin letters. This was mainly the consequence of the work and influence of Christian missionaries who arrived in Britain from Europe. However, old runic forms also influenced the creation of new letters within the emerging 'English-latin' alphabet, such as the thorn, wynn, eth and the yogh.

The eth is still used, but is written as 'th', and is pronounced as the aspirated but unvoiced 'th' in Thursday, think, thing, thanks etc. (Compare the voiced th in the word 'this' with the unvoiced 'eth' in Beth and thing: "This thing")

In the early days the English 'alphabet' had no specific 'letter-sorting' order; it was not necessary and to do so and would serve no particular purpose. Even so, it appears that other alphabets had sorting orders, e.g. Greek, Latin, Phoenician, Semitic etc. And the current English sorting order bears some 'sorting-order' similarities with those alphabets.

The big question was/is 'What should determine the sorting order of symbols?"

In 1011 a writer called Byrhtferth put all the Old English letters into an 'order'. His 'alphabet' included all the known letters, as well as other symbols such as the ampersand (&) etc. But the J and the U (as we know it!) were not included as they had not yet been invented!

A major influence on the content and order of the alphabet was the advent of letter-press printing. Letter 'types' were cast in metal, and it became very expedient to have all the 'types' in some sort of order so that the required 'type' was always in the same place each time the compositor needed to find all the letters and symbols necessary to print words and punctuate sentences.

The letters were kept in trays (cases). Some letter forms were capitals and were kept in the upper case. The 'small' letters were kept in the lower case. In time a 'natural order' emerged, not by any innate quality of the symbols themselves, but simply from customary usage, and eventually became abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz as we know it today.