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tags: Language
rel: Orality and Literacy - Ong and Hartley Course in General Linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure
The order of the alphabet exists arbitrarily at this point, with the precise reason for this inherited ordering lost over iteration through prior cultures. Perhaps a reasoning for the order did exist (and still exists elusively) but the grounds for it are lost to us.
What I thought of with this, is song, or song as a thread which ties this idea popularly in our head. If asked to perform a task regarding the alphabet, my intuition is that the majority of speakers will do so with recitation of a song (internal or externally.)
NOTE
I’ve had a thought about these internalized songs. I imagined this custodian who had grown up as a child with the popular “clean-up song” that goes “clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere, clean up, clean up, everybody do your share.” He does his tireless job, 9-5 and throughout his daily custodial tasks he’s constantly subvocalizing the song as he works, just as a carried on trait from his childhood.
It seems to be that the general world of English speaking (or those following the modern Latin alphabet) the order exists as a shared song. Maybe I am priming myself here, but I almost cannot divorce the song from the alphabet in my head.
(abcdefg) - internal rests/chunking (hijklmnop)