Another vid I made of a song I wrote:

[capri0mni]

What I wrote for the description:

(Quote)
This song came out of frustration. I've long asked two simple (I think they're simple) questions. And so far, no one seems to be able to give me a real answer:

1) *Why* is Alphabetical Order the order that it's in?

I've seen it written that it goes back to the ancient alphabet of the Phoenicians, but no one can tell me why *they* settled on the order that they did...

and:

2) When did "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" (also the tune to "Baa, baa, Black Sheep"), become the only "right" tune for the alphabet song?

Seriously -- does anyone know? I hate it when there I things I have to accept "Just because that's the way things are!"

Oh, and I've also found that the ABCs go quite well to "Frere Jaques" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."
(Unquote)


Slow Zoom, silent title: "The Albaphet Snog"

First verse to the so-called "real tune" to the Alphabet Song (yellow letters on Maroon field, slow zoom:

H O N
W A!
K B G Z
F X R E J
M V T.L.C. &
P.D.Q. S U & I

I can't tell you what went wrong.
Someone scrambled up thi song!

Silent title: "If at first you don't succeed..."

Second verse, also to the "real tune:"

A B C D
Z X Y
J K L & G H I
M N O P E & F
Q & U & T R S
W and last comes V!
Why you shake your head at me?

Silent title: "Third time's a charm (I hope?)

Third Verse, to the "wrong tune" Three Blind Mice:

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

Hey, I got it right! HOORAY for ME!
My ABCs!

Silent Title: "You know what? I need a nap. I'll see you later."

##End##

Comments

[smw]

Color me thoroughly amused, though having the ABCs set to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" stuck in my head is not what I expect of 5AM.

[capri0mni]

:-)

"Twinkle, twinkle" really is an awkward fit, when you think of it. You get through X-Y-Z, and you still have 14 notes left over, so you have to fill them in by inviting others to sing a second round.

"Row, Row, Row your boat" is almost a perfect fit, but because W is so polysyllabic, you have to squeeze one tiny extra note in, right after the "Merrilies" to make it fit.

I like Frere Jasques best: It gives you three notes after Z to make a final statement, like: "That's the end!" or "There's no more," or what pleases you.

[jesse_the_k]

The "O P Q R S T U V" via Three Blind Mice is triumphal! (But why don't you include credits in the video?)

I have heard, but not learned, that there's a Chinese character order (for dictionaries and such) based on the component strokes in the ideograph.

[capri0mni]

But why don't you include credits in the video?

I should start to do that, shouldn't I?

(My old college Humanities Scholar brain answered first, with: "But I don't need to cite my sources -- I wrote it myself!" Then, the rest of my brain remembered that most of the people watching on YouTube don't have the assumption: "Unless credit is given to someone else, the person speaking is the author" hammered deep into their subconscious)

One of the Deaf vloggers I follow is DrDonCGus. And over the last few years, he's been trying to come up with a new phonetic alphabet for Signed Languages one that a) is free from "English Alphabet" order, and b) can be turned into a font that can be typed on a computer (so you don't have to be competent at drawing to use it, the way you have to be with SignWriting). He's broken his symbols into 5 groups, which would appear in the "alphabet" in this order:

Hand shape
Orientation
Location
Movement
and Non-Manual Signs

And, within the Hand Shape group, for example, he's ordered the shapes in the order that babies born to Deaf/Signing parents learn to recreate them.

So the order within the phonetic writing system has a logical progression from simple to complicated. That strikes me as similar to the Chinese Character order you mention.

BTW, I've made a play list of Dr. Don's SignScript discussion (to facilitate my own study of it) here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL13921A5089930A02

[raze]

*laughs* This was delightful.

Incidentally, learning the alphabet in Spanish? Was done to the tune of "When The Saints Come Marching In" in my highschool spanish class.

[capri0mni]

Thank You!
(just one of the small and silly ways I continually thumb my nose at "just because")

...Had a bit of a brain-blink there, thinking: isn't the Spanish Alphabet the same as the English one? Then, I remembered there are letters with tildes and such...

[pebblerocker]

My mother's alphabet song, Americanised out of existence by the ubiquitousness of the Sesame Street song, went to the tune of Jack and Jill, and she sang various nursery rhymes in between. So it went:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M
N O P Q, R S T U, V WXYZ! Oh...

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water,
Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.

Oh... A B C etc

Oh... Little Jack Horner sat in his corner, etc

--and she fitted in other nursery rhymes to the same tune, although some of them were tweaked a bit to make them work, and some of them sound better to their own tunes. I can't remember what other rhymes went in between alphabet sections. Have you come across this one at all?

[capri0mni]

Well, I'll be. I can't remember what the tune to Jack and Jill is at all... it's so rarely sung, in America -- most often just chanted, without any melody at all. Time for a YouTube Scavenger Hunt, methinks!

And "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" was already firmly established as "the" alphabet tune, long before Sesame came onto the scene (Sesame Street had its first season the year I was 5, "Twinkle Twinkle" was the tune it was sung to in my grandmother's day...). Sesame Street was just continuing an American folk tradition.

Also, what do you mean by: "alphabet sections"?

P.S.: Okay, back from YouTube. I found two videos with two different British voices singing the rhyme to the same melody -- and I can now confidently say that I had not forgotten it.

Because I've never heard it until just then.

[pebblerocker]

Sort of chanted -- the first eight syllables are all on one note (as far as my inexpert ear can determine)!

The Twinkle Twinkle tune came over here from Sesame Street and wasn't well known before that, so we assumed they'd invented it. They did write a lot of songs for the show as well as adapting current songs.

"In between alphabet sections" -- the song was sung alternating various nursery rhymes as verses and the entire alphabet as the chorus in between each one.

I can offer you one more alphabet song: at Maori classes the teacher taught us to sing all the sounds of the Maori alphabet to the tune of the Connie Francis song "Stupid Cupid" :o)

[capri0mni]

Oh, yes, I can see how that conclusion would be easy to come to. Some of the best memories of Sesame Street that I have is of their original songs...

Still...

According to this thread over on the MudCat music forum (twinkle, twinkle), the tune was originally a French Folk song, first published in 1761, upon which Mozart wrote Variations in 1785; the poem "The Star" (5 stanzas) was originally published in England in 1806 in an anthology of poems for "infant minds."

No discussion there yet, of when the tune got put to the alphabet (I'm assuming after the 1806 publication of the poem), but lots of folks talk about the different ways they learned their ABCs to the tune -- including folks from London (1940s) and Germany.

Joan Gantz (Head of the Children's Television Workshop) &co. tried very hard to make different versions of Sesame Street for different countries, I wouldn't be surprised if they just never knew the ABCs were sung to other tunes... that's how ubiquitous the connection is, here in the States. Kids often learn the tune as the alphabet song before "The Star," or "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep"