Editing Alphabet (section)

== Alphabetical order ==
{{Main|Alphabetical order}}
Alphabets often come to be associated with a standard ordering of their letters; this is for [[collation]]—namely, for listing words and other items in ''[[alphabetical order]]''.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Street |first=Julie |date=2020-06-10 |title=From A to Z — the surprising history of alphabetical order -AU |url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-11/history-of-alphabetical-order-a-to-z/12320808 |access-date=2023-02-08 |work=ABC News}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=2020-06-10 |title=Alphabetical order has been around for 800 years. But is it on the way out? |url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-11/history-of-alphabetical-order-a-to-z/12320808 |access-date=2025-05-19 |work=ABC News |language=en-AU}}</ref>

=== Latin alphabets ===
The ordering of the [[Latin alphabet]] ([[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]]), which derives from the Northwest Semitic "Abgad" order,<ref>{{cite book |doi=10.1163/9789004217003_003 |chapter=27–30–22–26 – How Many Letters Needs an Alphabet? The Case of Semitic |title=The Idea of Writing |date=2012 |last1=Lehmann |first1=Reinhard G. |pages=11–52 |isbn=978-90-04-21700-3 }}</ref> is already well established. Although, languages using this alphabet have different conventions for their treatment of modified letters (such as the French ''é'', ''à'', and ''ô'') and certain combinations of letters ([[Multigraph (orthography)|multigraphs]]). In French, these are not considered to be additional letters for collation. However, in [[Icelandic language|Icelandic]], the accented letters such as ''á'', ''í'', and ''ö'' are considered distinct letters representing different vowel sounds from sounds represented by their unaccented counterparts. In Spanish, ''ñ'' is considered a separate letter, but accented vowels such as ''á'' and ''é'' are not. The ''ll'' and ''ch'' were also formerly considered single letters and sorted separately after ''l'' and ''c'', but in 1994, the tenth congress of the [[Association of Spanish Language Academies]] changed the collating order so that ''ll'' came to be sorted between ''lk'' and ''lm'' in the dictionary and ''ch'' came to be sorted between ''cg'' and ''ci''; those digraphs were still formally designated as letters, but in 2010 the {{lang|es|[[Real Academia Española]]}} changed it, so they are no longer considered letters at all.<ref>Real Academia Española. [https://www.rae.es/espanol-al-dia/exclusion-de-ch-y-ll-del-abecedario Exclusión de «ch» y «ll» del abecedario.]</ref><ref>"La 'i griega' se llamará 'ye'". Cuba Debate. 2010-11-05. Retrieved 12 December 2010. [http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2010/11/05/la-i-griega-se-llamara-ye-y-la-ch-y-la-ll-desaparecen-por-decreto-de-la-academia-espanola Cubadebate.cu]</ref>

In German, words starting with ''sch-'' (which spells the German phoneme {{IPAslink|ʃ}}) are inserted between words with initial ''sca-'' and ''sci-'' (all incidentally loanwords) instead of appearing after the initial ''sz'', as though it were a single letter, which contrasts several languages such as [[Albanian alphabet|Albanian]], in which ''dh-'', ''ë-'', ''gj-'', ''ll-'', ''rr-'', ''th-'', ''xh-,'' and ''zh-,'' which all represent phonemes and considered separate single letters, would follow the letters {{gpm|d, e, g, l, n, r, t, x, z}} respectively, as well as Hungarian and Welsh. Further, German words with an [[umlaut (diacritic)|umlaut]] get collated ignoring the umlaut as—contrary to [[Turkish alphabet|Turkish]], which adopted the [[grapheme]]s '''ö''' and '''ü''', and where a word like ''tüfek'' would come after ''tuz'', in the dictionary. An exception is the German telephone directory, where umlauts are sorted like ''ä''=''ae'' since names such as ''Jäger'' also appear with the spelling ''Jaeger'' and are not distinguished in the spoken language.<ref>{{Cite book |title=DIN 5007-1:2005-08 Filing of Character Strings – Part 1: General Rules for Processing (ABC Rules) |publisher=German Institute for Standardisation (Deutsches Institut für Normung) |year=2005 |language=de}}{{ISBN?}}</ref>

The [[Danish orthography|Danish]] and [[Norwegian orthography|Norwegian]] alphabets end with {{gpm|æ, ø, å}},<ref>{{Cite book |last=WAGmob |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W-pvAgAAQBAJ |title=Learn Danish (Alphabet and Numbers) |date=December 25, 2013 |publisher=WAGmob}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=WAGmob |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1Qx2AgAAQBAJ |title=Learn Norwegian (Alphabet and Numbers) |publisher=WAGmob |year=2014}}</ref> whereas the Swedish conventionally put {{gpm|å, ä, ö}} at the end. However, æ phonetically corresponds with {{gpm|ä}}, as does {{gpm|ø}} and {{gpm|ö}}.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Holmes |first=Philip |title=Swedish: a comprehensive grammar |publisher=Routledge |others=Ian Hinchliffe |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-415-27883-6 |edition=2nd |location=London}}</ref>

=== Early alphabets ===
It is unknown whether the earliest alphabets had a defined sequence. Some alphabets today, such as the [[Hanuno'o script]], are learned one letter at a time, in no particular order, and are not used for [[collation]] where a definite order is required.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Conklin |first=Harold C. |title=Fine description: ethnographic and linguistic essays |publisher=Yale University Southeast Asia Studies |others=Joel Corneal Kuipers, Ray McDermott |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-938692-85-0 |location=New Haven, CT |pages=320–342}}</ref> However, a dozen [[Ugaritic alphabet|Ugaritic]] tablets from the 14th century&nbsp;BC preserve the alphabet in two sequences. One, the ''ABCDE'' order later used in Phoenician, has continued with minor changes in [[Hebrew alphabet|Hebrew]], [[Greek alphabet|Greek]], [[Armenian alphabet|Armenian]], [[Gothic alphabet|Gothic]], [[Cyrillic]], and [[Latin alphabet|Latin]]; the other, ''HMĦLQ,'' was used in southern Arabia and is preserved today in [[Geʽez script|Geʽez]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Millard|1986|p=395}}</ref> Both orders have therefore been stable for at least 3000 years.<ref>{{Cite web |title=ScriptSource – Ethiopic (Geʻez) |url=https://scriptsource.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=script_detail&key=Ethi |access-date=2022-12-14 |website=scriptsource.org}}</ref>{{bsn|date=September 2024}}

[[Runic alphabet|Runic]] used an unrelated [[Elder Futhark|Futhark]] sequence, which got [[Younger Futhark|simplified]] later on.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Elliott |first=Ralph Warren Victor |title=Runes, an introduction |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=1980 |isbn=0-7190-0787-9}}</ref> [[Arabic alphabet|Arabic]] usually uses its sequence, although Arabic retains the traditional [[abjadi order]], which is used for numbers.{{cn|date=September 2024}}

The [[Brahmic family]] of alphabets used in India uses a unique order based on [[phonology]]: The letters are arranged according to how and where the sounds get produced in the mouth. This organization is present in Southeast Asia, Tibet, Korean [[hangul]], and even Japanese [[kana]], which is not an alphabet.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Frellesvig |first=Bjarke |title=A history of the Japanese language |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-511-93242-7 |pages=177–178}}</ref>