Poll of the Day > Why is A the first letter of the alphabet?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Why not Q?

Google
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Because it comes before B and B is the second letter of the alphabet.
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J_Dawg983 posted...

Because it comes before B and B is the second letter of the alphabet.

It should be W

Because something had to be first, and the Phoenicians decided to start with "alep". And then no one bothered to change it later (A and B seem relatively unchangeable, though a lot of the letters that follow have shifted around over the years - for example, with the third letter eventually splitting into C and G, while Z moved from 7th to last).


Related Fun Fact: a lot of people don't realize that the entire reason it's called the "alphabet" in the first place is from the first two letters of its Greek version, "Alpha Beta" (sort of the equivalent of when modern people refer to it as the "A-B-C's"). It's entirely possible that part of why A and B seem so absolutely locked in to their first and second positions is because we got into the habit of using them to refer to the whole group, so the idea of them being the primary letters became culturally ingrained (in the same way people who refer to the A-B-C's would probably find it incredibly odd to refer to them as the P-F-Z's instead).


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Alphabeta
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