Alphabetical order! Also, numbers

[aldersprig]

Repeated from twitter: Arguments against having the 7 basic numbers rhyme with each other? I.e. bahp dahp gahp kahp...


Which brings me to - does anyone know how alphabetical order in other alphabets is determined?

Comments

[clare_dragonfly]

Argument: it might be hard to hear the difference, especially with very similar sounds--like, in your example, gahp and kahp, because g and k are the same, except that one is voiced and the other unvoiced. It could be inconvenient to hear three when they said four and vice versa.

As for alphabetical order, I don't know, but in natural languages, it's probably more linguistic evolution than anything else.

[aldersprig]

I can make it anything I want? :-)

Second idea was to do something more like... Bahn, Dan, Gehn, Keen...

[clare_dragonfly]

Yes, yes you can!

I like the second idea. That sounds more like a real language to me. I mean: ichi, ni, san, shi, all sound somewhat similar; un, dau, tri, sound somewhat similar (bearing in mind that a Welsh u sounds exactly like its i). (Pedwar doesn't sound like anything else at all. Oh, Welsh.)

For Talani, I have: ma, me, mi, mo, mu, la, le, li, lo, sa. Possibly not very natural ;)

[aldersprig]

That it shall be, then!

[inventrix]

Like Clare said, it's difficult to differentiate if they rhyme. Base numbers are usually very different-sounding from each other.

Some examples:
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten
uno dos tres cuatro cinco seis siete ocho nueve diez
ichi ni san shi(or yon) go roku shichi(or nana) hachi kyuu juu

The only ones that really sound a bit similar to other numbers are in Japanese and are the two that have separate, entirely dissimilar variants.

As for alphabetical order, one of the early Indo-European languages settled on what I believe to be a fairly arbitrary order and we've all just been copying it ever since. The existence of an alphabetical order really only happened once literacy first became fairly common in a language group's culture, I think.

[aldersprig]

I was thinking about the examples I know, but WHY are they different?

[inventrix]

Same reason "you" and "me" are different, I think! Also "up" and "down", "left" and "right", "in" and "out". Words that are used commonly to differentiate things tend to be shorter and have more distinct sounds, to be more immediately recognizable.

[aldersprig]

Oof. Okay, that makes sense. But it means that anything I do short of roll a d7 three times is going to sound a bit manufactured, isn't it?

[inventrix]

You can always try my Extremely Scientific Method(TM) of spouting gibberish to yourself and picking the bits you like. 8)

[aldersprig]

*laugh* yes, yes I can.