Why is the alphabet in that specific order? Why not call them the "JRV's" instead of the "ABC's"?
967098
We copied the Romans, who copied the Greeks, who copied the Hebrews, who copied the Phonecians, but that still doesn't answer your question.
93813
Every time I've seen it it's just every three letters except for PQRS and WXYZ. That's how they do it on phones and in a few dictionaries I've seen.\nABC... DEF... GHI... JKL... MNO... PQRS... TUV... WXYZ
230673
Uh, LEVEL "upside down" (i.e. rotated 180 degrees) does not read the same.\n\nTwo such 4-letter words are "NOON" and "suns".  Yes, capitalization (or lack of) matters.\n\nOops, "suns" doesn't read the same backwards (palindrome).  Scratch that.  But it does read the same upside down.\n\nThis should be solvable.\n\nTo read the same backwards, word must have the form 1221.  For upside down, the letters must remain the same when rotated (since the first letter becomes the last when rotated, and since the first and last letters are the same).\n\nThe only letters that can be rotated and stay the same are H,I,N,O,S,X,o,s,x.  \n\nThe middle letter is repeated, and I think the only option for legit 4-letter words is OO (NN is posible in INNS, but this doesn't work).  So your choices are\n\nHOOH\nIOOI\nNOON\nSOOS\nXOOX\n\nAnd only NOON is such a word.\n\nPlease, if I'm wrong, someone tell me!\n\n\nSide note: I have a friend whose last name is Shih, so his family would be a bunch of SHIHS.
99929
AbC and Abc (only two types).
791173
So that it's in alphabetic order, of course -----Jeez!!!!
395684
You can write the lowercase w with hard corners - that's not why it's called a double-u.\n\nThe alphabet as we know it goes back to ancient latin alphabet.  The letter they called U was written as a V, long before we had a "V."  The W was originally written as "VV" as opposed to it's own letter.  This combination was added in late Latin times to represent a Germanic sound the Romans didn't use.  Later, in the middle ages, the letter U was added as a distictly different sound from the V, and the W became it's own letter, retaining it's naming from what people were used to using to refer to the VV sound.
542271
ABC its easy as 123, ABC, 123. \nGO MICHAEL!!!!!!!!!!
505251
As the others say....x horizontal and y vertical. Try to remember the order from the alphabet. It may help you remember.
986024
"The alphabet is abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz."
293830
trina dosent know what the hell shes talking about.....\nnow, if it were easy, wouldn't you be seeing alot of 'em?\nor just one of 'em, for that matter? I think even jesse james would have a very difficult time fabricating that one!\n\n\np.s; BTW, s.b. stands for small block V 8. its not the same, trina
964677
If everyone is pronouncing it wrong, then I suspect it is an unusual J sound for Americans.  If it does not sound like the J in jeans, jell-o, or jolly, then you should expect that people will get it wrong.  We do not pronounce the letter J any other way.  Also, the first A could be long or short - the second one is most likely short.  So your name would be pronounced either Jay-nuh or Jaw-nuh here in America.  If neither of these is correct, then people will definitely be pronouncing it wrong.  Don't be offended - just correct them and they will learn.  It may take a few times, but that is to be expected.
98202
What you are looking for is called the "Phonetic Alphabet".\n\nSee below for a few examples.
898837
Several have pointed out the basic origins of our alphabet, ultimately in the early Semitic alphabets of the 2nd millennium BC, a form of which Phoenician traders of the 1st millennium BC spread around the Mediterranean (esp. to the Greeks,  and from one group of Greeks to the Etruscans, and from them to the Romans -- hence the Latin alphabet we now use a form of).\n\nAs for the ORDER of these alphabets, some clarification is needed.\n\nBelow I will explain where your friend's suggestion may come from (I'm assuming he misread a lowercase for a capital and meant the letter "L").    But here's the big picture:\n\n1) Our very term "alphabet" is based on a Greek version which began with the letters "alpha" and "beta".  These words were nonsense in Greek, borrowed from the Phoenician names "aleph" and "beth" (meaning "ox" and "house" --words that began with these respective letters).   That is, the essential order of our alphabet (with modifications for letters added later by the Greeks and Romans), is an order used by the Phoenicians, as well as by others in their region who spoke related languages --this included speakers of Hebrew .\n\n2) Specific evidence for THIS order among the Semitic groups?  Of the texts we have in Phoenician,  I do not know of any of these that are specifically "abecedary" texts (that is, lists of the letters in a standardized a-b-c type order).    But the evidence for this order in first millennium BC Hebrew is quite strong in the biblical texts, esp. in their "acrostic poems", in which successive verses or sets of verses begin with the letters in the 'order of the alphabet'.    The most famous example is Psalm 119 in which the eight verses of each stanza start with the same letter.   In fact, almost any English Bible you pick up will display the Hebrew characters and names above the stanzas of this psalm.\n\n3) Actually, the evidence for this order -- beginning with "aleph" -- goes back to about 1300 B.C., where it is found in a number of "abecedary texts" apparently written in scribal schools in the Syrian port city of Ugarit.  (The characters are in an alphabet adapted to be written in "cuneiform", but are still the same basic letters as the other alphabetic texts we know.)    There is some suggestion that the order reflects the propsed Egyptian roots of the whole Semitic alphabet, but no evidence of this has been found. (And at least one writer has proposed that the Ugartic alphabet was organized as a mnenomic device, and has attempted to reconstruct a poem based on the word-names of the letters.)\n\n4) This is at least the DOMINANT order.  But there is another group of languages -- including writings in "Old South Arabiab" and later in "Ge`ez" (also called "Classical Ethiopic") that used a different order, that starts with the equivalent of "h".   This "South Semitic" order is first found in South Arabian inscriptions inthe mid-1st millennium BC...  or so we long thought.    It turns out that two texts found at Ugarit --one found back in 1933, but not appreciated; another found much later-- have since the 1990s been recognized as reflecting the South Semitic order.   With just two of them, and the peculiarities and uncertainties about these specific texts, it is difficult to know what to make of them.   There are some, however, who argue that this order may be just as old as the standard 'aleph-bet' order (and have looked forevidence in the lists of Egyptian symbols ['glyphs'] thought to be behind them).\n\n**5)  As for the "L" first suggestion.  Many have suggested that the 22-letter Phoenician and Hebrew alphabet was typically broken into TWO pieces of eleven letters each.   Looking at the Hebrew alphabet (perhaps at Psalm 119) you see that the first three letters of the seco
32615
we don't use k,l,m,n anymore. The letters are s,p,d and f. They refer to the different shapes of the shells(orbitals)
438356
Number of ways to arrange ABCDEF = 6! since all of the letters are distinct.\n\nNumber of ways to arrange TOYOTA = 6!/(2!2!) since there are two T's and two O's.
78661
Palindromes.  The same fowards as is backwards.  Like "Madam, I am Adam."
106072
If 13 is an unlikely number then so should the letter "b" be because "b" looks like a scruntched up 13. Hi my name is bob  - get the f uck away!