Rain Barrel: now I know why I know my ABCs

January 27, 2000

When I was a little kid, I had a thought that was so profound to my little mind that I remember it to this day: "isn't it weird that we have names for sounds?"

I was thinking about the alphabet when I had that thought when I realized that there was the letter 'b' and then there was the sound that is from 'b' and that they weren't the same.

Now that I'm older, I realize that we don't really have names for sounds, but we have names for symbols that represent sounds.

I had a similar alphabet-related epiphany as I was reading Information Anxiety (you can read the TOC here) and Richard Saul Werman was discussing classification schemes:

The ABCs are drummed into schoolchildren so early and in such a rigorous way that this system of organization sometimes seems as if it's God-given. But it isn't: only a cultural consensus puts L before M instead of the other way around.

Ok, maybe it's obvious to you, but I think its really fascinating that we all learn our ABCs not just so we know our alphabet, but also because we all have to learn a standard (and arbitrary) system of categorization. Maybe this is because I'm a librarian.


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