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I've also heard the opposite claim about other languages: they were intentionally obfuscated to keep the lower classes illiterate. I won't say which because I'm

• resolutebat 3y ago
  The ordering of letters in Thaana, the Maldivian writing system, is (as far as linguists can tell) completely random and the working hypothesis is that this was done intentionally to make it more cryptic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaana
  • layer8 3y ago
    To be fair, the order of the Latin alphabet looks rather arbitrary as well.
    • thaumasiotes 3y ago
      Not at all; it matches the order of the Greek alphabet from which it is derived.
      • layer8 3y ago
        Being derived from another arbitrarily-ordered looking alphabet doesn't make the order non-arbitrarily looking.
        • thaumasiotes 3y ago
          It does, in the sense that nobody ever wonders why the order is like that, and if they do it takes about one minute to give a correct and nearly complete answer. There is no natural ordering for sounds, so it's true that the ultimate reason for an alphabetic sequence can't exist. But then, since the concept is ill-founded anyway, that's not what anyone is ever talking about when they talk about the reason for an alphabetic sequence. It is obvious that any fully original writing system will be ordered in large part arbitrarily. But an explanation is called for when an unoriginal writing system puts its symbols in a strange order. Even where the writing system is autochthonous, but the concept of writing is not, the system is likely to be conventionally ordered, as in the case of the Japanese syllabary, which conforms to the traditional ordering of Sanskrit. Thaana is overtly strange, as you can see in the wikipedia entry: > The first nine letters (h–v) are derived from the Arabic numerals, whereas the next nine (m–d) were the local Indic numerals. The remaining letters for loanwords (z–ch) and Arabic transliteration are derived from phonetically similar native consonants by means of diacritics (like nuqta), with the exception of y, which is of unknown origin. > The order of the Thaana alphabet (ha, shaviyani, noonu, raa, baa, etc.) does not follow the order of other Indic scripts or of the Arabic script.
          • layer8 3y ago
            > to give a correct and nearly complete answer. Do we know how the order ultimately came about, and what it was originally based on? I don’t mean “because earlier alphabets had that order”, I mean an explanation in terms of the characters of the (earlier) alphabet themselves. I’m genuinely curious. I don’t remember having seen such an explanation. That aside, my original point wasn’t to suggest that the Latin alphabet is similar in how its order came about to the Thaana alphabet. I’m well aware that it is based on an ancestry of earlier alphabets and their order. I merely made the point that the order does look rather arbitrary as well, meaning one shouldn’t necessarily expect a historically grown alphabet to exhibit an order that makes particular sense in terms of its characters.
            • inkyoto 3y ago
              > Do we know how the order ultimately came about, and what it was originally based on? I don’t mean “because earlier alphabets had that order”, I mean an explanation in terms of the characters of the (earlier) alphabet themselves. I’m genuinely curious. I don’t remember having seen such an explanation. It is still a matter of debate, however the order in which Proto-Sinaic scripts and the Phoenician alphabets laid letters out is thought to have been based on the acrophonic principle, where the first sound of the word that represented the object or concept depicted by the letter determined its place in the alphabet. Later alphabetic and abiguda writing systems have followed an earlier lead. There have also been suggestions that it may have been influenced by the order of Egyptian hieroglyphic signs, whilst others propose that it could be based on a mnemonic sequence to make it easier to remember. The short answer is that… we may never find out why it happened to be that way.