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Comment by lagrange77 | Hacker News Reader

I even sing the 'abcdefg' song to infer letter sort order.

I still do this as well, I distinctly remember a time in my life where that song didn’t make sense to me though for a weird reason.

The l,m,n,o,p part is often sung very quickly so to my 5(?) year old brain I never understood where this “elemenopy” business came in and what it had to do with the alphabet. One day it clicked but for a while there I was just along for the ride!

I can relate to this kind of confusion. When your brain expects useful information encoded in a detail, BUTT the author just did it for some trivial reason.

I have had this same encounter (in Arabic though). And I still vividly remember when it all made sense (that would be 24 years ago)

I do this too. I can also start at L if my intuition tells me the letter(s) I'm testing come after L. But that's it - I have to start at L or A. I don't know why L and not some other letter.

The reason for L is probably because of the rhythm of the usual way the song goes. l, m, n... are rushed together because "elemenopee" is easy and fun to say quickly.

  ... a 
  b c d
  e f g
  h / i
  j / k
  l m n o p
  q / r / s 
  t / u / v
  w / x
  y and z

I don't even need the song for the first couple lines these days!

Probably also for memorization. If the song were linear, letters would all cuddle together in the little children’s mind.

It’s quite funny that, as a French native, we are all taught exactly the same song! Same pace, same tone, same elemenopy, but later in life, somehow y’all just smash tough/thorough/through/trough letters together, and we go on with our hon/hen/heim.

> same elemenopy

Why? The song actually works with French names of letters!

  a b c d e f g /
  h i j k l m n /
  o p q r s t u /
  v www x y-y z

with doublé-vey sung with a swing rhythm (♪. 𝅘𝅥𝅯 ♩)

I've been able to start at A, E, L, or T, and your explanation makes sense.

I usually know a letter is near one of those four, but not if it is before or after, so if I am looking for P for example, I'll start with T for a bit, realize I've gone too far, and start over at L in hopes of finding it.

So did "twinkle twinkle little star", or the alphabet song come first

I'm convinced my kids thought lmno was a single letter for a while.

Supposedly “ampersand” comes from when the alphabet song/rhyme used to end in “and ‘per se’ and”. School kids mushed it together into “ampersand”, and over time it became the name for &.

My almost 2-year-old does, and its name is "bah"

It is delightful to be in a foreign country where English is not primary language but is taught and hear/see a little child rattling off the 'abcedefg' song.

I generally lose track somewhere after P.

I generally lose track somewhere after "cookie monster": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYIRO97dhII

For long time I thought that I don't know alphabetical order. Unless I realized it's on telephone numpad, and I know that.

I like to think of the English alphabet as a singly-linked list.

I can mostly start at any letter, but it has to be forwards.

I don’t count on my fingers, but that, I do. I can think through to some subset of the order to find a target letter but it’s usually faster to just run through the song quickly in my head, from the beginning, so that’s what I do.

I mean, it’s like 4s worst-case to find the letter anyway. I can “sing” it in my head fast. Not something I really need to work on making faster.

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