The Friends of the Library University lecture series {"FOL U") returns with John McWhorter, a New York Times Opinion Columnist, Columbia University Professor of Linguistics, and Bestselling Author. In this fascinating program Mr. McWhorter explores the history and oddities of our alphabet.

As basic as it seems to us, the alphabet is a highly counterintuitive way of inscribing language, and has never occurred to any humans originally. Rather, our alphabet developed from writing as pictures, as people gradually figured out that you could use the first sound of a picture word as a symbol for that sound in all words. Workers in Egypt were the ones who had this insight almost 4000 years ago, and their alphabet became, first, a vowel-less one used by Phoenician traders, and eventually the full Roman alphabet we still use today.

This talk describes the highlights of how the first alphabet became ours, illuminating, for example, why we use C and K for the same sound, and then C and S for the same sound. We will see how Z began looking like a capital I and almost got lost from the rotation completely, and what the emergence of the letter F had to do with that of the letter W. You'll find out why we don't call H "hee," why pioneering lexicographer listed words beginning with J as if they began with I, and many other things that show the role that sheer serendipity has played in how we got our "ABCs."

This program was made possible by The Friends of the Port Washington Public Library.