Who Made The ABC’s?
Tim Griffin
Oh you know I wonder, tell me who made the ABC’s
There are too many sounds for the letters, won’t you explain it for me please
There should be one letter for each sound, or so it seems to me
Won’t somebody tell me who made the ABC’s?
(26 letters, oh how I need ‘em… How’m I gonna know just how to read ‘em?)
‘Cause there are 26 letters in the alphabet, you can count ’em if you disagree
But when I count all the sounds in our language, the last time I checked there were 43
There should be one letter for each sound, or so it seems to me
Won’t somebody tell me who made the ABC’s?
The letter A says (long a), (short a), or (ah), depending how it’s used
The letter E says (long e), (short e), or (uh), how will I know which one I should choose?
An I says (long i) or (short i) or (long e), O goes (short o) or (long o)
The letter U says (uh), (oooh), or (you) to me, sometimes I just don’t know
A, E, I, O, U may find it confusing; why don’t we write the way we speak?
Was it invented for some other language, maybe in Latin or in Greek?
There should be one letter for each sound, or so it seems to me
Won’t somebody tell me who made the ABC’s?
The letter A says (long a), (short a), or (ah) depending how it’s used
The letter E says (long e), (short e), or (uh), how will I know which one I ought to choose?
An I for an (long i) or an (short i) or (long e), O goes (short o) or (long o) (oh, oh, oh)
The letter U says (uh), (oooh), or (you) to me, sometimes I just don’t know
Shouldn’t there should be one letter for each sound, or so it seems to me
Won’t somebody tell me who made the ABCs?
Who made the ABC’s?
Who made the ABC’s?
Notes
Teaching and learning how to turn little abstract symbols on a page into sounds that make words has never been easy. Some languages (Armenian, for example) have their own alphabet designed just for that one language; which is mighty convenient for speakers of that language because once they know the sound each of their letters makes, they can encode (write) and decode (read) every word in their language with ease.
And then there's English. We use 26 letters invented for other languages (mainly Greek and Latin) to encode about 43 sounds. Then we start bringing in words from French (baguette), Spanish (burrito), Italian (pizza), and every other language that wanders into the party, each of which has its own special way of pronouncing and spelling things. The result is a fantastic language, but just like any great party it creates quite a mess.
This is why so many of our letters, especially the vowels, can make more than one sound depending on where the letter appears in a word, which other letters are around them, and what language we borrowed (stole) the word from. Trust me, you'll get the hang of it of you keep practicing.
Here are some academic content standards addressed by this song:
Kindergarten
CC.K.R.F.1. Print Concepts: Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.
CC.K.R.F.1.b. Print Concepts: Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.
CC.K.R.F.3. Phonics and Word Recognition: Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
CC.K.R.F.3.b. Phonics and Word Recognition: Associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.
First Grade
CC.1.R.F.2. Phonological Awareness: Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).
CC.1.R.F.2.a. Phonological Awareness: Distinguish long from short vowel sounds in spoken single-syllable words.
CC.1.R.F.3.b. Phonics and Word Recognition: Decode regularly spelled one-syllable words.
Second Grade
CC.2.R.F.3. Phonics and Word Recognition: Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
CC.2.R.F.3.a. Phonics and Word Recognition: Distinguish long and short vowels when reading regularly spelled one-syllable words.
Chords: F, Dm, Gm, C, F7, A