Adult Americans are in tears after an elementary school teacher unveiled the new version of the alphabet song, with one major change.
For decades, children have been learning the song ‘ABCDEFG, HIJK, LMNOP, QRS, TUV, WX, Y and Z, Now I know my ABC, will you sing along with me next time?’
Rachel Sorsel, a teacher specializing in structured literacy, literacy intervention, and dyslexia who has taught hundreds of students over the past five years, says there’s now a new way to sing the song — and for good reason.
Young children now sing: ‘ABCDEFG, HIJKLMN, OPQ, RST, UVW, XYZ, Now I’ll never forget how you say the alphabet.’
The change is based on the centuries-old ABC song, which was written in 1835 and set to the melody originally composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1761.
In a now-viral video, Sorsel explains that instructors modified the classic “LMNOP” and “Y and Z” groups after children kept pronouncing the first group in one breath as “ellemenopee” and assumed the “and” in “Y and Z” was a real letter.
‘I’m a teacher and I don’t learn the alphabet the way I used to sing it.
‘And this is one of the reasons that children hear “LMNOP” and don’t name the individual letter names. Some even think it’s one letter.
‘Another reason is that at the end of the traditional alphabet song we sing Y “N” Z and some children think YN is a letter or NZ is a letter.’
While the change is for good reason, many wonder why children from a new era can no longer understand the classic version of the song.
While the change is for good reason, many wonder why a new age of children can’t understand the classic version of the song
“I agree with you, but haven’t we all managed to sing and read the alphabet in an original way,” one TikToker wrote.
While another joked: ‘I’ve never met anyone in my life who thought lmnop or yn or nz were separate letters.’
“Don’t they have the alphabet above the blackboard anymore? We knew LMNOP was individual letters because we could see them,” one viewer wondered.
While another added: ‘Don’t they go through the alphabet and learn each letter anymore? Just throw the song at them and let them figure it out for themselves, huh?’
Some TikTokers also lamented the loss of the ‘LMNOP’ group in the song.
“Ellemenohpee was my favorite font,” one user mused.
While another added: ‘LMNOP helped me through a lot. We will never forget you. RIP.’
Sorsel went on to explain how learning the alphabet in the new way could actually improve the country’s literacy rate
Sorsel went on to explain how learning the alphabet in the new way could actually improve the country’s literacy rate.
“When children struggle with something as ‘simple’ as the alphabet song, we know that these [reading] “It’s hard for them to learn to speak the language, but those skills are essential for being able to decode and read,” she told USA Today.
She also explained why articulating words doesn’t work in such young children.
“A lot of people in my videos say, ‘Oh, why don’t you just say something?’ And of course we also enunciated to make sure the kids understood what we were saying with our mouths.
‘But that doesn’t make a difference, because their brains aren’t developed enough to notice the difference as well as we fluent, literate adults do.’
Sorsel added that while teachers want to link images to sounds, children between the ages of three and five who are learning the song do not have the neural networks to link the written letters to the sounds.
“To children, they just look like squiggles. You have to develop that much slower than just showing 26 squiggles and saying sounds.”
The revised version of the song is not Sorsel’s own creation, but the educational website Dream English adapted the classic back in 2012.