Adult Americans were left gasping after a first-grade teacher revealed a new version of the alphabet song — with one significant change.
For decades, children have been taught the song as ‘ABCDEFG, HIJK, LMNOP, QRS, TUV, WX, Y and Z, now I know the alphabet, next time won’t you sing with me?’
But now, Rachel Sorsel, an educator specializing in structured literacy, literacy intervention, and dyslexia who has taught hundreds of students over the past five years, reveals that there’s a new way to sing the chant—and for good reason.
Little children now sing: ‘ABCDEFG, HIJKLMN, OPQ, RST, UVW, XYZ, now I’ll never forget how to say the alphabet.’
The modification comes hundreds of years after the ABC Song, created in 1835 with the melody originally composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1761.
In a now-viral video, Sorsel explained that instructors switched the classic groups “LMNOP” and “Y and Z” after kids kept signing the former as “ellemenopee” in one go and assumed the “y” in “Y and Z” was a real letter.
‘I’m a teacher and I don’t teach the alphabet the way I grew up singing it.
‘And this is one of the reasons why children hear “LMNOP” and don’t say the names of the individual letters. Some even think it’s just one letter.
‘Another reason is because at the end of the traditional alphabet song, we sing Y “N” Z and some kids think YN is a letter or NZ is a letter.’
But while the change has a good reason, many are wondering why a new era of children can’t understand the classic version of the song.
While the change has a good reason, many have wondered why a new era of children can’t understand the classic version of the song.
‘I agree with you, but didn’t we all do well knowing how to read and so on with the original way of singing the alphabet?’ commented one TikToker.
While another joked: “I’ve never in my life met anyone who thought lmnop or yn or nz were individual letters.”
“Don’t they have the alphabet on the board anymore? We knew LMNOP was individual letters because we could see them,” one viewer questioned.
Another added: “Don’t they go over the alphabet anymore and teach each letter? They just throw the song at them and let them figure it out, huh?”
Some TikTokers also mourned the loss of the group ‘LMNOP’ in the song.
“Ellemenohpee was my favorite lyric,” one user recalled.
While another added: “LMNOP helped me through a lot. We will never forget you. Rest in peace.”
Sorsel further explained how learning alphabets in the new way could actually improve the country’s literacy rate.
Sorsel further explained how learning alphabets in the new way could actually improve the country’s literacy rate.
“When kids are struggling with something as ‘simple’ as the alphabet song, we know that these (reading) skills are going to be difficult for them and are critical to being able to decode and read,” she told USA Today.
He also explained why enunciation doesn’t work for such young children.
‘A lot of people on my videos comment, ‘Oh, why don’t you enunciate? ‘ And of course we enunciate to make sure the kids understand what we’re saying with our mouths.
“But it doesn’t make any difference because their brains aren’t developed enough to notice the difference as much as we, literate and fluent adults, do.”
Sorsel added that while educators want to connect images to sounds, those between the ages of three and five who are learning the song don’t have the neural networks to match written letters to sounds.
“For children, that just looks like scribbles. You have to develop it much more slowly than just showing 26 scribbles and saying sounds.”
The revised version of the song is not Sorsel’s own creation, but the educational website Dream English originally changed the classic in 2012.
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