The Anglish Alphabet

For a long time the influence which the Norman Invasion and its aftermath had on English spelling has been ignored in the Anglish project. This article is meant to address that. Note that influence borrowed into English before 1066 is not targeted for change, though it could be in a stricter system. Also note that I have not used this system as a cover for introducing fanciful innovations and personal preferences which have nothing to do with Anglish, like others insist on doing; every spelling change proposed in this system is meant to be indisputably relevant to Anglish, and based on real, historical spellings.

=The Writ=

Some reversions are more random, and do not fit neatly in the chart above. These include: ache to ake; scythe to sithe; island to iland; accursed to acursed; allay to alay; afford to aford; affright to afright; anneal to aneal; tongue to tung; Rhine to Rine; rhyme to rime; ghost to goast; sailor to sailer; neighbour to neighbor; harbour to harbor.

COMMENTARY
ABOUT GH

⟨gh⟩ is retained, here is why. For a time, due to the Norman Invasion, English used two versions of ⟨g⟩ as separate letters. Insular ⟨g⟩ (which at this point can be represented with ⟨ȝ⟩) continued to stand for /j/ and [ɣ], while the Norman's Carolingian ⟨g⟩ handled /g/. Around 1250 Insular ⟨g⟩ seems to have expanded its role to also include [x]. Apparently based on digraphs like ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨sh⟩, some writers would use ⟨ȝh⟩ to stand for [ɣ] and later [x], leaving a lone ⟨ȝ⟩ to stand for /j/. Eventually Insular ⟨g⟩ lost /j/ to ⟨y⟩. Next, Carolingian ⟨g⟩ took on the last remaining role of Insular ⟨g⟩, giving us ⟨gh⟩. At first glance this makes ⟨gh⟩ seem very French, but really all that is "needed" is a simple font change back to Insular, as this rectifies everything which is definitively post-invasion influence.

⟨ough⟩ sometimes becomes ⟨ugh⟩ and sometimes remains ⟨ough⟩ because in some cases the ⟨ou⟩ is acting in a French manner, standing for historical /u:/, but in other cases it acts in an English manner, standing for historical /ou/. You can usually tell which spellings are French influenced through pronunciation; words that rhyme with plough and tough are the ones with spellings influenced by French.

There are two living alternatives to ⟨gh⟩, but neither are standard. The first alternative is to drop historical [x] / [ɣ] from spelling by either omitting them entirely (donut), or by updating to spellings with ⟨f⟩ when applicable (draft). The second alternative is ⟨ch⟩, which has been used since Old English times (loch).

ABOUT PRE-INVASION INFLUENCE

⟨ch⟩ standing for /tʃ/ is not removed from the standard system because it was introduced into English before the Norman Invasion. If you choose to revert ⟨ch⟩ to ⟨c⟩, you might want to use this spelling convention some Old English writers employed where /tʃ/ was written as ⟨ce⟩ or ⟨ci⟩ in otherwise ambiguous spellings (imagine chat spelled as ceat or ciat).

⟨sh⟩ is not removed from the standard system because ⟨sch⟩ was introduced into English before the Norman Invasion. If you choose to revert ⟨sh⟩ to ⟨sc⟩ you might want to begin representing all instances of /sk/ with ⟨sk⟩.

⟨v⟩ is not removed from the standard system because ⟨u⟩ standing for /v/ was introduced into English before the Norman Invasion. If you choose to replace ⟨v⟩ with ⟨f⟩, I recommend dropping pointless instances of ⟨e⟩. For example, the verb live could become lif because the ⟨e⟩ does not mark the ⟨i⟩ as long, nor does it mark the ⟨f⟩ as voiced. Additionally, some words like love and dove should probably be converted to luf and duf. This is because the switch from ⟨u⟩ to ⟨o⟩ in spelling was likely driven by a desire to visually distinguish ⟨u⟩ from ⟨v⟩.

ABOUT OLD LETTERS AND DIGRAPHS

⟨ƿ⟩ was not revived because I have not linked its disappearance to French influence. English has been using ⟨uu⟩ and ⟨w⟩ since Old English times, and ⟨ƿ⟩ persisted fairly long after the Norman Invasion. It is possible that ⟨ƿ⟩ simply looked too much like ⟨p⟩ to forever withstand being replaced by clearer alternatives.

⟨ð⟩ was not revived because it seems to have died a natural death, losing out to ⟨þ⟩.

⟨þ⟩ was not revived because ⟨th⟩ was rapidly rising in popularity in the decades before the introduction of printing presses to England.

⟨æ⟩ was not revived because it seems to have died a natural death when its short value merged with ⟨a⟩, and its long value was taken over by ⟨ea⟩.

⟨ȝ⟩ being a new letter named Yough and lacking the ability to stand for /g/ is an outcome of the Norman Invasion. That, however, does not mean you cannot go back to drawing ⟨g⟩ in an Insular manner, nor does it mean you cannot select Insular style fonts while on the computer.

⟨cg⟩ is not a part of the standard system because I have not linked ⟨dg⟩ to French influence. Even if it were discovered that ⟨dg⟩ is linked to French, the next fallback would be ⟨gg⟩, not ⟨cg⟩.

⟨hw⟩ is not a part of the standard system because ⟨wh⟩ first begins showing up before the Norman Invasion. Some link the emergence of ⟨wh⟩ to the introduction of ⟨ch⟩, but another possibility is that the loss of ⟨hr⟩ and ⟨hl⟩ put pressure on ⟨hw⟩ to match ⟨wr⟩ and ⟨wl⟩. Note that ⟨wh⟩ appears in some Early Middle English manuscripts which lack ⟨ch⟩.

MISC

The silent ⟨u⟩ in ⟨gu⟩ is French influence. It is meant to show that ⟨g⟩ is not making /dʒ/ in the French manner.

⟨ie⟩ standing for /i/ is a French convention, but it seems to be unrelated to the suffix -ies in words like bloodies.

⟨tch⟩ seems to have been invented as a response to a French sound change. In French, ⟨ch⟩ went from being pronounced /tʃ/ to /ʃ/, so ⟨tch⟩ seems to have been invented to tell /tʃ/ and /ʃ/ apart. Compare cache to catch.

Yule should revert to yool, not become yewl.

⟨g⟩ does not make /j/ in the standard system because ⟨y⟩ seems to have taken on that job naturally. What seems to have happened is /y/ merged with /i/ in Old English, leading to ⟨y⟩ and ⟨i⟩ being interchangeable in Middle English. From here it was a small step to have ⟨y⟩ handle /j/.

EXTRA
QUOTES

The History of English Spelling, Christopher Upward & George Davidson


 * "The form anneal, however, derives from OE anælan; spellings of this word with NN are first attested in the 17th century, by analogy with Latinate forms such as annex (compare similar doubling of C, F, L in accursed, afford, allay)."
 * "The development of people offers a good paradigm for many words ending in -LE: Lat populum > OFr poeple > ME peple > people. The final syllable of people and similar words was commonly spelt in ME with a wide variety of vowel letters, as -EL, -IL, -UL, -YL, etc. In EModE, printers showed a growing tendency to prefer the Fr -LE spelling in many words of both Franco-Lat and OE descent."
 * "After the Conquest, French scribes introduced some new spellings. . . IE was used to represent /e:/: Old English foend, modern English fiend. . ."
 * "Words of Franco-Lat origin often retained the Fr single G (e.g. juge) through ME, but adopted the DG pattern (as in judge) in EModE."
 * "Anglo-Saxon scribes sometimes clarified the pronunciation of c using two devices. . . one device was to show the /tʃ/ value where it might otherwise not be apparent by inserting an E or I after the C; thus þencan could also be written þencean. The other device was to replace C by K to show its /k/ value before a front vowel: cyn 'kin', cyning 'king', cycen 'kitchen' were sometimes written kin (so contrasting with palatalized c in cin 'cin'), kyning, kicen. Likewise the genitive case of folk 'people' could be either folces or folkes 'of the people'."
 * "Phonetic spellings such as hey/hye for high, thow for though, indicative of new pronunciations developing from the 14th century onwards, were characteristic of non-Chancery writing during the first half of the 15th century."

Middle English Compendium


 * "The wh- spelling already appears, though infrequently, in LOE as a variant of OE hw-. In ME it is used sporadically during the 12th cent., e.g., in Peterb.Chron., a gloss, and a few names; by the end of the century it is the regular spelling in Orm., from the NEM. The spelling becomes more frequent in the 13th cent., and widespread in the 14th cent." - Middle English Compendium

CREDITS

Credit goes to Henry Bane of Calques of the Anglish Discord for pointing out that the loss of ⟨hr⟩ and ⟨hl⟩ could have influenced the switch from ⟨hw⟩ to ⟨wh⟩.

Credit goes to Frith for pointing out how magic-E on ⟨u⟩ used to make the native long-U sound.

Credit goes to Eadwine of the Old English Discord for pointing out that replacing ⟨ie⟩ with ⟨ea⟩ rather than ⟨ee⟩ is not supported with evidence as far as we can tell.

Credit goes to Yose of the Anglish Discord for pointing out that ⟨th⟩ was rising in popularity in the decades before the printing press, and for pointing out that Iceland was able to procure printing blocks for ⟨þ⟩ (implying that Englishmen could have as well if they wanted to).

Credit goes to the YouTube channel "Middle-English Manuscripts" for helping me find the Anglo-Saxon charters which contain ⟨ch⟩, ⟨sch⟩, and ⟨u⟩ making /v/.