The Anglish Alphabet

This article goes over how one can write with Anglish Spelling. In the same way Anglish words are meant to be native alternatives to loanwords, Anglish spellings are meant to be native alternatives to foreign influenced spellings from after 1066. Note that the point of this system is not to introduce "cool" innovations, nor to return to old spellings simply because they are old, nor to fix irregularities which have nothing to do with foreign influence, nor to magically predict exactly how English orthography would have turned out had the Norman Invasion failed.

=The Writ=

Some reversions are more random. These include: ache to ake; scythe to sithe; island to iland; accursed to acursed; allay to alay; afford to aford; affright to afrite or afriht; anneal to aneal; tongue to tung; Rhine to Rine; rhyme to rime; ghost to goast.

COMMENTARY
PRE-1066 INFLUENCE
 * Although ⟨ch⟩, ⟨sh⟩, and ⟨v⟩ do appear to be French influence, I have not included them in the standard Anglish Spelling system because a significant number of Old English texts show ⟨ch⟩, ⟨sch⟩, and ⟨u⟩ (making /v/) popping up in English before 1066. This is relevant because some members of the Anglish community accept willfully borrowed foreign influence from before the Norman Invasion.

REJECTED IDEAS
 * ⟨cg⟩ is not a part of standard Anglish Spelling because I have not linked ⟨dg⟩ to foreign influence. Even if ⟨dg⟩ were deemed foreign, the next fallback would be ⟨gg⟩, not ⟨cg⟩.
 * ⟨ƿ⟩ is not a part of standard Anglish Spelling because I have not linked its disappearance to foreign influence. English has been using ⟨uu⟩ and ⟨w⟩ since Old English times, and ⟨ƿ⟩ persisted long after the Norman Invasion.
 * ⟨ȝ⟩ is not a part of standard Anglish Spelling because it ultimately owes its existence to the Normans importing Carolingian ⟨g⟩.
 * ⟨hw⟩ is not a part of standard Anglish Spelling 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⟩.
 * ⟨ð⟩ is not a part of standard Anglish Spelling because it seems to have died a natural death, losing out to ⟨þ⟩.
 * ⟨þ⟩ is not a part of standard Anglish Spelling because trends show that ⟨th⟩ was rising in popularity in the 15th century, before the introduction of printing presses to England. Judging from manuscripts, ⟨þ⟩ had evolved to look strikingly similar to ⟨y⟩, and this may have discouraged its use.
 * ⟨g⟩ does not make /j/ in standard Anglish Spelling 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 innovation to make ⟨y⟩ handle /j/.

C
 * In Old English writers would occasionally fight ambiguity by writing /tʃ/ as ⟨ce⟩ or ⟨ci⟩ (imagine chat spelled as ceat or ciat). This can be employed to help deal with the loss of French ⟨ch⟩ if you choose to discard it.
 * Had English never borrowed ⟨ch⟩, and had English continued to use ⟨c⟩ for /tʃ/, it is likely that certain words would have retained spellings with ⟨i⟩ or ⟨e⟩. For example, church was commonly spelled with ⟨i⟩, not ⟨u⟩, in Middle English, making circ a seemingly more realistic spelling than curc.

GH
 * ⟨gh⟩ is likely based on ⟨ȝh⟩, a spelling convention linked directly to the Norman invasion and the importation of the Carolingian ⟨g⟩.
 * The spelling convention in Middle English, and to a lesser extent Modern English, where /x/ is dropped from spelling (or replaced with ⟨f⟩ when applicable) is a simple and natural alternative to ⟨gh⟩. Such spellings have occasionally become standard or widespread in certain regions. Note: sluff, duff, dwarf, draft, tho, donut. However, many prefer reverting ⟨gh⟩ back to ⟨h⟩, which seems to have been the last native standard.
 * ⟨ch⟩ standing for /x/ can be found in Old English, Middle English, and Modern English, but never with enough popularity to justify incorporating it as a standard spelling for this system.
 * ⟨laff⟩ is preferred to ⟨lauf⟩ due to sound changes.

GU
 * The silent ⟨u⟩ in ⟨gu⟩ is there to show the ⟨g⟩ is not making /dʒ/ in the French manner.

IE
 * Reverting ⟨ie⟩ to ⟨ee⟩ probably should not apply to the -ies in words like bloodies.

TCH
 * ⟨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.

U
 * Yule should revert to yool, not become yewl.

V
 * 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⟩.

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/.

DEEPER REVERSIONS

The reversions above are for those who want to revert foreign influence even if it affected English before the Norman Invasion. ⟨þ⟩ is included because it conceivably still had a fighting chance in English if not for foreign-based printing presses.