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 reform is not to introduce "cool" innovations, or to fix irregularities; all suggested spellings are based on historical spelling conventions.

COMMENTARY ON C COMMENTARY ON DG
 * In Old English, writers would occasionally fight ambiguity by writing /tʃ/ as ‹ci› or ‹ce› (imagine chat spelled as ceat or ciat). While this spelling convention could be revived to help deal with the loss of French ‹ch›, the simplest approach may be to just accept that ‹c› will be somewhat ambiguous in a dozen or so words.
 * It can be argued that some spellings would likely have retained ‹i› or ‹e› had English never borrowed ‹ch›. For example, in Middle English *church* was often (maybe usually) written with ‹i›, not ‹u›. Had English never borrowed ‹ch› from French it is likely that the word today would be spelled something like circe, since writers would have wanted to keep this unambiguous spelling.
 * Slapping ‹e› after ‹c› at the end of words seems to be a French thing meant to show the ‹c› is /s/ and not /k/. This system does not seem to have applied to English's ‹c› when it made /tʃ/; in the 12th century, before heavy French influence, one finds words like wrench spelled as wrenc, not wrence.
 * I have not linked ‹dg› to foreign influence so I have not touched it.

COMMENTARY ON E + FRICATIVES
 * ‹e› has a special relationship with fricatives in Modern English, and this is true in Anglish Spelling as well. In the same way ‹e› can show ‹th› is voiced when writing with normal spelling, ‹e› can show that ‹þ› and ‹f› are voiced in Anglish Spelling. This not only means that sheathe is to be written sheaþe, but also that leave is to be written leafe.
 * Modern conventions do not allow us to write goose and fleece as gooss and fleess, so Anglish Spelling keeps the convention where ‹e› is used in such words to show that ‹s› is unvoiced, which results in Anglish Spelling having goose and fleese.
 * A few ambiguous spellings emerge as a result of the above. For example, the noun life can be misread as /laɪv/ when it is really /laɪf/. The ‹e› here is lengthening the vowel, not voicing the fricative.

COMMENTARY ON GH
 * ‹gh› is likely based on ‹ȝh›, which itself was a spinoff of using ‹ȝ› for /x/, which was 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 was the last native standard.
 * /x/ was sometimes written ‹g› and ‹ch› in Old English and Middle English, but neither were ever the norm.

COMMENTARY ON REVERTING QU
 * I recommend ‹cw› over ‹kw› since it fits ‹cr› and ‹cl›, clusters where /k/ is still pronounced. There still exists ‹kn›, but the /k/ is no longer pronounced.

COMMENTARY ON SH
 * I suspect that ‹sh› is linked to foreign influence (perhaps it is modelled on ‹ch›), but it does appear in the 12th century in the Ormulum, a manuscript with only slight French influence. If we do determine ‹sh› is from French influence, the obvious replacement is ‹sc›.

COMMENTARY ON TH
 * Although ‹th› is not an "Unanglish" spelling, as it has been around since Old English, it seems to have only overcome ‹þ› because of indirect foreign influence in the form of printing presses. ‹þ› survived for a while by being represented by ‹y› in print, but eventually printers swapped to ‹th› consistently.
 * ‹ð› could be revived, but it seems to have died naturally because it lost to ‹þ›.

COMMENTARY ON U
 * In the 13th century when the magic-E system was firmly taking root, and before French ‹ou› was widespread in English, it was somewhat rare to find words like sow spelled as sue because writers seem to have found the magic-E unnecessary for such words. Had ‹ou› not been borrowed, it is likely that spellings like sue would have become as widespread as spellings like tie and toe. My point is to not let the rarity of spellings like sue in the 13th century dissuade you from using such spellings today.

COMMENTARY ON V
 * Sometimes words end in ‹ve› simply because Modern English does not like to allow ‹v› at the end of words. When converting to Anglish Spelling, drop the ‹e› if it serves no purpose. For example, the verb live should become lif because the ‹e› does not mark the ‹i› as long, nor does it mark the ‹f› as voiced.

COMMENTARY ON WH
 * Some link the emergence of ‹wh› to the introduction of ‹ch›, but I link it to the loss of ‹hr› and ‹hl› leading to ‹hw› being changed to match ‹wr› and ‹wl› instead. The timeline fits this perfectly.

COMMENTARY ON Y AS A SEMIVOWEL
 * Old English's /y/ merged with /i/, resulting in ‹y› and ‹i› being interchangeable in Middle English. This seems to have set the stage for ‹y› taking the role of /j/ away from ‹ȝ›. It is impossible to say whether or not ‹g› without French influence would have kept /j/ rather than losing it to ‹y› like ‹ȝ› did.

COMMENTARY ON Ƿ
 * While using ‹ƿ› would certainly count as Anglish, I deem it to be less "realistic" than ‹w›. My gut feeling is that writers would have switched to ‹w› by the 21st century with or without the Norman invasion. It should be noted that ‹w› (as a ligature, not a letter) and ‹uu› can be found in Old English.

=Boring Stuff=

EVIDENCE - QUOTES

Below are quotes that help explain where some of the thinking behind this reform comes from.


 * "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 History of English Spelling, Christopher Upward & George Davidson.
 * "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." - Upward C, Davidson G (2011) The History of English Spelling, Wiley-Blackwell, pages 108-110.
 * "After the Conquest, French scribes introduced some new spellings. . . V was ontriduced by Anglo-Norman scribes in the 13th century. . ." - Upward C, Davidson G (2011) The History of English Spelling, Wiley-Blackwell
 * "After the Conquest, French scribes introduced some new spellings. . . IE was used to represent /e:/: Old English foend, modern English fiend. . ." - Upward C, Davidson G (2011) The History of English Spelling, Wiley-Blackwell
 * "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." - Upward C, Davidson G (2011) The History of English Spelling, Wiley-Blackwell
 * "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'." - Upward C, Davidson G (2011) The History of English Spelling, Wiley-Blackwell
 * "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." - Upward C, Davidson G (2011) The History of English Spelling, Wiley-Blackwell

EVIDENCE - ATTESTATIONS

Lack of GH
 * "Te cherl be in friþ..hise plowes to driuen." - a1250(?c1150) Prov.Alf.(*Glb A.19-James)80/91
 * "Þow þat a lytyl pynt xulde coste. . ."
 * "Bewar þat þou falle nouȝt wiþ the tree, while þat þow takest to þe þe buwes."
 * "Perceauing me in thot perplex'd."
 * "in Creklade bytwene þe borow of John Buckar"
 * "He hath pardon ten thousand And eyte hundryd ʒer."
 * "Off howe many thyngges Adam was wrotte?"
 * "Fiueten on heit. . ." - a1400(a1325) Cursor (Vsp A.3)1677

Lack of V
 * "Þou ne myȝt hytte nefere do. . ." Note nefere for never.
 * "Bot i haf of the all that i hafe." Note haf for have.

Magic-E + U
 * "All þis werld til him sal bue. . ."
 * "Þe stille sue æt, gruniende, hire mete."
 * "Ðo þe after him comen remden lude stefne, þus queðinde."

Lack of -CE
 * Nu him behofed þet he crape in his mycele codde in ælc hyrne gif þær wære hure an unwreste wrenc þet he mihte get beswicen anes Crist & eall Cristene folc.

CREDITS

Credit goes to Henry Bane of Calques on 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.