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 proposal is meant to address that. A few things should be noted: influence borrowed into English before 1066 is not targeted for change, though it could be in a stricter system; this system is not a cover for introducing fanciful innovations and personal preferences which have nothing to do with Anglish, like others insist on doing; I do not claim this system accurately captures how English spelling would have turned out, only that it targets influence from the Norman Invasion and attempts to "sensibly reverse" it.

REVERSIONS
Some reversions are more random, and do not fit neatly in the chart above. These include: ajar to achar; 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; guest to gest; guess to gess.


 * "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, Upward & Davidson

COMMENTARY
REVERSIONS

⟨c⟩ being soft (standing for /s/) is a French thing. I have found no trace of it before the Norman Invasion.

⟨tch⟩ seems to have been invented in response to a post-invasion French sound change where ⟨ch⟩ went from /tʃ/ to /ʃ/ (compare catch to cache). Anglish has no reason to accommodate this French sound change.

⟨ie⟩ standing for /i/ seems to have rubbed off onto English from loanwords like piece.


 * "After the Conquest, French scribes introduced some new spellings. . . IE was used to represent /e:/. . ." - The History of English Spelling, Upward & Davidson

⟨le⟩ at the end of words seems to have rubbed off onto English from French loanwords like people.


 * "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." - The History of English Spelling, Upward & Davidson

⟨o⟩ taking the place of ⟨u⟩ in many instances, such as sum to some, seems to be post-invasion influence. French scribes writing in their Carolingian hand would sometimes write ⟨o⟩ instead of ⟨u⟩ because the latter was more prone to being lost in the surrounding text. This convention seems to have rubbed off onto English shortly after 1066.


 * "The convention of using o for earlier u begins in late Latin and is extended first to French and then to English." - Venezky, Richard L. Visible Language; Detroit, Michigan etc. Volume 10, Issue 4, pages 351-365


 * "In the handwriting of the ME period much more than in that of the OE, the letters i (and j), u (and v), n, m, and w tended to be made simply by one, two, or three short upright strokes (technically called minims) without horizontal connecting strokes at the top of bottom between minims forming parts of the same letter, and sometimes without a dot over the single minim standing for i (or j). The result was that any word containing two or more of these letters in sequence became difficult to read, a succession of, say, four minims being interpretable as nu, un, mi, wi ,im ,iw, ini, iui (ivi), nii, uii (vii), iin, or iiu (iiv). In some contemporary French dialects, o had come, in certain phonetic situations, to indicate the same sound as u; French scribes were not slow to substitute o very generally for u whenever u was etymologically called for in the neighborhood of other letters made up of minims. This practice came to be widely imitated in writing English, and hence ME sone, which was easier to read than sune. . ." - Early English: An Introduction to Old and Middle English, Clark, page 122

⟨ou⟩ was borrowed from French. Beforehand, English represented /uː/ with ⟨u⟩, and often it was marked as long with a "magic-E". Due to the Great Vowel Shift, many instances of /uː/ became /aʊ/, but in some cases the old value was preserved. These conservative instances ended up either with the English ⟨oo⟩ spelling (room), or took on the French ⟨ou⟩ spelling (bouk). For Anglish spelling, these instances of ⟨ou⟩ standing for /uː/ should only be spelled as ⟨oo⟩. In some cases ⟨ough⟩ has a French based ⟨ou⟩, but in some cases the ⟨ou⟩ stands for a naturally occurring English diphthong which arose through vowel breaking. As a general rule, words which rhyme with dough have the "English ⟨ou⟩", while words rhyming with plough and tough have the "French ⟨ou⟩".

⟨q⟩ was borrowed from French after the Norman Invasion.

⟨ue⟩ standing for /ju/ developed from French influence. English borrowed French loanwords which contained /y/, and writers chose to represent this sound with ⟨ue⟩, since that combination was no longer standing for long-U, due to English borrowing ⟨ou⟩ from French. I do not know how this French /y/ was realised in English, but it ultimately merged with a native English diphthong, resulting in native words like hue taking on strange spellings when one would expect them to be written in ways like hew. Note that Yule should revert to yool, not become yewl.

⟨z⟩ was rarely used in Old English, and virtually never in native words. The letter began to appear in native words after English had taken in many French loanwords which contained it.

REJECTED IDEAS

⟨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 this 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 this system because it cannot be definitely linked to the Norman Invasion. Some claim that ⟨hw⟩ changed to ⟨wh⟩ to match ⟨ch⟩, ⟨sch/sh⟩, and ⟨th⟩, but it is possible that the loss of ⟨hr⟩ and ⟨hl⟩ put pressure on ⟨hw⟩ to conform instead to ⟨wr⟩ and ⟨wl⟩, two spellings that were around when the switch happened. Note that ⟨wh⟩ appears in some Early Middle English manuscripts which lack ⟨ch⟩, ⟨sch/sh⟩, and ⟨th⟩, which casts some doubt on the claim that ⟨wh⟩ is a spelling simply meant to conform to French digraphs.


 * "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

⟨g⟩ does not make /j/ in this 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/.

⟨v⟩ is not removed from in this system because ⟨u⟩ standing for /v/ was used in 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⟩.

⟨gh⟩ is retained because the idea that the letter Gee is associated with [x] because of Normans appears to be false; although ⟨h⟩ stood for [x] in Old English, ⟨h⟩ seems to have lost this role to insular ⟨g⟩ because insular ⟨g⟩ had the ability to stand for [ɣ], and the role of insular ⟨g⟩ seems to have widened from there to include the unvoiced [x] counterpart to [ɣ]. I cannot link this development to French influence. It goes without saying that one may write ⟨gh⟩ in an insular style, giving it a non-Carolingian appearance like ⟨ȝh⟩.

CREDITS

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

Credit goes to ShrekBeeBensonDCLXVI on the Anglish Reddit for sharing the idea that ⟨tch⟩ was invented to distinguish the new French pronunciation of ⟨ch⟩ from the old one.

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 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 ⟨u⟩ making /v/.

Credit goes to Andwlite of the Anglish Discord for finding sources on the ⟨o⟩ to ⟨u⟩ switch.

EXAMPLES
Use of ⟨u_e⟩ before ⟨ou⟩ was borrowed:
 * c1175(?OE) HRood (Bod 343)4/16 : Sonæ swa he ðes wateres swetnysse ifelde, þa wearð he swiðe bliðe on his mode & mid lude stefne to ðare ferde clypian ongan.
 * a1200 Trin.Hom.(Trin-C B.14.52)89 : Ðo þe after him comen remden lude stefne, þus queðinde.
 * c1275(?c1250) Owl & N.(Clg A.9)314 : Þat nis noȝt soþ ich singe efne Mid fulle dreme & lude stefne.
 * a1225(c1200) Vices & V.(1) (Stw 34)43/21 : Ðe gastliche hierdes..sculen..stieren ðo ðe bieð in ðare woreld, and ec..ðe bieð ute.
 * a1275(?c1150) Prov.Alf.(Trin-C B.14.39)122/487 : He þat is ute bi-loken, he is inne sone forȝeten.

Use of ⟨u⟩ for /v/ before 1066:
 * https://esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/charter/939.html
 * https://esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/charter/1458.html
 * https://esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/charter/1423.html
 * https://esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/charter/1549.html
 * https://esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/charter/1348.html