The Anglish Alphabet

This is a system I hope will be accepted as Anglish's official but optional spelling reform. I think this system is worthy of that role because I specially designed it to be. Rather than fill the reform up with innovations, Pan-Germanic elements, and anachronism for the sake of anachronism, I followed the normal Anglish procedure of only targeting foreign influence then trying to replace it with the most recent alternatives.


 * 1) I settled on spellings like rice (rich) because that seems to match modern spelling conventions the best. We avoid allowing ‹c› to appear at the end of morphemes. In the few ambiguous pairs that arise because ‹c› makes [tʃ], ‹k› can be used as an optional disambiguater. This is what one sees in Late Old English, throughout Middle English, and of course today in many standard modern spellings like ken and king. In other words, if you want to tell cat and chat apart you can write kat and cat. Another attested disambiguater was the use of silent ‹e› or ‹i› to indicate when ‹c› makes /tʃ/.
 * 2) ‹gh› is almost certainly 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›. That being so, the spelling convention in Middle English (and to a lesser extent Modern English) where /x/ is dropped or replaced is a simple and natural alternative to this French-born digraph. Such spellings have occasionally become standard or widespread in certain regions, such as sluff, duff, dwarf, draft, tho, donut. Alternatively, ‹gh› could be reverted back to ‹h›, but that would be a less modern solution.
 * 3) Although ‹th› had been used all the way back in Old English, ‹þ› had firmly secured its place in the English alphabet until it was knocked out when printing presses based on foreign alphabets were imported to England. ‹þ› survived for a while by being represented by ‹y› in print, but eventually printers swapped to ‹th› consistently.

COMMENTARY

Some link the emergence of ‹wh› to ‹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.

I have not linked ‹dg› and its forerunner ‹gg› to foreign influence so I have not touched it. In fact, I read that Italic words resisted ‹gg› and tended to keep ‹g›.

I have not linked the death of ‹ƿ› to foreign influence so I have not revived it. It should be noted that ‹w› was used in English orthography before French influence (although back then it was a digraph or ligature, not a full-fledged letter).

I have not linked the death of ‹ð› to foreign influence so I have not revived it. It seems to have simply lost a popularity contest with ‹þ›.

I now have doubts that ‹sh› comes from ‹sch› since the former appears in the early 12th century in the Ormulum, and I have not yet found an English text with ‹sch› preceding it.

EVIDENCE

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

Below are attestations.


 * "Þow þat a lytyl pynt xulde coste. . ." Note how /x/ is not represented in the spelling of though.
 * "Bewar þat þou falle nouȝt wiþ the tree, while þat þow takest to þe þe buwes." Note how boughs is spelled buwes.
 * "Perceauing me in thot perplex'd." Note thot for thought.
 * "in Creklade bytwene þe borow of John Buckar" Note borow for borough.
 * "He hath pardon ten thousand And eyte hundryd ʒer." Note eyte for eight.
 * "Off howe many thyngges Adam was wrotte?" Note wrotte for wrought.
 * "Ðo þe after him comen remden lude stefne, þus queðinde." Note lude for loud.
 * "Þe stille sue æt, gruniende, hire mete." Note sue for sow.
 * "We scal and wele ratifye and conferme hit. . ." Note ‹sc› still being used by some in the 15th century.
 * "Þou ne myȝt hytte nefere do. . ." Note nefere for never.