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 writ is meant to address that. While we will never truly know how English spelling would have turned out had the Norman Invasion never happened, we can see what English spelling was like before French influence and revert to those conventions.

This project is the work of multiple people from the Anglish Discord, including Hurlebatte, Yose, Andwlite, and Eadwine. For supporting evidence see Spelling Timeline.

REVERSIONS
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; 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. We have found no trace of it in English before the Norman Invasion.

⟨ch⟩ for /tʃ/ came into English with the Norman Invasion. It appears early in English in the Ormulum, a manuscript from the 1100s. Before ⟨ch⟩ was borrowed, English developed two ways to cut down on ambiguity. First, some scribes began turning to ⟨k⟩, a letter which Anglo-Saxon scribes had previously left mostly unused. Second, some scribes would insert a silent ⟨e⟩ or a silent ⟨i⟩ after ⟨c⟩ to "trigger" its /tʃ/ value, similar to how the silent ⟨u⟩ in modern guest "triggers" the /g/ value of ⟨g⟩. Since many words which are now ambiguous if we remove ⟨ch⟩ once began with ⟨ce⟩, we believe English would have retained ⟨ce⟩ for the sake of clarifying the value of ⟨c⟩. In other words, we believe choke would be spelled ceoke today had ⟨ch⟩ never been borrowed. This is similar to how English keeps ⟨-e⟩ and ⟨gh⟩ to indicate vowel length despite those particular letters no longer standing for spoken phonemes.


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

⟨ie⟩ standing for /eː/ (pronounced /i/ today) seems to have rubbed off onto English from French loanwords like piece, siege, and priest. We propose words like field be spelled feeld; words like roost show that feeld is not an illegal spelling.


 * "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.


 * "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 and trough have the "English ⟨ou⟩", while words rhyming with plough and tough have the "French ⟨ou⟩".

⟨q⟩ was borrowed into regular usage under influence from French. It seems to have become common in the 1200s. ⟨cw⟩ was chosen over ⟨kw⟩ because it seems to have remained the most common spelling before the introduction of ⟨q⟩.

⟨sh⟩ seems to be based on ⟨ch⟩ one way or another. It may be an alternative to ⟨sc⟩ which was modelled on ⟨ch⟩, or it may be a shortening of ⟨sch⟩ which was apparently modelled on ⟨ch⟩.

⟨u⟩, ⟨ue⟩, and ⟨uCe⟩ standing for /ju/ developed from French influence. English borrowed French loanwords which contained /y/, and writers chose to represent this sound with ⟨u⟩, ⟨ue⟩, and ⟨uCe⟩. Previously these spellings stood for English's native /uː/, but that phoneme began to be spelled in the French manner with ⟨ou⟩, leaving ⟨u⟩, ⟨ue⟩, and ⟨uCe⟩ open to being repurposed. Making matters more complicated, this French /y/ merged with English's native /iu/, resulting in words with /iu/ occasionally taking on spellings with ⟨u⟩, ⟨ue⟩, and ⟨uCe⟩; we write hue not hew because of this. Note that Yule should revert to yool, not become yewl.

⟨u⟩ taking the place of what was once Old English ⟨y⟩ seems to be linked to French. Although /y/ had merged with /e/ or /i/ for many English speakers by 1066, speakers in the Southwest and the West Midlands apparently retained /y/. This sound was then rendered as ⟨u⟩ in the French manner, leading to spellings like burden existing alongside spellings like birden and berden in Middle English.


 * "Bereits in ae. Zeit (um 900) war in Kent und Surrey, Essex und Suffolk y, ý (Lautwert: y, y:) zu e, e: geworden. Es blieb y, y: im Südwesten und im westlichen Mittelland, wo es nach frz. Gewohnheit u geschrieben wurde. Im östlichen Mittelland und im ganzen Norden wurde es hingegen zu i, i: entrundet. Aus der Lage Londons erklärte es sich, daß sich bei Chaucer alle drei Entwicklungen belegen lassen." – Bähr, Dieter (1997). Einführung ins Mittelenglische. UTB, Stuttgart
 * Already in OE times (around 900), y, ý (phonetic value: y, y:) had become e, e: in Kent and Surrey, Essex and Suffolk. It remained y, y: in the South West and the West Midlands, where it was spelled u according to French custom. In the East Midlands and throughout the north, however, it was unrounded to i, i:. The position of London explains how all three developments can be found with Chaucer.

⟨wh⟩ is deemed French influence. While we acknowledge that the loss of ⟨hl⟩ and ⟨hr⟩ could have pressured ⟨hw⟩ to change to ⟨wh⟩ to match ⟨wl⟩ and ⟨wr⟩, the lack of early Middle English manuscripts with ⟨wh⟩ but not ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨sch/sh⟩ is too striking to not conclude there was a link. Also, the timing of the ⟨hw⟩-⟨wh⟩ swap is too close to 1066 to be ignored.

⟨v⟩ (or rather, the use of ⟨u⟩ for /v/) seems to have entered English shortly after 1066. Note that words like have should become haf not hafe, since the ⟨e⟩ is only there to prevent the ⟨v⟩ from showing up word-final.

⟨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

⟨cg⟩ is not a part of this system because nobody has shown that the shift from ⟨cg⟩ to ⟨gg⟩ to ⟨dg⟩ had anything to do with French. ⟨gg⟩ can be found in Old English manuscripts which have little-to-no sign of French influence, and French loanwords from around the time of the switch tended to use ⟨g⟩ for /dʒ/ (for example, sege for siege and iuge for judge).

⟨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/. Some have proposed English picked up the use of ⟨y⟩ for /j/ from French, but a general lack of French loanwords containing ⟨y⟩ for /j/ makes this appear doubtful.

⟨æ⟩ was not revived because it seems to have died a natural death. The short value represented by ⟨æ⟩ merged with the short vowel represented by ⟨a⟩, and took on ⟨a⟩ as its spelling. Meanwhile, the long value represented by ⟨æ⟩ ended up with ⟨ea⟩ as its spelling. We have not linked this development to French. As an aside, for a time around 1200 some scribes used ⟨æ⟩ for what were once long ⟨æ⟩ and long ⟨ea⟩ in Old English, so one can find spellings such as læd instead of Old English lead.

⟨ȝ⟩ is not used in this system because it being a different letter from ⟨g⟩ is Norman influence. To undo Norman influence one should acknowledge only ⟨g⟩, but give it an Insular appearance when possible.

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

⟨þ⟩ was not revived because ⟨th⟩, a spelling convention used in Old English since the earliest manuscripts, was rapidly rising in popularity in the decades before the introduction of printing presses to England. The switch to ⟨th⟩ may have been influenced by the widespread use of French-linked ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨sh⟩, but we cannot demonstrate that.

⟨ƿ⟩ was not revived because we 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⟩ (and blackletter ⟨þ⟩ as well) to forever withstand being replaced by clearer alternatives.