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.

COMMENTARY ON C
 * Modern English does not like allowing ‹c› to appear at the end of words. This may be due to French influence, but I cannot yet prove that. That being so, for now I see both lac and lace as legitimate alternatives to latch.
 * In Old English, writers would occasionally fight ambiguity by writing /tʃ/ as ‹ci› or ‹ce›. This can be used for Anglish, meaning cat and chat could be spelled cat and ciat/ceat. Alternatively, Old English writers would sometimes use ‹k› to stand for /k/ where ‹c› would be ambiguous, meaning cat and chat could be spelled kat and cat.

COMMENTARY ON GH
 * ‹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›.
 * 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 this French-born digraph. Such spellings have occasionally become standard or widespread in certain regions, such as sluff, duff, dwarf, draft, tho, donut.
 * ‹gh› can be reverted back to the once common spelling ‹h›.
 * ‹gh› can be reverted back to the not-so-common spelling ‹g›, but I advise against this.

COMMENTARY ON U
 * When the magic-E system was getting set up, and before ‹ou› was borrowed, it was somewhat rare to find spellings like sue (sow), though it was common to find spellings like lude (loud). Even so, the rarity of spellings like sue in the 13th century should not keep us from using them for Anglish, since the other vowels went in that direction. In other words, sue matches spellings like pie and toe.

COMMENTARY ON QU
 * I recommend ‹cw› over ‹kw› because it fits ‹cr› and ‹cl›, while ‹kw› only fits the no longer pronounced ‹k› in ‹kn›.

COMMENTARY ON TH
 * 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. The point I am getting at is that while ‹ð› is an option, I do not recommend using it.

COMMENTARY ON V
 * Sometimes ‹ve› should become ‹fe›, and sometimes it should become ‹f›. Alive should become alife, keeping the ‹e› to show the fricative is voiced. The verb live should become lif because the ‹e› would serve no purpose.

COMMENTARY ON Ƿ
 * While using ‹ƿ› would certainly count as Anglish, I deem it to be needlessly archaic and recommend sticking with ‹w›, which was used in Old English as well (though it was not yet a full-fledged letter).

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 DG
 * I have not linked ‹dg› and its forerunner ‹gg› to foreign influence so I have not touched it. In fact, I read that French loanwords resisted ‹gg› spellings and tended to keep ‹g›.

COMMENTARY ON SH
 * I suspect that ‹sh› is linked to foreign influence, 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›.

=Boring Stuff=

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
 * "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

Below are attestations.


 * "Þow þat a lytyl pynt xulde coste. . ." Note þow for though.
 * "Bewar þat þou falle nouȝt wiþ the tree, while þat þow takest to þe þe buwes." Note buwes for boughs.
 * "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.
 * "Þou ne myȝt hytte nefere do. . ." Note nefere for never.
 * "All þis werld til him sal bue. . ." Note bue for bow.
 * "Þe stille sue æt, gruniende, hire mete." Note sue for sow.
 * "Ðo þe after him comen remden lude stefne, þus queðinde." Note lude for loud.
 * "Bot i haf of the all that i hafe." Note haf for have.

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.