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 Anglish Spellings of latch.
 * 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› is ambiguous in a handful of words (choke, chat, char, choose, chore, churl, chavel).

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 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. To spell leave as leaf would be ambiguous, because modern conventions do not allow us to write leaf as leaff.
 * Similar to the above point, 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 back to ‹h›, which was the last native standard.
 * ‹gh› could be written as ‹g›, but this is less "realistic" than ‹h› and deletion.
 * ‹gh› could be written as ‹ch›, as some English writers did (including in Old English), but this is less "realistic" than ‹h› and deletion.

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, 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› 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.
 * ‹ð› could be revived, but that is less "realistic" than keeping it dead.

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 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 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."

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.