Lecture eight, 04.04.2002 The development of English spelling system.

OE The earliest scribes used Futhorc Runic alphabet based on Latin. The letters were carved with a knife, hence the characteristic shape. (e.g. for s). It occurs only in earlier texts, such as the Franks Casket. There, the correspondence to Latin is straightforward, but it was not always so. Anyway, were interested in the typical spelling. What we see in the books is a transliteration. Most letters in were based on Latin, apart from : < > and <> supplied by runic characters. (< > did not represent the voiced sound, they were interchangeable. It is strange that two symbols were used) < > yogh represented various sounds: [ ], [ ], [ ], [ ] and another one. (?) <w> wynn (sorry, couldnt find the an appropriate character, it looks more or less like this: ). It stood for w. <k> was unpopular among scribes. It is not found in the Latin alphabet: it is taken from Greek, although there it looks like that: . And vowels: <> A ligature. Written <ae> first? <y> Not in Latin. Taken from Greek . Latin was very simple in terms of phonology. Seems a very undeveloped language, e.g. no palatalizations. It started to change only shortly before the fall of Rome, only in peripheral areas, vulgar Latin. OE was much more complicated. For instance in OE there was a [ ] sound. It was missing in Latin, so they represented it as <sc>. Such spelling was ambiguous: it represented either [ ], as in scipu, or [ ], as in ascian. (Notice that theres no palatalisation before a front in this word. Another spelling of this word existed <ax>, which reflected a certain process: metathesis. It might have blocked palatalisation) A digression. In fisc the [ ] sound is repeated throughout the paradigm to associate the singular with the plural (a phonological explanation: its sufficient to have a front vowel on one side, ic, derived from / /). Another digression: each language tries to work out its own system of diacritics. In Polish there are the ones found in , , and surface diacritics (adding letters, as in <sz>). Surface diacritics are also used in English after Norman Invasion, e.g. <sh>. Yet another digression about spelling reform, proposed in English, to represent the voiced interdental fricative as <dh>. And a comment on Polish system of spelling as completely redundant and dysfunctional: <h>/<ch> and <u>/<>. In Reszkiewicz diacritics are inserted. They were not present in original OE texts because it was assumed that a learned monk would know how to pronounce the words. No-one paid attention to spelling at that time because hardly anybody was literate. Only in 14th c did education spread.

After Norman Invasion. A large number of scribes came and introduced their own style of writing. In OE there was insular writing, letters had staffs (or staves?). The Normans brought Carolingian minuscule, later on replaced by cursive minuscule. This caused tremendous confusion for English scribes. OE <cg> replaced with ME <dg> (OE brycg/ME bridge, the <e> is redundant, God knows why its there. Sometimes it was functional though as in life, where it showed that the vowel was long) OE <c> with ME <ch>, e.g. OE cild/ME child OE <sc> with ME <sh>, e.g. OE scinan/ME shine OE <> (short) with <a> We dont know whether it was only spelling trick or really reflected a pronunciation change, its a suspicious claim: long vowels went up and short vowels went up, the change would be against the rules (the change of long to long open e was a real sound change). E.g. OE bcc/ME back (<ck> IS only a spelling trick) OE < > (length was not marked or marked like that: <u>) with ME <ou> or <ow> (a French convention) e.g. OE h s, t n/ME hous(e), town OE < > with ME <th> e.g. OE in, is/ME thin, this OE non-initial <-h> with ME <gh>, e.g. OE cniht/ME knight The cursive minuscule was a source of permanent problems: ME <o> can correspond to [ ], [ ], [ ] and [ ]. Normans replaced <u> with <o>. Thats why Englishmen wont know how to pronounce ton [ ], tongs [ ] or c[ ]mpasses. OE tunne in cursive looked like that: t e. To disambiguate spelling they replaced <u> with <o>. luve looked like: l e. There was also danger with <w>: . (tongs had original <o>) OE mind d was changed to mynd. And k g was changed into kyng. OE cumman: c a was changed to come. The change of <u> to <o> is found mainly in the neighbourhood of <m> <n> <v> and partly <i>, <w>. This change is connected with handwriting. When Caxton set up the printing press, <u> and <n> became different. The fate of < > yogh. Another Norman correction, this time a positive one. They wanted to disambiguate OE es. <y> stood for [ ] and <g> stood for [ ]. A number of words of French origin entered English and rules of reading changed, e.g. gentle, with [ ], there was a problem with spelling: <dg> couldnt appear word initially (so it indicates foreign origin). Also [ ], which has a very limited distribution (confined to medial position), indicates foreign origin, cf. measure, pleasure, treasure, leisure. The spelling system was fixed in 15th century. Go up