The Origins and Development of the English Language

Chapter 3: Letters and Sounds: A Brief History of Writing

John Algeo and Thomas Pyles

Michael Cheng National Chengchi University

Ideographic and Syllabic Writing

Pictures or comic strips (Native American)

Ideographs or logographic writing (Chinese) – each word represented by symbol

Phonograms – sound represented by symbol

Syllabary – symbols represent syllables

From Semitic Writing to the Greek Alphabet

Semitic writing - 2nd millennium BCEUsually consonants onlyAdopted by GreeksSemitic names of letters matched to phoneticsExtra consonants turned into vowels (3000 years ago)A = ‘aleph “ox” turned into alpha

Latin

Greek

Original Phoenician

Hebrew

Arabic

The Romans Adopt the Greek Alphabet

Romans modified the Greek alphabet

Europeans adopted Roman alphabet

Some eastern European people adopted the Greek alphabet directly; this became the Cyrillic alphabet

http://go.hrw.com/venus_images/0304MC05.gifhttp://go.hrw.com/hrw.nd/gohrw_rls1/pKeywordResults?keyword=st9%20roman%20empire

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_Ancient_Rome

The Use of Digraphs

Pairs of letters to represent single sounds

sh, ch, th, dg

gu in guest and guilt vs. gesture, gibe

Ghent is not pronounced like gent

Additional Symbols

þ thornƿ wynnð edhæ ash

The History of English Writing

Futhark/Futhorc

The Spelling of English Consonant Sounds

The Spelling of English Vowel Sounds

Spelling Pronunciations and Pronunciation Spellings

Writing and History

Exercises