A brief history of English spelling

From The English Spelling Society:

The English writing system

English has grown from the language brought to Britain in the 5th century by Anglo-Saxon invaders from North Germany. Its history is usually divided into three main phases:

Old English – from the arrival of the invaders in the 5th century to around 1130
Middle English – roughly 1130 to 1470
Modern English – about 1470 to the present

However there were many changes within each phase – for example Early Modern English (roughly 1470 to 1700) is seen as distinct from truly Modern English. In reality, of course, change has been ongoing through all the phases.

The Roman alphabet and Latin were used in Britain when it was part of the Roman Empire (AD 43 to 410), and they stayed in use in the Celtic parts of the British Isles after most of the Romans left.

However, the invaders brought with them the runic alphabet, known as the futhorc from its first six letters. A few small examples of Old English written in runes have survived. There were at that time already several distinct English dialects based roughly on the separate kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England.

In 597 St Augustine came from Rome to Canterbury and converted the Saxons in Kent to Christianity. After this the Christian monks started using the Roman alphabet to write English. As the Roman alphabet did not have enough letters, they also used some runes, such as Þ (called thorn) for the th sounds in this and thin. At this stage, English spelling was mostly fairly simple, as the letters matched the spoken words quite well.

Major surviving works in Old English include the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Bede’s History of the Christian Church in England (translated into Old English from Bede’s Latin), and the saga Beowulf.

The English writing system
English has grown from the language brought to Britain in the 5th century by Anglo-Saxon invaders from North Germany. Its history is usually divided into three main phases:

Old English – from the arrival of the invaders in the 5th century to around 1130
Middle English – roughly 1130 to 1470
Modern English – about 1470 to the present

However there were many changes within each phase – for example Early Modern English (roughly 1470 to 1700) is seen as distinct from truly Modern English. In reality, of course, change has been ongoing through all the phases.

The Roman alphabet and Latin were used in Britain when it was part of the Roman Empire (AD 43 to 410), and they stayed in use in the Celtic parts of the British Isles after most of the Romans left.
However, the invaders brought with them the runic alphabet, known as the futhorc from its first six letters. A few small examples of Old English written in runes have survived. There were at that time already several distinct English dialects based roughly on the separate kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England.

In 597 St Augustine came from Rome to Canterbury and converted the Saxons in Kent to Christianity. After this the Christian monks started using the Roman alphabet to write English. As the Roman alphabet did not have enough letters, they also used some runes, such as Þ (called thorn) for the th sounds in this and thin. At this stage, English spelling was mostly fairly simple, as the letters matched the spoken words quite well.

Major surviving works in Old English include the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Bede’s History of the Christian Church in England (translated into Old English from Bede’s Latin), and the saga Beowulf.

English lost and found

Shortly after the Norman Conquest in 1066, Norman French replaced English as the language of government and the nobles, but English always remained the language of the common people. However French words began to be used in English and this has had a deep and lasting effect on the language, not least the spelling.

In the end Norman French went into decline after the loss of most of England’s French lands. Then English (now Middle English) began to be adopted once more for official and literary use. This happened during the 14th century, but the process was not complete until about 1430.

Examples of works in Middle English include Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, Langland’s Piers Ploughman and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

The early 15th century saw attempts at standardizing English spelling. The main one is known as the Chancery Standard, because it was used by the Court of Chancery and other official bodies.

However, the new system was not consistent. It used both English and French ways of spelling, which accounts for many of the problems in modern English spelling. Although some words of French origin were respelled to suit English speech, eg boeuf > beef, bataille > battle, compter > count, others were not, eg table, double, centre.

Very early Early Modern English works include the morality play Everyman (late 15th century) and Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (as printed by Caxton in 1485).

English lost and found

Shortly after the Norman Conquest in 1066, Norman French replaced English as the language of government and the nobles, but English always remained the language of the common people. However French words began to be used in English and this has had a deep and lasting effect on the language, not least the spelling.

In the end Norman French went into decline after the loss of most of England’s French lands. Then English (now Middle English) began to be adopted once more for official and literary use. This happened during the 14th century, but the process was not complete until about 1430.

Examples of works in Middle English include Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, Langland’s Piers Ploughman and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

The early 15th century saw attempts at standardizing English spelling. The main one is known as the Chancery Standard, because it was used by the Court of Chancery and other official bodies.

However, the new system was not consistent. It used both English and French ways of spelling, which accounts for many of the problems in modern English spelling. Although some words of French origin were respelled to suit English speech, eg boeuf > beef, bataille > battle, compter > count, others were not, eg table, double, centre.

Very early Early Modern English works include the morality play Everyman (late 15th century) and Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (as printed by Caxton in 1485).

Printing adds to the muddle

William Caxton first set up in business as a printer in Bruges (now in Belgium). There in 1473 he made the first printed book in English, the Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye. Caxton returned to England in 1476 and set up a press in Westminster. The first book known to have been printed there was Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Caxton’s spelling was based on the Chancery Standard, to which he added his own variants. Sadly, though printing brought many advantages, it also added to the irregularity of the spelling system. The printers Caxton brought with him from the Low Countries were unused to the English language and made spelling errors, eg any, busy, citie for eny, bisy, cittie. They also sometimes used Dutch spellings, such as adding an h after g, turning words like gost into ghost. Although many of the changes they made were later weeded out, some of them, like ghost and ghastly, are still with us.

The printers also tended to lengthen words. This was driven partly by money – they were paid by the number of lines printed – and partly by page layout, such as making the right-hand side of the text line up neatly. Many simple spellings became more complex, eg frend > friend, hed > head, seson > season, fondnes > fondnesse, shal > shall. However in this the printers were only following the centuries-old practice of the legal scribes, who were paid by the inch for their writing.

Another factor was the printing of the first English Bibles at the time of the Reformation. Many of these were printed abroad for fear of persecution, as producing a Bible in English was regarded as heresy. The recopying from texts that were already corrupt and the use of non-English-speaking printers in Europe added to the diversity of spellings. As there were no dictionaries, and few books of any kind, people tended to copy the spellings they found in any version of the Bible they could look at.

Link to the rest at The English Spelling Society

The instant he found this site, PG was in love. How can anyone resist a group called The English Spelling Society?

A bit of exploration on the site disclosed the existence of the International English Spelling Congress. The initial session of the Congress was held on 30 May 2018. The final session of the Congress was held on 28 January 2021. You can watch it on YouTube.

The purpose for holding the Congress was to discuss how English language spelling should be updated. The participants came to three conclusions:

• The debate on acceptable alternatives to traditional spelling is not closed. The Society’s website (Personal View Section) will remain open for members wishing to submit their own schemes for peer review and more general comment.
• The Committee’s support for TSR will be reviewed after 5 years to assess the degree to which the Scheme has become acceptable within the English Speaking World.
• Any financial support for publicising or otherwise assisting in the dissemination of TSR will be modest.

One of the short-listed schemes wass TSR:

TSR

TSR is a relatively conservative scheme which only changes spellings where absolutely necessary and consequently makes fewer respellings than with many other alternative proposals. Features include:

• Removal of redundant letters.
• Removal of ambiguity for the letter combinations that can currently represent more than one sound.
• Applying more consistently the underlying rules of current spelling (especially the so-called Magic E and Doubling Rules).
• Retaining only a few of the current irregular spellings so that these can be memorised fairly easily.

Despite its conservative nature, TSR claims significant improvement in the predictability of English spelling and consequently the potential for better access to literacy.

The website includes copies of academic papers discussing the reform of English Spelling going back to the 1940’s, including titles like, Economic and Social Costs of English Spelling.

PG couldn’t find a page on the TESS where he could apply for membership. He would definitely have done so if membership was offered. He would also buy a cup and a T-shirt with the Society’s logo on each.