# History of the English Alphabet



## lvcabbie (Jan 23, 2019)

I hope this is the right area to post this.
It is, to me, one of the most interesting and informative things I've ever seen about our language. It explains a lot of mysteries.







The raw link is:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p...-9ymGjM1gcIR2Ja53plVBZhhn9ys9APz8=w663-h498-p


----------



## Myk3y (Jan 25, 2019)

It's the Latin alphabet, not the English... not to be a pedant, but other languages than English use the same alphabet (such as French, Spanish, Portuguese, Malay, Maori, along with hundreds of African languages).


----------



## lvcabbie (Jan 25, 2019)

Here's a version of the alphabet I've always enjoyed.

[sorry but the Fraktur letters won't show on here.


----------



## Myk3y (Jan 25, 2019)

lvcabbie said:


> Here's a version of the alphabet I've always enjoyed.
> 
> [sorry but the Fraktur letters won't show on here.



You're mistaking a font typeface with an alphabet.

His OP clearly shows the evolution of the current 26-letter Latin alphabet. It doesn't matter which font you type it in, the alphabet is immune to change, until it's changed.

The current 26-character iteration is missing about a half of the language sounds we used to have - like 'thorn', the 'y' of 'ye olde tankard shoppe' - it's not pronounced 'why', but 'th', as in 'the' or 'thorn'. People say 'yee oldee tankard shoppee', but the users of a thorn would have said 'the old tankard shop'.

Then there's the 'yogh' - the phlegm-clearing noise Celts make when talking about lochs and bach's. The French abhorred such noises and replaced them with 'gh', which transmogrified into the  'f' sound, as in cough and slough. 

http://mentalfloss.com/article/31904/12-letters-didnt-make-alphabet


I live in Asia and we see things like 'kecup' and 'sos', which are 'ketchup' and 'sauce' as two of the first to come to mind, but there are so many 'loan words'. Many variants of words from other languages integrate into other languages, all over the world.

I find it fascinating.


----------



## Bardling (Apr 8, 2019)

Something interesting to think about in a Fantasy or Sci-Fi setting - how has language changed over time?  You would have to write the present in modern english for ease of access but what if they come across something old?  Can you use old english or even latin language?  If you are writing Sci-Fi, if your characters turn up something from our time then write it out phonetically or slur words?  

What are some of the ways other writers on this site have done it?


----------

