The Old English Latin alphabet generally consisted of about 24 letters, and was used for writing

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

from the 8th to the 12th centuries. Of these letters, most were directly adopted from the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

, two were modified Latin letters ( Æ, Ð), and two developed from the

runic alphabet Runes are the Letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see ''#Futharks, futhark'' vs ''#Runic alphabets, runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were ...

( Ƿ, Þ). The letters Q and Z were essentially left unused outside of foreign names from Latin and Greek. The letter J had not yet come into use. The letter K was used by some writers but not by others. W gained usage in late Old English under Norman influence, as seen towards the end of the

Peterborough Chronicle The ''Peterborough Chronicle'' (also called the Laud manuscript and the E manuscript) is a version of the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicles'' originally maintained by the monks of Peterborough Abbey, now in Cambridgeshire. It contains unique informa ...

manuscript, though in this period W was still a ligature and not a full-fledged letter. The manuscripts , , and differ in how they arrange the non-standard Old English letters (Harley has Ƿ–Ð–Æ–Þ, Stowe has Ƿ–Ð–Þ, Titus has Ƿ–Þ–Ð), but all three manuscripts place them after the standard Latin letters.

History

was first written using

Anglo-Saxon runes Anglo-Saxon runes or Anglo-Frisian runes are runes that were used by the Anglo-Saxons and Medieval Frisians (collectively called Anglo-Frisians) as an alphabet in their native writing system, recording both Old English and Old Frisian (, ᚱ� ...

in the 5th century. In 597, the arrival of the

Gregorian mission The Gregorian missionJones "Gregorian Mission" ''Speculum'' p. 335 or Augustinian missionMcGowan "Introduction to the Corpus" ''Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature'' p. 17 was a Christian mission sent by Pope Pope Gregory I, Gregory the Great ...

in Kent marked the beginning of the

Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England The Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England was the process starting in the late 6th century by which population of England formerly adhering to the Anglo-Saxon paganism, Anglo-Saxon, and later Old Nordic religion, Nordic, forms of Germanic pag ...

, and with it the reintroduction of the Latin alphabet to Britain, where it was used to write English for the first time. The earliest attested instances of Old English being written using the Latin script were in Anglo-Saxon law codes, including one drawn up in 616 on behalf of King

Æthelberht of Kent Æthelberht (; also Æthelbert, Aethelberht, Aethelbert or Ethelbert; ; 550 – 24 February 616) was Kings of Kent, King of Kingdom of Kent, Kent from about 589 until his death. The eighth-century monk Bede, in his ''Ecclesiastical Hist ...

. A minuscule

half-uncial Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic, and are the current style for ...

form of the alphabet was introduced with the

Hiberno-Scottish mission The Hiberno-Scottish mission was a series of expeditions in the 6th and 7th centuries by Gaels, Gaelic Missionary, missionaries originating from Ireland that spread Celtic Christianity in Scotland, Wales, History of Anglo-Saxon England, England a ...

during the 8th century. This was replaced by

Insular script Insular script is a Middle Ages, medieval script (styles of handwriting), script system originating in Ireland that spread to England and continental Europe under the influence of Hiberno-Scottish mission, Irish Christianity. Irish missionaries ...

, a cursive and pointed version of the half-uncial script. This was used until the end of the 12th century when continental

Carolingian minuscule Carolingian minuscule or Caroline minuscule is a script which developed as a calligraphic standard in the medieval European period so that the Latin alphabet of Jerome's Vulgate Bible could be easily recognized by the literate class from one ...

replaced the Insular, along with a shift in spelling conventions toward the

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th -4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...

alphabet, leading to Middle English. The letter ''eth'' was an alteration of Latin , and the runic letters thorn (letter), thorn and wynn are borrowings from futhorc. Also used was a symbol for the Conjunction (grammar), conjunction ''and'', a character similar to the number seven (, called ''ond'' or a

Tironian et Tironian notes () are a form of thousands of signs that were formerly used in a system of shorthand (Tironian shorthand) dating from the 1st century BCE and named after Tiro, a personal secretary to Marcus Tullius Cicero, who is often credited ...

) which is still used in Irish and

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic (, ; Endonym and exonym, endonym: ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic language, Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongs ...

, and a symbol for the

relative pronoun A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the relative pronoun ''which'' introduces the relative clause. The relative clause modifies th ...

'' þæt'', a thorn with a crossbar through the ascender (). Macrons over vowels were used, though rarely, to indicate long vowels. A macron was also used occasionally as a nasal indicator.

References

Bibliography

External links

* {{cite web , title=Old English / Anglo-Saxon (Englisc) , website=Omniglot (omniglot.com) , url=http://www.omniglot.com/writing/oldenglish.htm , access-date=17 July 2010 , url-status=dead , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100407164322/http://www.omniglot.com/writing/oldenglish.htm , archive-date=7 April 2010 Latin alphabets

Alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...