History of English, English written language

Tools and materials.

The many tools and writing materials used throughout history include stone tablets, clay tablets, wax tablets, vellum, parchment, paper, copperplate, styluses, quills, ink brushes, pencils, pens, and many styles of lithography. It is speculated that the Incas might have employed knotted threads known as quipu (or khipu) as a writing system.

The typewriter and various forms of word processors have subsequently become widespread writing tools, and various studies have compared the ways in which writers have framed the experience of writing with such tools as compared with the pen or pencil. For more information see writing implements.

History of early writing.

By definition, the modern practice of history begins with written records; evidence of human culture without writing is the realm of prehistory.

The writing process evolved from economic necessity in the ancient near east. Archaeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat determined the link between previously uncategorized clay "tokens" and the first known writing, cuneiform. The clay tokens were used to represent commodities, and perhaps even units of time spent in labor, and their number and type became more complex as civilization advanced. A degree of complexity was reached when over a hundred different kinds of tokens had to be accounted for, and tokens were wrapped and fired in clay, with markings to indicate the kind of tokens inside. These markings soon replaced the tokens themselves, and the clay envelopes were demonstrably the prototype for clay writing tablets. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

English writing system.

Since around the ninth century, English has been written in the Latin alphabet, which replaced Anglo-Saxon runes. The spelling system, or orthography, is multilayered, with elements of French, Latin and Greek spelling on top of the native Germanic system; it has grown to vary significantly from the phonology of the language. The spelling of words often diverges considerably from how they are spoken.

Though letters and sounds may not correspond in isolation, spelling rules that take into account syllable structure, phonetics, and accents are 75% or more reliable. Some phonics spelling advocates claim that English is more than 80% phonetic. However, English has fewer consistent relationships between sounds and letters than many other languages; for example, the sound sequence ough can be pronounced in 10 different ways. The consequence of this complex orthographic history is that reading can be challenging. It takes longer for students to become completely fluent readers of English than of many other languages, including French, Greek, and Spanish.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Basic sound-letter correspondence.

Written accents.

Unlike most other Germanic languages, English has almost no diacritics except in foreign loanwords (like the acute accent in café), and in the uncommon use of a diaeresis mark (often in formal writing) to indicate that two vowels are pronounced separately, rather than as one sound (e.g. naïve, Zoë). Words such as décor, café, résumé/resumé, entrée, fiancée and naïve are frequently spelt both with or without diacritics.

Some English words retain diacritics to distinguish them from others, such as animé, exposé, lamé, öre, øre, pâté, piqué, and rosé, though these are sometimes also dropped (for example, résumé/resumé is often spelt resume in the United States). To clarify pronunciation, a small number of loanwords may employ a diacritic that does not appear in the original word, such as maté, from Spanish yerba mate, or Malé, the capital of the Maldives, following the French usage.

Formal written English.

A version of the language almost universally agreed upon by educated English speakers around the world is called formal written English. It takes virtually the same form regardless of where it is written, in contrast to spoken English, which differs significantly between dialects, accents, and varieties of slang and of colloquial and regional expressions. Local variations in the formal written version of the language are quite limited, being restricted largely to the spelling differences between British and American English, along with a few minor differences in grammar and lexis. 
 
 
 
 

Basic and simplified versions.

To make English easier to read, there are some simplified versions of the language. One basic version is named Basic English, a constructed language with a small number of words created by Charles Kay Ogden and described in his book Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930). The language is based on a simplified version of English. Ogden said that it would take seven years to learn English, seven months for Esperanto, and seven weeks for Basic English. Thus, Basic English may be employed by companies which need to make complex books for international use, as well as by language schools that need to give people some knowledge of English in a short time.

Ogden did not put any words into Basic English that could be said with a few other words and he worked to make the words work for speakers of any other language. He put his set of words through a large number of tests and adjustments. He also made the grammar simpler, but tried to keep the grammar normal for English users.

The concept gained its greatest publicity just after the Second World War as a tool for world peace. Although it was not built into a program, similar simplifications were devised for various international uses.

Another version, Simplified English, exists, which is a controlled language originally developed for aerospace industry maintenance manuals. It offers a carefully limited and standardized subset of English. Simplified English has a lexicon of approved words and those words can only be used in certain ways. For example, the word close can be used in the phrase "Close the door" but not "do not go close to the landing gear". 
 
 
 
 

English orthography.

English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language. English orthography, like other alphabetic orthographies, uses a set of rules that generally governs how speech sounds are represented in writing.

English has relatively complicated spelling rules when compared to other languages with alphabetic orthographies. Because of the complex history of the English language, nearly every sound can be legitimately spelled in more than one way, and many spellings can be pronounced in more than one way.

Phonemic representation.

Like most alphabetic systems, letters in English orthography may represent a particular sound. For example, the word cat (pronounced /ˈkæt/) consists of three letters ‹c›, ‹a›, and ‹t›, in which ‹c› represents the sound /k/, ‹a› the sound /æ/, and ‹t› the sound /t/.

Single letters or multiple sequences of letters may provide this function. Thus, the single letter ‹c› in the word cat represents the single sound /k/. In the word ship (pronounced /ˈʃɪp/), the digraph ‹sh› (two letters) represents the sound /ʃ/. In the word ditch, the three letters ‹tch› represent the sound /tʃ/.

Less commonly, a single letter can represent multiple sounds voiced in succession. The most common example is the letter ‹x› which normally represents the consonant cluster /ks/ (for example, in the word ex-wife, pronounced /ˌɛksˈwaɪf/).

The same letter (or sequence of letters) may indicate different sounds when it occurs in different positions within a word. For instance, the digraph ‹gh› represents the sound /f/ at the end of some words, such as rough /ˈrʌf/. At the beginning of syllables (i.e. the syllable onset), the digraph ‹gh› represents the sound /ɡ/, such as in the word ghost (pronounced /ˈɡoʊst/). Conversely, the digraph ‹gh› never represents the sound /f/ in syllable onsets and never represents the sound /ɡ/ in syllable codas. (Incidentally, this shows that ghoti does not follow English spelling rules to sound like fish.)

Word origin.

Another type of spelling characteristic is related to word origin. For example, when representing a vowel, the letter ‹y› in non-word-final positions represents the sound /ɪ/ in some words borrowed from Greek (reflecting an original upsilon), whereas the letter usually representing this sound in non-Greek words is the letter ‹i›. Thus, the word myth (pronounced /ˈmɪθ/) is of Greek origin, while pith (pronounced /ˈpɪθ/) is a Germanic word. Other examples include ‹th› representing /t/ (which is usually represented by ‹t›), ‹ph› representing /f/ (which is usually represented by ‹f›), and ‹ch› representing /k/ (which is usually represented by ‹c› or ‹k›) — the use of these spellings for these sounds often mark words that have been borrowed from Greek.

Some, such as Brengelman (1970), have suggested that, in addition to this marking of word origin, these spellings indicate a more formal level of style or register in a given text, although Rollins (2004) finds this point to be exaggerated as there would be many exceptions where a word with one of these spellings, such as ‹ph› for /f/ (like telephone), could occur in an informal text.

Homophone differentiation.

Spelling may also be used to distinguish between homophones (words with the same pronunciation but different meanings). For example, the words hour and our are pronounced identically in some dialects (as /ˈaʊ(ə)r/). However, they are distinguished from each other orthographically by the addition of the letter ‹h›. Another example is the pair of homophones plain and plane, where both are pronounced /ˈpleɪn/ but are marked with two different orthographic representations of the vowel /eɪ/.

In written language, this may help to resolve potential ambiguities that would arise otherwise (cf. He's breaking the car vs. He's braking the car). This is particularly advantageous in writing since, unlike in the spoken language, the reader often has no recourse to ask for clarification. Nevertheless, homophones that are unresolved by spelling still exist (for example, the word bay has at least five fundamentally different meanings).

Some proponents of spelling reform view homophones as undesirable and would prefer that they be eliminated. Doing so, however, would increase orthographic ambiguities that would need to be resolved via the linguistic context.

Marking sound changes in other letters.

Another function of English letters is to provide information about other aspects of pronunciation or the word itself. Rollins (2004) uses the term "markers" for letters with this function. Letters may mark different types of information. One type of marking is that of a different pronunciation of another letter within the word. An example of this is letter ‹e›  in the word cottage (pronounced /ˈkɒtɨdʒ/). Here ‹e› indicates that the preceding ‹g› should represent the sound /dʒ/. This contrasts with the more common value of ‹g› in word-final position as the sound /ɡ/, such as in tag (pronounced /tæɡ/).