Alternate English Alphabet .

As the title says ,what are some alternate letters of the English Alphabet ?I know Latin and Greek played a major role in the formation of the English language ,though not as important as say German ,Welsh and French did So how can we find a way to get more letters from those languages into good old English ?Have at it .
 
As the title says ,what are some alternate letters of the English Alphabet ?I know Latin and Greek played a major role in the formation of the English language ,though not as important as say German ,Welsh and French did So how can we find a way to get more letters from those languages into good old English ?Have at it .

There are thorn and eth (þ,ð), two letters in the Old English Latin Alphabet that came from runes.

A bigger point, influence of alphabet=/=influence of language. Otl standard German uses an almost completely Latin alphabet but has very few Latin loan words.
 
As the title says ,what are some alternate letters of the English Alphabet ?I know Latin and Greek played a major role in the formation of the English language ,though not as important as say German ,Welsh and French did So how can we find a way to get more letters from those languages into good old English ?Have at it .

Ash(Æ,æ), eth (Ð,ð) /voiced th/, ethel (Œ, œ), thorn (þ,Þ) /voiceless th/, wynn (Ƿ,ƿ) /w/, yogh (Ȝ,ȝ) /y/, long s (ſ) /don't ask/.
 
I don't think this belongs in after-1900. Alternate alphabets, rather than recent spelling reforms, would go in before-1900.

By the way, Old English got very, very little vocabulary or grammar from Celtic languages. There's not much evidence of a Celtic substrate - just a handful of borrowings, plus some place names. Old English already had more Latin-dervied vocabulary, usually for religious purposes ("psalm"), than Celtic vocabulary. I also dislike the reference to German as an influence: English and German both descend from a common ancestor, but did not influence each other much until the modern era, and then the influence has been more English on German than the reverse. It's nothing like the situation with French, or for that matter Old Norse, which contributed vocabulary to English well after they'd diverged (millennia in the case of French).
 
I don't think this belongs in after-1900. Alternate alphabets, rather than recent spelling reforms, would go in before-1900.

Unless there was some kind of movement to simplify the language. Didn't something like this already happen around the time of Teddy Roosevelt? Perhaps it's much more successful and widespread, and has more radical changes than just simplifying through to thru, such as removing c or x, or adding letters for /th/, /sh/, /ng/, etc.
 
Given that when standards gel, they get treated as if they were put in place by God, adding in new letters seems like a tough sell. I mean, there have been so many failed attempts to bring sanity to our spelling, people have written books about it.
 
I don't think this belongs in after-1900. Alternate alphabets, rather than recent spelling reforms, would go in before-1900.

That depends, if Political movement try to push there Ideology, worst example were the Nazi (again) or Administration follow recommendations of scientist experts.
so far i now German Empire made that by replacing AE OE UE by Ä Ö Ü and last spelling reforms terminate the use ß by ss.
there were also german proposal to replace Sch by one new alphabetic character.

i can Imagine that Ministry of Education make a spelling reforms with introduction on alternate Alphabet in 1930s.
 

Devvy

Donor
Almost impossible post-1900. Given that there is no official body in any of the major English speaking countries, there is nobody to push adoption of extra letters. And the average (wo)man on the street will stick to habit and how they have always spelt things; there's no real need to adopt extra letters.
 
Definitely impossible post1900.
In fact the nearer to the present the more likely for diacritics rather than new letters.
The simplest "additions" would be retention of thorn and/or eth. Yogh is still likely to be replaced by continental g for "g" and i/j/y for "y".
We might be able to add in eng (Ŋŋ)for ng.

I don't think this belongs in after-1900. Alternate alphabets, rather than recent spelling reforms, would go in before-1900.

By the way, Old English got very, very little vocabulary or grammar from Celtic languages. There's not much evidence of a Celtic substrate - just a handful of borrowings, plus some place names. Old English already had more Latin-dervied vocabulary, usually for religious purposes ("psalm"), than Celtic vocabulary. I also dislike the reference to German as an influence: English and German both descend from a common ancestor, but did not influence each other much until the modern era, and then the influence has been more English on German than the reverse. It's nothing like the situation with French, or for that matter Old Norse, which contributed vocabulary to English well after they'd diverged (millennia in the case of French).

One could argue that the progressive ("I am verbing" etc) could be considered celtic influence.
 
An awful lot of the problems we have with spelling seem to have come in with the Norman Conquest. Had William the Bastard been defeated, English would look an awful lot like Icelandic by now.

(Of course, that's a simplistic look at things. We also have to remember that a lot of well-meaning imbeciles thought that the point of teaching English spelling was to help with learning a 'real' language: Latin. It's like how Stalin shoved Cyrillic down people's throats in the thirties to help make sure that New Soviet Man spoke the language of the future: Russian.)


What this means is that any sort of reform would have had to come in before printing solidified the written language into its current contorted state.
 
If its jyst speling riform dhen shyr, dhat cud posibli hapen poust-1900, byt ohlmoust sertenli not in aidher dhi YS or YK - dheir literasi reits wer tu hai for sych e meijer cheinj, Ai think. Jermani, Swiiden, ets. hav had riisent riformz, byt dhei wer mych smohler, on dhi level yv raiting ss insted yv ß.

Byt meibi sym eks-coloni wud spel Inglish foneticli, az e wei yv meinteining dhi colounial leinguej az dhi ounli nuutral ohlternativ tu ethnic leinguejez in multi-ethnic steits laik Naijiiria, byt at dhi seim taim aserting e breik from Briten.
 
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If its jyst speling riform dhen shyr, dhat cud posibli hapen poust-1900, byt ohlmoust sertenli not in aidher dhi YS or YK - dheir literasi reits wer tu hai for sych e meijer cheinj, Ai think. Jermani, Swiiden, ets. hav had riisent riformz, byt dhei wer mych smohler, on dhi level yv raiting ss insted yv ß.

Byt meibi sym eks-coloni wud spel Inglish foneticli, az e wei yv meinteining dhi colounial leinguej az dhi ounli nuutral ohlternativ tu ethnic leinguejez in multi-ethnic steits laik Naijiiria, byt at dhi seim taim aserting e breik from Briten.

Okay you are a sick genius and how the hell did you do that ?Also it looks very plausible and I like it .
 
I think that the best model for this sort of thing is remembering that after the American Revolution, Webster revolted against the OED spelling. This means that in a scenario like JelloBiafra's Reds timeline, they might change the spelling as well.
 
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