The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

by Bill Bryson

English spelling has caused problems for about as long as there have been English words to spell. When the Anglo-Saxons became literate in the sixth century, they took their alphabet from the Romans, but quickly realized that they had three sounds for which the Romans had no letters. These they supplied by taking three symbols from their old runic alphabet: w, þ, and ð. The first, literally double u, represented the sound “w” as it is pronounced today. The other two represented the “th” sound: þ (called thorn) and ð (called eth and still used in Ireland). The first Norman scribes came to England and began grappling with what to them was a wholly foreign tongue—a fact clearly evident in many of the spellings from the Domesday Book. In just one small parish in Yorkshire, Hanlith was recorded as Hagenlith, Malham as Malgham, and Calton as Colton—all spellings that were probably never used locally. Many such errors can be attributed to carelessness and unfamiliarity, but others clearly reflect Norman orthographic preferences. The Normans certainly did not hesitate to introduce changes they felt more comfortable with, such as substituting qu for cw. Had William the Conqueror been turned back at Hastings, we would spell queen as cwene. The letters z and g were introduced and the Old English ð and v were phased out.