ORTHOGRAPHY

1 The Alphabet

1.1 There are approximately 40 phonemes and only 26 graphemes

1.1.1 The Anglo-Saxons used symbols to mark groupings of letters.

1.1.1.1 For example; p was for th

1.1.1.1.1 This is still used in the phonetic alphabet but disappeared with the Normans from the regular alphabet.

2 Pronunciation

2.1 Standard spelling was not available to most people until the 18th century

2.1.1 Before that, society spelled how they spoke. This is called Phonetic spelling.

2.1.1.1 15th century the Great Vowel Shift altered the pronunciation of all words containing long vowels, but many spellings remained 'frozen'.

2.1.1.1.1 Many 'silent' letters were once pronounced

3 Writing and Printing

3.1 The early scribes in England were monks and nuns

3.1.1 Caxton introduced the printing press in 1476

3.1.1.1 He chose the East Midlands dialect which formed the bases of Standard English

3.1.1.1.1 Although Standardisation began with Caxton, some letters were still interchangeable.

Annotations:

3.1.1.1.1.1 INTERESTING FACT: Shakespeare spelled his own name in four or five different ways!!

4 Foreign influence

4.1 Words were borrowed from many different cultures

Annotations:

In the 15th and 16th centuries, European scholars became interested in the ideas of the ancient Greeks and Romans that so many new words came into English.

5 Dictionaries

5.1 Until the second half of the 18th century, people spelled as they spoke

5.1.1 A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1755) by Dr. Samuel Johnson

Annotations:

Did you know that it took Dr. Johnson seven years to complete the two volumes of his dictionary?

5.1.1.1 Most modern dictionaries are based on the Oxford English Dictionary (1994)

Annotations:

Now, looking a word up in the dictionary to check the spelling is a valued skill

6 Rationalisation

6.1 In the 16th century Richard Mulcaster wrote one of the earliest books on spelling.

6.1.1 He suggested that words of one syllable should have the letter 'e' added to it.

Annotations:

6.1.1.1 Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, amongst others argues for making the spelling system more logical

Resource summary

	Created by Ashleigh Edwards over 6 years ago