The first folio of the heroic epic poem Beowulf, written primarily in the West Saxon dialect of Old English. - Courtesy of the British Library
THE English language has had a long and storied history, and it's gone through many changes throughout the years.
You only have to flip through a few pages of any William Shakespeare's play to see how much it has changed since the Middle Ages. The one thing that has stood the test of time though, is the alphabet that the language is written in. Adopted around the 700s, the English alphabet is based on Latin script and has 26 letters consisting of five vowels, nineteen consonants and two letters (Y and W) that can function as either a consonant or vowel.
However, is it true that the English language has lost letters of the years?
Verdict:
TRUE
The English language wasn't always written using Latin characters, prior to the 700s the language was written using Germanic runes.
Called Futhorc, these were almost identical to Futhark, the runes used by other Germanic peoples such as the Norse from Scandinavia.
When the switch to Latin script happened, there were a few sounds the English language had which Latin didn't, so the early adopters of the new alphabet imported some of the runes (or made up rune-like letters) to cover the discrepancies.
Basically there were five additional characters used in the English alphabet that has since disappeared: Thorn, Eth, Wynn, Ash and Ethel.
The first letter, Thorn, makes the "th" sound such as in the, than or there. Based on the Norse Futhark rune Thurs, it technically stayed in the English language for a very long time.
It was only replaced with the "th" pairing in the mid 1600s but in a way it has never left us.
If you've ever seen a business sign or brand name that incorporated "ye olde", then you've seen the last vestiges on Thorn.
You see, when the printing press became a thing in Europe in the 15th century, most presses did not have a moveable type character for the letter Thorn so it became common practice for printers to substitute Thorn with the letter Y.
This means the "ye" in "Ye Olde Tavern" was actually pronounced "the".
Eth
The letter Eth also made the "th" sound but it originated from Ireland. Seeing that it was essentially Thorn written a different way, its use was eventually phased out.
Wynn
The next letter, Wynn, was used exactly the same way we use the letter W now. In fact it was adopted from Futhorc because the Latin alphabet did not have a letter for the W sound, which is something heavily used in English.
It disappeared from use by the 13th century as Germanic Europeans on the continent started using two U's to make the W sound.
As a side note, the reason the letters W looks the way it does was that both the letter U and V were written the same way all through to the Early Modern Period.
Ash
Ash is another extinct letter that you may have come across before. It's still used in some languages, such as Danish and Norwegian, but in English it makes the "ee" or "ae" sound in archaeology or encyclopaedia.
In fact, the word encyclopaedia is most likely where you've last seen it as back in the day many publishers chose to bedeck their books with the old style encyclopædia.
Ash was eventually replaced with a simple a and e, except for the US where they just use "e".
Ethel
Finally, the letter Ethel. Ethel was based on the Futhark rune Odal, and is actually still in use in the French language. An example of which would be the French word for beef: bœuf.
In English however, instead of a rounded "o" sound it made a long "e" sound, such as in the word subpoena/subpœna. Much like Ash, it eventually was split into two letters, namely o and e.
Yogh
For the bonus round we have a now extinct letter that comes from English' closest sister language, Scots.
Scots is a language spoken by the folk living in the Scottish low-lands that is so close to English that some argue that it's actually just a dialect of English, but does bear enough uniqueness to be considered its own thing.
They had a letter called Yogh that made "y" sound in yes or you, as well as the "gh" sound in night or night or height.
Similarly to what happened to Thorn, many printers at the time did not have the letter "Ȝ" to use in their presses so they also substituted in with a letter, in this case with the letter "z".
But unlike Thorn this led to a lot of confusion that has even reached us right up to now in the modern day.
This was due to the fact that what was being printed up north in Scotland was being read by folk down south in England.
While the "z" substitution did not affect words like night or sight, some words became so well known in print that eventually people based their pronunciation on how they saw it spelt.
One word would be the surname Mackenȝie, now spelt Mackenzie. Yes, the correct pronunciation of that name today would be spelled something like Mackenyie.
References:
1. https://www.rd.com/list/there-were-six-more-letters-in-our-alphabet/
2. https://www.dictionary.com/e/letters-alphabet/
3. https://www.thoughtco.com/yogh-letter-in-middle-english-1692452
