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    Ampersand: Latin Alphabet: Origins

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    SrynnE
    The document discusses the etymology and history of letters in the English alphabet. It describes the origins and developments of letter names from Latin through French to Middle and Modern English. It also discusses archaic letters, diacritics, loanwords with diacritics, and rare uses of diacritics in native English words.

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    Ampersand: Latin Alphabet: Origins

    Uploaded by

    SrynnE
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    The document discusses the etymology and history of letters in the English alphabet. It describes the origins and developments of letter names from Latin through French to Middle and Modern English. It also discusses archaic letters, diacritics, loanwords with diacritics, and rare uses of diacritics in native English words.

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    The document discusses the etymology and history of letters in the English alphabet. It describes the origins and developments of letter names from Latin through French to Middle and Modern English. It also discusses archaic letters, diacritics, loanwords with diacritics, and rare uses of diacritics in native English words.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    13 views2 pages

    Ampersand: Latin Alphabet: Origins

    Uploaded by

    SrynnE
    The document discusses the etymology and history of letters in the English alphabet. It describes the origins and developments of letter names from Latin through French to Middle and Modern English. It also discusses archaic letters, diacritics, loanwords with diacritics, and rare uses of diacritics in native English words.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Etymology[edit]

    The names of the letters are for the most part direct descendants, via French, of the Latin (and
    Etruscan) names. (See Latin alphabet: Origins.)
    The regular phonological developments (in rough chronological order) are:

     palatalization before front vowels of Latin /k/ successively to /tʃ/, /ts/, and finally to Middle


    French /s/. Affects C.
     palatalization before front vowels of Latin /ɡ/ to Proto-Romance and Middle French /dʒ/.
    Affects G.
     fronting of Latin /uː/ to Middle French /yː/, becoming Middle English /iw/ and then Modern
    English /juː/. Affects Q, U.
     the inconsistent lowering of Middle English /ɛr/ to /ar/. Affects R.
     the Great Vowel Shift, shifting all Middle English long vowels. Affects A, B, C, D, E, G, H,
    I, K, O, P, T, and presumably Y.
    The novel forms are aitch, a regular development of Medieval Latin acca; jay, a new letter
    presumably vocalized like neighboring kay to avoid confusion with established gee (the other
    name, jy, was taken from French); vee, a new letter named by analogy with the majority; double-u, a
    new letter, self-explanatory (the name of Latin V was ū); wye, of obscure origin but with an
    antecedent in Old French wi; izzard, from the Romance phrase i zed or i zeto "and Z" said when
    reciting the alphabet; and zee, an American levelling of zed by analogy with other consonants.
    Some groups of letters, such as pee and bee, or em and en, are easily confused in speech,
    especially when heard over the telephone or a radio communications link. Spelling alphabets such
    as the ICAO spelling alphabet, used by aircraft pilots, police and others, are designed to eliminate
    this potential confusion by giving each letter a name that sounds quite different from any other.

    Ampersand[edit]
    The ampersand (&) has sometimes appeared at the end of the English alphabet, as in Byrhtferð's list
    of letters in 1011.[2] & was regarded as the 27th letter of the English alphabet, as taught to children in
    the US and elsewhere. An example may be seen in M. B. Moore's 1863 book The Dixie Primer, for
    the Little Folks.[3] Historically, the figure is a ligature for the letters Et. In English and many other
    languages, it is used to represent the word and, plus occasionally the Latin word et, as in the
    abbreviation &c (et cetera).

    Archaic letters[edit]
    Old and Middle English had a number of non-Latin letters that have since dropped out of use. These
    either took the names of the equivalent runes, since there were no Latin names to adopt, or (thorn,
    wyn) were runes themselves.

     Æ æ ash or æsc /ˈæʃ/, used for the vowel /æ/, which disappeared from the language and
    then reformed
     Ð ð edh, eð or eth /ˈɛð/, used for the consonants /ð/ and /θ/
     Œ œ ethel, ēðel, œ̄þel, etc. /ˈɛðəl/, used for the vowel /œ/, which disappeared from the
    language quite early
     Þ þ thorn or þorn /ˈθɔːrn/, used for the consonants /ð/ and /θ/
     Ƿ ƿ wyn, ƿen or wynn /ˈwɪn/, used for the consonant /w/ (the letter 'w' had not yet been
    invented)
     Ȝ ȝ yogh, ȝogh or yoch /ˈjɒɡ/ or /ˈjɒx/, used for various sounds derived from /ɡ/, such
    as /j/ and /x/.
    Diacritics[edit]
    Main article: English terms with diacritical marks

    The most common diacritic marks seen in English publications are the acute (é), grave (è),
    circumflex (â, î or ô), tilde (ñ), umlaut and diaeresis (ü or ï – the same symbol is used for two
    different purposes), and cedilla (ç).[4] Diacritics used for tonal languages may be replaced with tonal
    numbers or omitted.

    Loanwords[edit]
    Diacritic marks mainly appear in loanwords such as naïve and façade. Informal English writing tends
    to omit diacritics because of their absence from the keyboard, while professional copywriters and
    typesetters tend to include them.
    As such words become naturalised in English, there is a tendency to drop the diacritics, as has
    happened with many older borrowings from French, such as hôtel. Words that are still perceived as
    foreign tend to retain them; for example, the only spelling of soupçon found in English dictionaries
    (the OED and others) uses the diacritic. However, diacritics are likely to be retained even in
    naturalised words where they would otherwise be confused with a common native English word (for
    example, résumé rather than resume).[5] Rarely, they may even be added to a loanword for this
    reason (as in maté, from Spanish yerba mate but following the pattern of café, from French, to
    distinguish from mate).

    Native English words[edit]


    Occasionally, especially in older writing, diacritics are used to indicate the syllables of a
    word: cursed (verb) is pronounced with one syllable, while cursèd (adjective) is pronounced with two.
    For this, è is used widely in poetry, e.g. in Shakespeare's sonnets. J.R.R. Tolkien uses ë, as in O
    wingëd crown.
    Similarly, while in chicken coop the letters -oo- represent a single vowel sound (a digraph), they less
    often represent two which may be marked with a diaresis as in zoölogist and coöperation. This use
    of the diaeresis is rare but found in some well-known publications, such as MIT Technology
    Review and The New Yorker.
    In general, these devices are not used even where they would serve to alleviate some degree of
    confusion.

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