Middle English
Alphabet

The basic Old English Latin alphabet consisted of 20 standard letters plus four additional letters: ash ⟨ æ ⟩, eth ⟨ ð ⟩, thorn ⟨ þ ⟩, and wynn ⟨ ƿ ⟩. There was not yet a distinct j, v, or w, and Old English scribes did not generally use k, q, or z.

Ash was no longer required in Middle English, as the Old English vowel /æ/ that it represented had merged into /a/. The symbol nonetheless came to be used as a ligature for the digraph ⟨ ae ⟩ in many words of Greek or Latin origin, as did ⟨ œ ⟩ for ⟨ oe ⟩.

Eth and thorn both represented /θ/ or its allophone / ð / in Old English. Eth fell out of use during the 13th century and was replaced by thorn. Thorn mostly fell out of use during the 14th century and was replaced by ⟨ th ⟩. Anachronistic usage of the scribal abbreviation (þe, "the") has led to the modern mispronunciation of thorn as ⟨ y ⟩ in this context; see ye olde.

Wynn, which represented the phoneme /w/, was replaced by ⟨ w ⟩ during the 13th century. Due to its similarity to the letter ⟨ p ⟩, it is mostly represented by ⟨ w ⟩ in modern editions of Old and Middle English texts even when the manuscript has wynn.

Under Norman influence, the continental Carolingian minuscule replaced the insular script that had been used for Old English. However, because of the significant difference in appearance between the old insular g and the Carolingian g (modern g), the former continued in use as a separate letter, known as yogh, written ⟨ ȝ ⟩. This was adopted for use to represent a variety of sounds:,,,,, while the Carolingian g was normally used for. Instances of yogh were eventually replaced by ⟨ j ⟩ or ⟨ y ⟩ and by ⟨ gh ⟩ in words like night and laugh. In Middle Scots, yogh became indistinguishable from cursive z, and printers tended to use ⟨ z ⟩ when yogh was not available in their fonts; this led to new spellings (often giving rise to new pronunciations), as in McKenzie, where the ⟨ z ⟩ replaced a yogh, which had the pronunciation /j/.

Under continental influence, the letters ⟨ k ⟩, ⟨ q ⟩, and ⟨ z ⟩, which had not normally been used by Old English scribes, came to be commonly used in the writing of Middle English. Also, the newer Latin letter ⟨ w ⟩ was introduced (replacing wynn). The distinct letter forms ⟨ v ⟩ and ⟨ u ⟩ came into use but were still used interchangeably; the same applies to ⟨ j ⟩ and ⟨ i ⟩. (For example, spellings such as wijf and paradijs for "wife" and "paradise" can be found in Middle English.)

The consonantal ⟨ j ⟩ / ⟨ i ⟩ was sometimes used to transliterate the Hebrew letter yodh, representing the palatal approximant sound /j/ (and transliterated in Greek by iota and in Latin by ⟨ i ⟩); words like Jerusalem, Joseph, etc. would have originally followed the Latin pronunciation beginning with /j/, that is, the sound of ⟨ y ⟩ in yes. In some words, however, notably from Old French, ⟨ j ⟩ / ⟨ i ⟩ was used for the affricate consonant /dʒ/, as in joie (modern "joy"), used in Wycliffe's Bible. This was similar to the geminate sound, which had been represented as ⟨ cg ⟩ in Old English. By the time of Modern English, the sound came to be written as ⟨ j ⟩ / ⟨ i ⟩ at the start of words (like "joy"), and usually as ⟨ dg ⟩ elsewhere (as in "bridge"). It could also be written, mainly in French loanwords, as ⟨ g ⟩, with the adoption of the soft G convention (age, page, etc.)
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