Claire Greason
Professor Buller
Oral Communications
28 October 2014
Origin of the English Alphabet Keeping up with the latest fashion style is hard enough, imagine creating your own alphabet and trying to teach it to others in hopes they will catch on is even harder. That however is exactly what the Egyptians did. They turned there hieroglyphics cuneiform into letters that could said and written to one another.

Paragraph 1: Where it originated from
4000 thousand years ago a sematic form of writing developed in Egypt between 1800-1900 BC. * Compared to other forms of writing like cuneiform that used wedge shapes or hieroglyphics which primarily used pictographic symbols
The Phoenicians developed a widely used alphabet about 700 years later * 22 letters that were all consonants * This sematic language was used throughout the Mediterranean, including North Africa and South Europe
The Greeks built on the Phoenician alphabet by adding vowels Around 750 BC * Adopted by the Latins who then combined it with Etruscan characters “F” and “S” * By the 3rd century the Roman alphabet looked very similar to the modern English but it still excluded the letters J, U, V and W

Paragraph 2: Old and Middle English
The history of writing began in Britain with the Anglo Saxons in the 5th century AD. * Anglo Saxons had ties with Scandinavia and other North Sea cultures and had a writing style call futhroc a runic language * New Runes (symbol/character) were continuously added, it originally APPEARED IN England with 26 characters by the 11th century it had 33 characters

In the 7th century the Latin Alphabet was introduced by Christian Missionaries and it took old throughout Britain. * In 1011 AD formal list of Old English Alphabet including five uniquely English letters ond, wyn, thorn, eth, and ash * This was the language that was used by all
In 1066 AD the Normans invaded * English was only spoken by the low born. The nobility, clergy and scholars spoke or wrote Latin or Norman * By the 13th century English writing and speaking became more prominent again * Old English letters thorn and eth were replaced by th and wynn became W and all the others were discarded
Paragraph 3: Modern English
By the 15th century English had become more standardized. * In 1448 William Caxton introduced the printing press to Great Britain * In the mid 16th century V and U were split into two letters * 1604 Robert Cawdrey published the first English dictionary and around that time as well J was added
The alphabets had it up’s and down’s throughout the years. Unlike other alphabets that slowly tapered off, the English alphabet has stayed true to its roots and is used in over 60 countries.

Work Cited: Huffey, Paul. "History of English Alphabet." History of English Alphabet. N.p., 2012. Web. 27 Oct. 2014.
Melissa. "The Origin of the English Alphabet." Today I Found Out RSS. Vacca Foeda Media, 2012. Web. 27 Oct. 2014.