Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English

language.

This is episode 36, finalizing the alphabet.

Last time, we looked at how the first English scribes applied the Roman alphabet to the

unique sounds of Old English, and we focused on all of those Germanic sounds in the back

of the throat.

Well, this time, we'll complete our look at the first English alphabet by exploring some

of the other unique sounds of early English, and once again, we'll see how this early alphabet

impacted modern English spellings.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the history of the alphabet audiobook is

still available through iTunes, Amazon.com and CDBaby.com.

You can just go to the website for the podcast, historyofenglishpodcast.com, for links to

that audiobook.

Now, as we saw last time when the first scribes began to write down the English language, they

encountered sounds which were new and starting to emerge in very early Old English.

But they also encountered sounds which were native Germanic sounds, sounds that weren't

necessarily new to English, but they were new to Latin.

One of those sounds was the TH sound, thuh.

This sound is still very common in modern English, and it's a sound that goes all the way

back to the original Germanic language.

But it wasn't a sound generally found in Latin, so the Roman alphabet didn't have a specific

letter for it.

...