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Numerous words came to be adopted from French and from Latin.
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After the Norman Conquest, the use of a single letter c to represent the different sounds /k/ and /s/ came into the English spelling system (and continues to be used to this day). The letter c, was used in French to spell an /s/ sound in many loanwords of Latin origin; the letter c in the Roman writing system represented a /k/, but a sound change in Latin turned /k/ into /s/ before front non-low vowels. E.g. Latin civitas/kiwitas/ evolved into French cité, from where we get our word city.
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Letters were added to words to make the words seem more French
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Where the vowel were being pronoucned differently by people and being pronoucned in a different part of the mouth.
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English became the official language of England after the 100 years war with France ended. Most words of French descent have been respellt to show their changed, anglicised pronunciation (e.g. from ‘boeuf, bouger, bataille, compter, gouvernement, montagne’ to ‘beef, battle, budge, count, government, mountain’)
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Caxton set up the first English printing press and brought with him printers from Belgium who spoke little to no English and made numerous spelling errors. E.g. 'eny -> any, bisy--> busy'. They also were paid by the line and lengthened words to earn more money or make margins look more neater. e.g. Frend --> Friend; hed --> head
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Chaucer’s spelling system became even more gravely corrupted. After the introduction of printing in England, the newly invented spelling system was changed because the early London printers were foreign and made many spelling errors. They often inserted additional letters into words to earn more money. They regularly added extra letters to the last word of a line to make the whole text look neater. 'Had', was sometimes spelt as 'hadd' or 'hadde'. Many of their spelling errors became accepted.
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Many Latin and Greek words were imported into English which changed English spellings. The adopted words of that time were often left with their original spellings, because Latin and Greek were regarded as superior to English. The English rule for doubling a consonant after a short vowel, words like 'better, bitter, thinner, dinner', was affected by this, because the adopted Latin and Greek words did not have this rule, even if they sounded like older English words: e.g. rabbit – habit.
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Also, many Greek adopted words were spelt with y instead of i: symbol, system, symmetry. Silent letters entered the spelling system too: pneumonia, rheumatism. Furthermore, the use of "ea" as an alternative spelling for both the ee and e sounds also became firmly established (speech – speak, bed – bread). There was no apparent reason for this but it did make spelling harder to learn, (teeth – tether, heath – heather).
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Bibles were printed abroad because the Pope banned translations of them. Bible spelling became more varied and people who bought them learnt to read and write.
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Samuel Johnson created the first dictionary. He linked several alternative spellings to different meanings, such as there, their. and thair
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Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, the first American dictionary. (eg. from 'honour, centre, masque' to 'honor, center, mask')
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The U.S. Government Printing Office adopted most of Noah Webster's plan for reforming English spelling including: "-our" to "-or", "-re" to "-er", dropping final "k" in "publick" etc., changing "-ence" to "-ense" in "defence" etc., use single "l" in inflected forms for example in traveled", use double "l" in words like "fulfill", use "-or" for "-er" where done so in Latin e.g. "Visitor", and change "-ise" to "-ize" wherever this can be traced back to Latin and Greek.
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the letter A of the Oxford English dictionary was finished
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Oxford English dictionary published definitions from A to H.
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With the introduction of Internet English, conversations were getting shorter online. Abbreviations for typing came about instead of phrases and sentences. Some passed into spoken English.
IMHO for in my humble opinion, BTW for by the way, FYI for for your information, FAQ for frequently asked questions, LOL for laugh out loud or lots of love, UG2BK for you've got to be kidding. -
Old English underwent various changes such as the loss of final syllables, which also led to the simplification of the morphology. King Alfred did attempt to regularise spelling in the 9th century, but by the 11th century continued changes in pronunciation disrupted the attempt to regularise spelling.
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