English alphabet

The modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters (each having an uppercase and a lowercase form) – the same letters that are found in the ISO basic Latin alphabet:

The exact shape of printed letters varies depending on the typeface. The shape of handwritten letters can differ significantly from the standard printed form (and between individuals), especially when written in cursive style. See the individual letter articles for information about letter shapes and origins (follow the links on any of the uppercase letters above).

Written English uses a number of digraphs, such as ch, sh, th, ph, wh, etc., but they are not considered separate letters of the alphabet. Some traditions also use two ligatures, æ and œ, or consider the ampersand (&) part of the alphabet.

History

Old English

The English language was first written in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc runic alphabet, in use from the 5th century. This alphabet was brought to what is now England, along with the proto-form of the language itself, by Anglo-Saxon settlers. Very few examples of this form of written Old English have survived, these being mostly short inscriptions or fragments

English

English may refer to:

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak the English language. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Angelcynn ("family of the Angles"). Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who migrated to Great Britain around the 5th century AD. England is one of the countries of the United Kingdom.

Historically, the English population is descended from several peoples — the earlier Britons (or Brythons) and the Germanic tribes that settled in Britain following the withdrawal of the Romans, including Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians. Collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, they founded what was to become England (from the Old English Englaland) along with the later Danes, Normans and other groups. In the Acts of Union 1707, the Kingdom of England was succeeded by the Kingdom of Great Britain. Over the years, English customs and identity have become fairly closely aligned with British customs and identity in general.

English Words

English Words is a Canadian Indie Rock Band based in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. It is made up of two song writing brothers (Ryan & Aaron Crane), a cousin (Todd MacLean), an old friend (Josh Byrne) and a spring chicken (Andrew Murray).

Healing Power of Injury won the 2010 Music PEI Award for Rock Recording of the Year.Healing Power of Injury was nominated for the 2010 East Coast Music Award for Rock Recording of the Year.

References

Alphabet

An alphabet is a standard set of letters (basic written symbols or graphemes) which is used to write one or more languages based on the general principle that the letters represent phonemes (basic significant sounds) of the spoken language. This is in contrast to other types of writing systems, such as syllabaries (in which each character represents a syllable) and logographies (in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic unit).

The Proto-Canaanite script, later known as the Phoenician alphabet, is the first fully phonemic script. Thus the Phoenician alphabet is considered to be the first alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet is the ancestor of most modern alphabets, including Arabic, Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and possibly Brahmic. According to terminology introduced by Peter T. Daniels, an "alphabet" is a script that represents both vowels and consonants as letters equally. In this narrow sense of the word the first "true" alphabet was the Greek alphabet, which was developed on the basis of the earlier Phoenician alphabet. In other alphabetic scripts such as the original Phoenician, Hebrew or Arabic, letters predominantly or exclusively represent consonants; such a script is also called an abjad. A third type, called abugida or alphasyllabary, is one where vowels are shown by diacritics or modifications of consonantal base letters, as in Devanagari and other South Asian scripts.