The English alphabet was not always twenty-six letters long
Today, we rely on a stable set of 26 Latin letters. But the history of English writing is a graveyard of vanished characters, from runic symbols to medieval ligatures, all replaced by the streamlined script we use today.
The English alphabet's journey began in the 5th century with the 'futhorc', a runic script used by Anglo-Saxon settlers. It wasn't until the 7th century that Christian missionaries introduced the Latin script, which began a slow process of replacing the runes. This transition was not an overnight replacement but a complex merger; the emerging alphabet retained elements of the old system, such as the letters thorn (Þ) and wynn (<0xC7><0xB7>).
As centuries passed, the alphabet underwent significant contraction and stabilization. Medieval scribes used various unique characters, including the letter eth (Ð), the ligature ash (Æ), and the letter yogh (ȝ). By the 16th century, the modern 26-letter set had largely stabilized. This era also saw the formal separation of 'u' and 'j' from 'v' and 'i', and the recognition of 'w' as an independent letter.
Many of these lost letters left behind linguistic ghosts. The letter thorn (þ) was eventually replaced by the 'th' digraph, though its lowercase form became so similar to the letter 'y' that it survives in pseudo-archaic phrases like 'Ye Olde Booke Shoppe'. Similarly, the letter wynn disappeared around the 14th century, replaced by 'uu', which eventually evolved into our modern 'w'.
While the 26-letter alphabet is now standard, the English orthography remains a hybrid system. It utilizes many digraphs—such as 'ch' and 'sh'—and occasionally retains diacritics in loanwords like 'naïve'. Even the apostrophe remains a subject of debate; some, like Geoffrey Pullum, have even argued it functions more like a 27th letter than mere punctuation.
Source: English alphabet
