LOST LETTERS Building blocks of society that faded through time by C McBarnett, Year 8
L
etters. Perhaps the most important part of any language, they form each and every word that we use today. They’re dependable and necessary for word forming, but what about the ones that don’t make an appearance in modern times? Written communication first started 4,000 years ago when the Egyptians started to use logo-syllabaries (using pictures to represent words), which we would know as hieroglyphics. Over time, these pictures became symbols to represent sounds rather than entire words. As Christianity spread through Europe, the Latin alphabet took the place of the runic alphabet which had previously been used by the Anglo-Saxons in England and in many other Germanic countries. If you were to try and read works from about 1,000 years ago, it would be near impossible to understand its meaning. For example, here is the Lord’s Prayer in Old English compared to in modern English: Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum; si þin nama gehalgod to becume þin rice gewurþe ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum. Which translates to: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. Some letters, such as Þ (thorn), ƿ (wynn), ȝ (yogh, not a three) and ð (eth) were made from old Runic letters but these did not survive into the alphabet of modern English. The Latin alphabet, although replacing the runic one, read as: ABCDEFHIKLMNOPQRSTVXZ
22
