Books about history of English orthography and it's relation to the spoken language?

[Spiryt]

I know there are some knowledgeable people on the Playground, so I figured I may ask.

Not really for me, although I surely would also be interested in reading.

Not sure if this is right place to ask, but I'm trying.

[BWR]

What exactly are you interested in?

A modern picture of how words are spelt and pronounced?
If so, read a dictionary. preferably the Oxford English Dictionary, in as complete a version as you can find.

Are you interested in how spelling has changed through the ages?
If so, are we talking specifics of how individual words have changed or a general overview of the language?
In the former case, you will be best served learning Old English and then just reading through literature throughout the ages until you get to the modern age. Things like dictionaries and grammars of Old and Middle English will be very useful. And because it is an awesome project (if not directly related) the LAEME.

In the latter case the stuff listed in wikipedia's article on English orthography looks to be useful. (Using Wikipedia for source mining is often productive, if you need to start from zero). Venezky's stuff looks to be the most interesting, and Jespersen is generally good, if a bit old. What little stuff I have on the subject is kind of buried now and a pain to dig out, and I'm terrible with names so I can't remember the names of the books and articles I have read. I'll wait and see if anyone else comes up with stuff. If not, I'll see what I can find.

[Spiryt]

Well, as far as I understand, the topic is pretty much what I've written:

The history of using Latin alphabet to write in English, changes in signs used to represent particular sounds, and so on.

History of usage of i/j letter as example:

In English (j) most represents the affricate /dʒ/ . In Old English the phoneme /dʒ/ was represented orthographically with (cg) and (cȝ). Under the influence of Old French, which had a similar phoneme deriving from Latin /j/, English scribes began to use (i) later (j) to represent word-initial /dʒ/ in Old English (for example, iest, and later jest), while using (dg) elsewhere (for example, hedge).

In English case it was quite a history, AFAIU, leading to modern English pronunciation being full of exceptions and 'just because's.


I've read about this stuff in books about history of Polish language, just hoped to find some similar works about English, I guess.

[Jay R]

"English orthography" gets over 3,000 hits on Amazon. Adding "history" narrows it down to just over 400.

This one looks like a good starting point. But it's a deep subject, and one book won't cover it all.

[Spiryt]

Thanks for the answers so far.

Amazon is definitely something to looks closely, although sheer amount of positions that are 'roughly on topic' makes it difficult. :D


So I will welcome all suggestions and opinions about those options.

"History of English spelling' looks interesting indeed.


Also, I've received clues that more modern changes in spoken and written language are main part of information to search for.

Particularly how informal, colloquial spoken language and written language are getting more and more similar thanks to modern media.