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Language: en-GB

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This is the former leader of the Liberal Democrats,
the Right Honourable Walter Menzies [MING-IS]

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Campbell. He's the MP for North East Fife,
and in his youth he was an Olympic sprinter,

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holding the British record for the 100 metres.

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I want to talk about his name.

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Walter Menzies [MING-IS] Campbell. Ming for
short. Most people who aren't Scottish would

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look at that middle name and pronounce it
MENZ-IES. In fact, a lot of people do pronounce

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it that way. So what's going on here?

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To find out, we have to go back into history.

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Our modern English alphabet hasn't always
looked like this. It evolved over time. The

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full A to Z that we have today didn't settle
down until about the 18th century.

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In 1011, a monk called Byrhtferð -- and I'm
probably mispronouncing that -- wrote down

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what he considered to be the alphabet -- what
we would now call the "Old English" Latin

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Alphabet -- in alphabetical order as part
of a manuscript. Now since England in 1011

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had no mass communication, this will not be
definitive: it's an example of one set of

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letters and ordering. But it shows, pretty
clearly, the major differences over a thousand

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years.

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So. Let's handle the letters that we all recognise
first. I and J, at this point in history,

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are the same letter. They wouldn't split for
centuries. If you've ever seen Indiana Jones

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and the Last Crusade, you'll remember Sean
Connery muttering about "Jehovah starting

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with an I". Which does raise the question
of why there was a J on that deathtrap. But

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never mind.

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U and V are combined as well, and there's
no W at all. Instead, that harp-like glyph,

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the wynn, was used for /w/. After the Normans
invaded in the 12th century, the wynn would

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fall out of use, getting replaced with a double
U. Which became a W.

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Byrhtferð included two symbols for 'and'
in his alphabet. Actually in his alphabet.

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If you speak any Gaelic languages, you may
recognise the second one, it's still in use

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today in a couple of places. Then there's
the Wynn, the /w/. Then there's the Thorn

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and the Eth, used for "th" sounds.

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Last up is the ash, which represented a vowel
halfway between a and e.

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These letters are still used in some European
languages: Icelandic still has thorn and ash.

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What killed them all in English? Well, time
for a start: some of them just dropped out

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of use and were replaced -- or grew similar
to -- other letters. But secondly, there was

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the advent of movable type and the printing
press: for example, presses imported from

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Germany didn't have a thorn. They did have
a y, which, as the thorn had evolved over

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time in the British Isles, was considered
close enough: that's why, to this day, we

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still see "The Olde" with a Y. It's the last
vestige of thorn in English.

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Still doesn't explain "Ming-is", though.

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Well, by Middle English, another letter had
popped up: yogh. Now, this could represent

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all sorts of sounds in English -- but in Scots,
it generally represented only a couple of

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things: including the 'ya' sound. And yet
again, the printers didn't have the right

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letters in their boxes of movable type, so
they used the closest thing they had: a Z.

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"Ming-is" became... well, still "Ming-is".
And a few hundred years later, here we are.

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Some people switched the pronunciation; some
didn't. If you grew up in the UK before the

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turn of the millennium, you will remember
when John Menzies [MENZ-IES] shops were in

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every high street.

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But here's my question: has the English alphabet
stopped evolving now? Those of us with British

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or American keyboards only have 26 letters
at our disposal, and typing anything else

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is enough of a pain that most people don't
bother. When we use all of those letters,

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and only those letters, regularly, and their
design is codified into every font on every

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computer in the world... could there still
be room for change? Or is this the last alphabet

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that English will have?

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