영어철자 형성에 관한 연구

Abstract

In this paper I determine which civilization, the Greeks, Romans, or English, made the greatest contribution to the creation and expansion of the English alphabets.While the English alphabet is a member of the Latin alphabet family, the primitive Roman alphabet was derived from the Greek Alphabet. Further, the Greek alphabet was derived from Phoenician alphabet. Thus, the alphabet that was transmitted to the foreign language would in some respects be redundant, in others defective.The Greeks in adopting Semitic letters naturally had difficulty pronouncing the ones which had no parallel in their language. The symbols for the same sounds could be transmitted without change, but superfluous letters might disappear, and new letters would be evolved by differentiation. The Greeks contributed vowels and other consonants to their alphabet. In addition, by the fifth century B.C. the Greeks altered the direction they wrote in from left to right.The Romans contributed to reform letter forms beautiful through regularity, symmetry and simplicity and transmit that alphabet to all of Europe. The material they used for writing helped them reform the forms of the letters.The Anglo-Saxons contributed three new letters (j, u, and w) and transmitted the English language and its letters around the world. English is now so widely spoken that many have suggested that English might well become the international. Since written language is dependent upon its alphabet, it seems to me that the most important contribution came from the English and the second from the Romans.