Буквы английского языка как пишется

English alphabet
An English pangram displaying all the characters in context, in FF Dax Regular typeface
Script type	Alphabet
Time period	c.1500 to present
Languages	English
Related scripts
Parent systems	(Proto-writing) Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Greek alphabet Old Italic script Latin alphabet English alphabet
Child systems	ISO basic Latin alphabet Cherokee syllabary (in part) Scots alphabet Osage alphabet Saanich writing system Numerous other Latin-based orthographies
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Latn (215), ​Latin
Unicode
Unicode alias	Latin
Unicode range	U+0000 to U+007E Basic Latin and punctuation
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The alphabet for Modern English is a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form. The word alphabet is a compound of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta. The alphabet originated around the 7th century CE to write Old English from Latin script. Since then, letters have been added or removed to give the current letters:

The exact shape of printed letters varies depending on the typeface (and font), and the standard printed form may differ significantly from the shape of handwritten letters (which varies between individuals), especially cursive.

The English alphabet has 5 vowels and 21 consonants.

Written English has a large number of digraphs (e.g., would, beak, moat); it stands out (almost uniquely) as a European language without diacritics in native words. The only exceptions are:

• a diaeresis (e.g., «coöperation») may be used to distinguish two vowels with separate pronunciation from a double vowel^{[nb 1][1]}
• a grave accent, very occasionally, (as in learnèd, an adjective) may be used to indicate that a normally silent vowel is pronounced

Letter names[edit]

The names of the letters are commonly spelled out in compound words and initialisms (e.g., tee-shirt, deejay, emcee, okay, etc.), derived forms (e.g., exed out, effing, to eff and blind, aitchless, etc.), and objects named after letters (e.g., en and em in printing, and wye in railroading). The spellings listed below are from the Oxford English Dictionary. Plurals of consonant names are formed by adding -s (e.g., bees, efs or effs, ems) or -es in the cases of aitches, esses, exes. Plurals of vowel names also take -es (i.e., aes, ees, ies, oes, ues), but these are rare. For a letter as a letter, the letter itself is most commonly used, generally in capitalized form, in which case the plural just takes -s or -‘s (e.g. Cs or c’s for cees).

Letter	Name	Name pronunciation	Frequency
Modern English	Latin	Modern English	Latin	Old French	Middle English
A	a	ā	, [nb 2]	/aː/	/aː/	/aː/	8.17%
B	bee	bē		/beː/	/beː/	/beː/	1.49%
C	cee	cē		/keː/	/tʃeː/ > /tseː/ > /seː/	/seː/	2.78%
D	dee	dē		/deː/	/deː/	/deː/	4.25%
E	e	ē		/eː/	/eː/	/eː/	12.70%
F	ef, eff	ef		/ɛf/	/ɛf/	/ɛf/	2.23%
eff as a verb
G	gee	gē		/ɡeː/	/dʒeː/	/dʒeː/	2.02%
H	aitch	hā		/haː/ > /ˈaha/ > /ˈakːa/	/ˈaːtʃə/	/aːtʃ/	6.09%
haitch[nb 3]
I	i	ī		/iː/	/iː/	/iː/	6.97%
J	jay	–		–	–	[nb 4]	0.15%
jy[nb 5]
K	kay	kā		/kaː/	/kaː/	/kaː/	0.77%
L	el, ell[nb 6]	el		/ɛl/	/ɛl/	/ɛl/	4.03%
M	em	em		/ɛm/	/ɛm/	/ɛm/	2.41%
N	en	en		/ɛn/	/ɛn/	/ɛn/	6.75%
O	o	ō		/oː/	/oː/	/oː/	7.51%
P	pee	pē		/peː/	/peː/	/peː/	1.93%
Q	cue, kew, kue, que[nb 7]	qū		/kuː/	/kyː/	/kiw/	0.10%
R	ar	er		/ɛr/	/ɛr/	/ɛr/ > /ar/	5.99%
or[nb 8]
S	ess	es		/ɛs/	/ɛs/	/ɛs/	6.33%
es- in compounds[nb 9]
T	tee	tē		/teː/	/teː/	/teː/	9.06%
U	u	ū		/uː/	/yː/	/iw/	2.76%
V	vee	–		–	–	–	0.98%
W	double-u	–	[nb 10]	–	–	–	2.36%
X	ex	ex		/ɛks/	/iks/	/ɛks/	0.15%
ix	/ɪks/
Y	wy, wye, why[nb 11]	hȳ		/hyː/	ui, gui ?	/wiː/	1.97%
/iː/
ī graeca	/iː ˈɡraɪka/	/iː ɡrɛːk/
Z	zed[nb 12]	zēta		/ˈzeːta/	/ˈzɛːdə/	/zɛd/	0.07%
zee[nb 13]

Etymology[edit]

The names of the letters are for the most part direct descendants, via French, of the Latin (and Etruscan) names. (See Latin alphabet: Origins.)

The regular phonological developments (in rough chronological order) are:

• palatalization before front vowels of Latin /k/ successively to /tʃ/, /ts/, and finally to Middle French /s/. Affects C.
• palatalization before front vowels of Latin /ɡ/ to Proto-Romance and Middle French /dʒ/. Affects G.
• fronting of Latin /uː/ to Middle French /yː/, becoming Middle English /iw/ and then Modern English /juː/. Affects Q, U.
• the inconsistent lowering of Middle English /ɛr/ to /ar/. Affects R.
• the Great Vowel Shift, shifting all Middle English long vowels. Affects A, B, C, D, E, G, H, I, K, O, P, T, and presumably Y.

The novel forms are aitch, a regular development of Medieval Latin acca; jay, a new letter presumably vocalized like neighboring kay to avoid confusion with established gee (the other name, jy, was taken from French); vee, a new letter named by analogy with the majority; double-u, a new letter, self-explanatory (the name of Latin V was ū); wye, of obscure origin but with an antecedent in Old French wi; izzard, from the Romance phrase i zed or i zeto «and Z» said when reciting the alphabet; and zee, an American levelling of zed by analogy with other consonants.

Some groups of letters, such as pee and bee, or em and en, are easily confused in speech, especially when heard over the telephone or a radio communications link. Spelling alphabets such as the ICAO spelling alphabet, used by aircraft pilots, police and others, are designed to eliminate this potential confusion by giving each letter a name that sounds quite different from any other.

Ampersand[edit]

The ampersand (&) has sometimes appeared at the end of the English alphabet, as in Byrhtferð’s list of letters in 1011.^[2] & was regarded as the 27th letter of the English alphabet, as taught to children in the US and elsewhere. An example may be seen in M. B. Moore’s 1863 book The Dixie Primer, for the Little Folks.^[3] Historically, the figure is a ligature for the letters Et. In English and many other languages, it is used to represent the word and, plus occasionally the Latin word et, as in the abbreviation &c (et cetera).

Archaic letters[edit]

Old and Middle English had a number of non-Latin letters that have since dropped out of use. These either took the names of the equivalent runes, since there were no Latin names to adopt, or (thorn, wyn) were runes themselves.

• Æ æ ash or æsc , used for the vowel , which disappeared from the language and then reformed. Used by ae^{[nb 14]} and e now.
• Ð ð edh, eð or eth , and Þ þ thorn or þorn , both used for the consonants and (which did not become phonemically distinct until after these letters had fallen out of use). Used by th now.
• Ŋ ŋ eng or engma, used for voiced velar nasal sound produced by «ng» in English. Used by ng now.
• Œ œ ethel, ēðel, œ̄þel, etc. , used for the vowel /œ/, which disappeared from the language quite early. Used by oe^{[nb 15]} and e now.
• Ƿ ƿ wyn, ƿen or wynn , used for the consonant . (The letter ‘w’ had not yet been invented.) Used by w now.
• Ȝ ȝ yogh, ȝogh or yoch or , used for various sounds derived from , such as and . Used by y, j^{[nb 16]} and ch^{[nb 17]} now.
• ſ long s, an earlier form of the lowercase «s» that continued to be used alongside the modern lowercase s into the 1800s. Used by lowercase s now.

Diacritics[edit]

The most common diacritic marks seen in English publications are the acute (é), grave (è), circumflex (â, î, or ô), tilde (ñ), umlaut and diaeresis (ü or ï—the same symbol is used for two different purposes), and cedilla (ç).^[4] Diacritics used for tonal languages may be replaced with tonal numbers or omitted.

Loanwords[edit]

Diacritic marks mainly appear in loanwords such as naïve and façade. Informal English writing tends to omit diacritics because of their absence from the keyboard, while professional copywriters and typesetters tend to include them.

As such words become naturalised in English, there is a tendency to drop the diacritics, as has happened with many older borrowings from French, such as hôtel. Words that are still perceived as foreign tend to retain them; for example, the only spelling of soupçon found in English dictionaries (the OED and others) uses the diacritic. However, diacritics are likely to be retained even in naturalised words where they would otherwise be confused with a common native English word (for example, résumé rather than resume).^[5] Rarely, they may even be added to a loanword for this reason (as in maté, from Spanish yerba mate but following the pattern of café, from French, to distinguish from mate).

Native English words[edit]

Occasionally, especially in older writing, diacritics are used to indicate the syllables of a word: cursed (verb) is pronounced with one syllable, while cursèd (adjective) is pronounced with two. For this, è is used widely in poetry, e.g., in Shakespeare’s sonnets. J.R.R. Tolkien used ë, as in O wingëd crown.

Similarly, while in chicken coop the letters -oo- represent a single vowel sound (a digraph), they less often represent two which may be marked with a diaresis as in zoölogist^[6] and coöperation. This use of the diaeresis is rare but found in some well-known publications, such as MIT Technology Review and The New Yorker. Some publications, particularly in UK usage, have replaced the diaeresis with a hyphen such as in co-operative.^{[citation needed]}

In general, these devices are not used even where they would serve to alleviate some degree of confusion.

Punctuation marks within words[edit]

Apostrophe[edit]

The apostrophe (ʼ) is not considered part of the English alphabet nor used as a diacritic even in loanwords. But it is used for two important purposes in written English: to mark the «possessive»^{[nb 18]} and to mark contracted words. Current standards require its use for both purposes. Therefore, apostrophes are necessary to spell many words even in isolation, unlike most punctuation marks, which are concerned with indicating sentence structure and other relationships among multiple words.

• It distinguishes (from the otherwise identical regular plural inflection -s) the English possessive morpheme ‘s (apostrophe alone after a regular plural affix, giving -s’ as the standard mark for plural + possessive). Practice settled in the 18th century; before then, practices varied but typically all three endings were written -s (but without cumulation). This meant that only regular nouns bearing neither could be confidently identified, and plural and possessive could be potentially confused (e.g., «the Apostles words»; «those things over there are my husbands»^[7])—which undermines the logic of «marked» forms.
• Most common contractions have near-homographs from which they are distinguished in writing only by an apostrophe, for example it’s (it is or it has), or she’d (she would or she had).

Hyphen[edit]

Hyphens are often used in English compound words. Writing compound words may be hyphenated, open or closed, so specifics are guided by stylistic policy. Some writers may use a slash in certain instances.

Frequencies[edit]

The letter most commonly used in English is E. The least used letter is Z. The frequencies shown in the table may differ in practice according to the type of text.^[8]

Phonology[edit]

The letters A, E, I, O, and U are considered vowel letters, since (except when silent) they represent vowels, although I and U represent consonants in words such as «onion» and «quail» respectively.

The letter Y sometimes represents a consonant (as in «young») and sometimes a vowel (as in «myth»). Very rarely, W may represent a vowel (as in «cwm», a Welsh loanword).

The consonant sounds represented by the letters W and Y in English (/w/ and /j/ as in yes /jɛs/ and went /wɛnt/) are referred to as semi-vowels (or glides) by linguists, however this is a description that applies to the sounds represented by the letters and not to the letters themselves.

The remaining letters are considered consonant letters, since when not silent they generally represent consonants.

History[edit]

Old English[edit]

The English language itself was first written in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc runic alphabet, in use from the 5th century. This alphabet was brought to what is now England, along with the proto-form of the language itself, by Anglo-Saxon settlers. Very few examples of this form of written Old English have survived, mostly as short inscriptions or fragments.

The Latin script, introduced by Christian missionaries, began to replace the Anglo-Saxon futhorc from about the 7th century, although the two continued in parallel for some time. As such, the Old English alphabet began to employ parts of the Roman alphabet in its construction.^[9] Futhorc influenced the emerging English alphabet by providing it with the letters thorn (Þ þ) and wynn (Ƿ ƿ). The letter eth (Ð ð) was later devised as a modification of dee (D d), and finally yogh (Ȝ ȝ) was created by Norman scribes from the insular g in Old English and Irish, and used alongside their Carolingian g.

The a-e ligature ash (Æ æ) was adopted as a letter in its own right, named after a futhorc rune æsc. In very early Old English the o-e ligature ethel (Œ œ) also appeared as a distinct letter, likewise named after a rune, œðel^{[citation needed]}. Additionally, the v-v or u-u ligature double-u (W w) was in use.

In the year 1011, a monk named Byrhtferð recorded the traditional order of the Old English alphabet.^[2] He listed the 24 letters of the Latin alphabet first, including the ampersand, then 5 additional English letters, starting with the Tironian note ond (⁊), an insular symbol for and:

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z & ⁊ Ƿ Þ Ð Æ

Modern English[edit]

In the orthography of Modern English, the letters thorn (þ), eth (ð), eng (ŋ), wynn (ƿ), yogh (ȝ), ash (æ), and ethel (œ) are obsolete. Latin borrowings reintroduced homographs of æ and œ into Middle English and Early Modern English, though they are largely obsolete (see «Ligatures in recent usage» below), and where they are used they are not considered to be separate letters (e.g., for collation purposes), but rather ligatures. Thorn and eth were both replaced by th, though thorn continued in existence for some time, its lowercase form gradually becoming graphically indistinguishable from the minuscule y in most handwriting. Y for th can still be seen in pseudo-archaisms such as «Ye Olde Booke Shoppe». The letters þ and ð are still used in present-day Icelandic (where they now represent two separate sounds, /θ/ and /ð/ having become phonemically-distinct — as indeed also happened in Modern English), while ð is still used in present-day Faroese (although only as a silent letter). Wynn disappeared from English around the 14th century when it was supplanted by uu, which ultimately developed into the modern w. Yogh disappeared around the 15th century and was typically replaced by gh.

The letters u and j, as distinct from v and i, were introduced in the 16th century, and w assumed the status of an independent letter. The variant lowercase form long s (ſ) lasted into early modern English, and was used in non-final position up to the early 19th century. Today, the English alphabet is considered to consist of the following 26 letters:

Written English has a number^[10] of digraphs, but they are not considered separate letters of the alphabet:

Ligatures in recent usage[edit]

Outside of professional papers on specific subjects that traditionally use ligatures in loanwords, ligatures are seldom used in modern English. The ligatures æ and œ were until the 19th century (slightly later in American English)^{[citation needed]} used in formal writing for certain words of Greek or Latin origin, such as encyclopædia and cœlom, although such ligatures were not used in either classical Latin or ancient Greek. These are now usually rendered as «ae» and «oe» in all types of writing,^{[citation needed]} although in American English, a lone e has mostly supplanted both (for example, encyclopedia for encyclopaedia, and maneuver for manoeuvre).

Some fonts for typesetting English contain commonly used ligatures, such as for ⟨tt⟩, ⟨fi⟩, ⟨fl⟩, ⟨ffi⟩, and ⟨ffl⟩. These are not independent letters, but rather allographs.

Proposed reforms[edit]

Alternative scripts have been proposed for written English—mostly extending or replacing the basic English alphabet—such as the Deseret alphabet and the Shavian alphabet.

See also[edit]

• Alphabet song
• NATO phonetic alphabet
• English orthography
• English-language spelling reform
• American manual alphabet
• Two-handed manual alphabets
• English Braille
• American Braille
• New York Point
• Chinese respelling of the English alphabet
• Burmese respelling of the English alphabet
• Base36

Notes and references[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• Michael Rosen (2015). Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story. Counterpoint. ISBN 978-1619027022.
• Upward, Christopher; Davidson, George (2011), The History of English Spelling, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 978-1-4051-9024-4, LCCN 2011008794.

English alphabet
An English pangram displaying all the characters in context, in FF Dax Regular typeface
Script type	Alphabet
Time period	c.1500 to present
Languages	English
Related scripts
Parent systems	(Proto-writing) Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Greek alphabet Old Italic script Latin alphabet English alphabet
Child systems	ISO basic Latin alphabet Cherokee syllabary (in part) Scots alphabet Osage alphabet Saanich writing system Numerous other Latin-based orthographies
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Latn (215), ​Latin
Unicode
Unicode alias	Latin
Unicode range	U+0000 to U+007E Basic Latin and punctuation
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The alphabet for Modern English is a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form. The word alphabet is a compound of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta. The alphabet originated around the 7th century CE to write Old English from Latin script. Since then, letters have been added or removed to give the current letters:

The exact shape of printed letters varies depending on the typeface (and font), and the standard printed form may differ significantly from the shape of handwritten letters (which varies between individuals), especially cursive.

The English alphabet has 5 vowels and 21 consonants.

Written English has a large number of digraphs (e.g., would, beak, moat); it stands out (almost uniquely) as a European language without diacritics in native words. The only exceptions are:

• a diaeresis (e.g., «coöperation») may be used to distinguish two vowels with separate pronunciation from a double vowel^{[nb 1][1]}
• a grave accent, very occasionally, (as in learnèd, an adjective) may be used to indicate that a normally silent vowel is pronounced

Letter names[edit]

The names of the letters are commonly spelled out in compound words and initialisms (e.g., tee-shirt, deejay, emcee, okay, etc.), derived forms (e.g., exed out, effing, to eff and blind, aitchless, etc.), and objects named after letters (e.g., en and em in printing, and wye in railroading). The spellings listed below are from the Oxford English Dictionary. Plurals of consonant names are formed by adding -s (e.g., bees, efs or effs, ems) or -es in the cases of aitches, esses, exes. Plurals of vowel names also take -es (i.e., aes, ees, ies, oes, ues), but these are rare. For a letter as a letter, the letter itself is most commonly used, generally in capitalized form, in which case the plural just takes -s or -‘s (e.g. Cs or c’s for cees).

Letter	Name	Name pronunciation	Frequency
Modern English	Latin	Modern English	Latin	Old French	Middle English
A	a	ā	, [nb 2]	/aː/	/aː/	/aː/	8.17%
B	bee	bē		/beː/	/beː/	/beː/	1.49%
C	cee	cē		/keː/	/tʃeː/ > /tseː/ > /seː/	/seː/	2.78%
D	dee	dē		/deː/	/deː/	/deː/	4.25%
E	e	ē		/eː/	/eː/	/eː/	12.70%
F	ef, eff	ef		/ɛf/	/ɛf/	/ɛf/	2.23%
eff as a verb
G	gee	gē		/ɡeː/	/dʒeː/	/dʒeː/	2.02%
H	aitch	hā		/haː/ > /ˈaha/ > /ˈakːa/	/ˈaːtʃə/	/aːtʃ/	6.09%
haitch[nb 3]
I	i	ī		/iː/	/iː/	/iː/	6.97%
J	jay	–		–	–	[nb 4]	0.15%
jy[nb 5]
K	kay	kā		/kaː/	/kaː/	/kaː/	0.77%
L	el, ell[nb 6]	el		/ɛl/	/ɛl/	/ɛl/	4.03%
M	em	em		/ɛm/	/ɛm/	/ɛm/	2.41%
N	en	en		/ɛn/	/ɛn/	/ɛn/	6.75%
O	o	ō		/oː/	/oː/	/oː/	7.51%
P	pee	pē		/peː/	/peː/	/peː/	1.93%
Q	cue, kew, kue, que[nb 7]	qū		/kuː/	/kyː/	/kiw/	0.10%
R	ar	er		/ɛr/	/ɛr/	/ɛr/ > /ar/	5.99%
or[nb 8]
S	ess	es		/ɛs/	/ɛs/	/ɛs/	6.33%
es- in compounds[nb 9]
T	tee	tē		/teː/	/teː/	/teː/	9.06%
U	u	ū		/uː/	/yː/	/iw/	2.76%
V	vee	–		–	–	–	0.98%
W	double-u	–	[nb 10]	–	–	–	2.36%
X	ex	ex		/ɛks/	/iks/	/ɛks/	0.15%
ix	/ɪks/
Y	wy, wye, why[nb 11]	hȳ		/hyː/	ui, gui ?	/wiː/	1.97%
/iː/
ī graeca	/iː ˈɡraɪka/	/iː ɡrɛːk/
Z	zed[nb 12]	zēta		/ˈzeːta/	/ˈzɛːdə/	/zɛd/	0.07%
zee[nb 13]

Etymology[edit]

The names of the letters are for the most part direct descendants, via French, of the Latin (and Etruscan) names. (See Latin alphabet: Origins.)

The regular phonological developments (in rough chronological order) are:

• palatalization before front vowels of Latin /k/ successively to /tʃ/, /ts/, and finally to Middle French /s/. Affects C.
• palatalization before front vowels of Latin /ɡ/ to Proto-Romance and Middle French /dʒ/. Affects G.
• fronting of Latin /uː/ to Middle French /yː/, becoming Middle English /iw/ and then Modern English /juː/. Affects Q, U.
• the inconsistent lowering of Middle English /ɛr/ to /ar/. Affects R.
• the Great Vowel Shift, shifting all Middle English long vowels. Affects A, B, C, D, E, G, H, I, K, O, P, T, and presumably Y.

The novel forms are aitch, a regular development of Medieval Latin acca; jay, a new letter presumably vocalized like neighboring kay to avoid confusion with established gee (the other name, jy, was taken from French); vee, a new letter named by analogy with the majority; double-u, a new letter, self-explanatory (the name of Latin V was ū); wye, of obscure origin but with an antecedent in Old French wi; izzard, from the Romance phrase i zed or i zeto «and Z» said when reciting the alphabet; and zee, an American levelling of zed by analogy with other consonants.

Some groups of letters, such as pee and bee, or em and en, are easily confused in speech, especially when heard over the telephone or a radio communications link. Spelling alphabets such as the ICAO spelling alphabet, used by aircraft pilots, police and others, are designed to eliminate this potential confusion by giving each letter a name that sounds quite different from any other.

Ampersand[edit]

The ampersand (&) has sometimes appeared at the end of the English alphabet, as in Byrhtferð’s list of letters in 1011.^[2] & was regarded as the 27th letter of the English alphabet, as taught to children in the US and elsewhere. An example may be seen in M. B. Moore’s 1863 book The Dixie Primer, for the Little Folks.^[3] Historically, the figure is a ligature for the letters Et. In English and many other languages, it is used to represent the word and, plus occasionally the Latin word et, as in the abbreviation &c (et cetera).

Archaic letters[edit]

Old and Middle English had a number of non-Latin letters that have since dropped out of use. These either took the names of the equivalent runes, since there were no Latin names to adopt, or (thorn, wyn) were runes themselves.

• Æ æ ash or æsc , used for the vowel , which disappeared from the language and then reformed. Used by ae^{[nb 14]} and e now.
• Ð ð edh, eð or eth , and Þ þ thorn or þorn , both used for the consonants and (which did not become phonemically distinct until after these letters had fallen out of use). Used by th now.
• Ŋ ŋ eng or engma, used for voiced velar nasal sound produced by «ng» in English. Used by ng now.
• Œ œ ethel, ēðel, œ̄þel, etc. , used for the vowel /œ/, which disappeared from the language quite early. Used by oe^{[nb 15]} and e now.
• Ƿ ƿ wyn, ƿen or wynn , used for the consonant . (The letter ‘w’ had not yet been invented.) Used by w now.
• Ȝ ȝ yogh, ȝogh or yoch or , used for various sounds derived from , such as and . Used by y, j^{[nb 16]} and ch^{[nb 17]} now.
• ſ long s, an earlier form of the lowercase «s» that continued to be used alongside the modern lowercase s into the 1800s. Used by lowercase s now.

Diacritics[edit]

The most common diacritic marks seen in English publications are the acute (é), grave (è), circumflex (â, î, or ô), tilde (ñ), umlaut and diaeresis (ü or ï—the same symbol is used for two different purposes), and cedilla (ç).^[4] Diacritics used for tonal languages may be replaced with tonal numbers or omitted.

Loanwords[edit]

Diacritic marks mainly appear in loanwords such as naïve and façade. Informal English writing tends to omit diacritics because of their absence from the keyboard, while professional copywriters and typesetters tend to include them.

As such words become naturalised in English, there is a tendency to drop the diacritics, as has happened with many older borrowings from French, such as hôtel. Words that are still perceived as foreign tend to retain them; for example, the only spelling of soupçon found in English dictionaries (the OED and others) uses the diacritic. However, diacritics are likely to be retained even in naturalised words where they would otherwise be confused with a common native English word (for example, résumé rather than resume).^[5] Rarely, they may even be added to a loanword for this reason (as in maté, from Spanish yerba mate but following the pattern of café, from French, to distinguish from mate).

Native English words[edit]

Occasionally, especially in older writing, diacritics are used to indicate the syllables of a word: cursed (verb) is pronounced with one syllable, while cursèd (adjective) is pronounced with two. For this, è is used widely in poetry, e.g., in Shakespeare’s sonnets. J.R.R. Tolkien used ë, as in O wingëd crown.

Similarly, while in chicken coop the letters -oo- represent a single vowel sound (a digraph), they less often represent two which may be marked with a diaresis as in zoölogist^[6] and coöperation. This use of the diaeresis is rare but found in some well-known publications, such as MIT Technology Review and The New Yorker. Some publications, particularly in UK usage, have replaced the diaeresis with a hyphen such as in co-operative.^{[citation needed]}

In general, these devices are not used even where they would serve to alleviate some degree of confusion.

Punctuation marks within words[edit]

Apostrophe[edit]

The apostrophe (ʼ) is not considered part of the English alphabet nor used as a diacritic even in loanwords. But it is used for two important purposes in written English: to mark the «possessive»^{[nb 18]} and to mark contracted words. Current standards require its use for both purposes. Therefore, apostrophes are necessary to spell many words even in isolation, unlike most punctuation marks, which are concerned with indicating sentence structure and other relationships among multiple words.

• It distinguishes (from the otherwise identical regular plural inflection -s) the English possessive morpheme ‘s (apostrophe alone after a regular plural affix, giving -s’ as the standard mark for plural + possessive). Practice settled in the 18th century; before then, practices varied but typically all three endings were written -s (but without cumulation). This meant that only regular nouns bearing neither could be confidently identified, and plural and possessive could be potentially confused (e.g., «the Apostles words»; «those things over there are my husbands»^[7])—which undermines the logic of «marked» forms.
• Most common contractions have near-homographs from which they are distinguished in writing only by an apostrophe, for example it’s (it is or it has), or she’d (she would or she had).

Hyphen[edit]

Hyphens are often used in English compound words. Writing compound words may be hyphenated, open or closed, so specifics are guided by stylistic policy. Some writers may use a slash in certain instances.

Frequencies[edit]

The letter most commonly used in English is E. The least used letter is Z. The frequencies shown in the table may differ in practice according to the type of text.^[8]

Phonology[edit]

The letters A, E, I, O, and U are considered vowel letters, since (except when silent) they represent vowels, although I and U represent consonants in words such as «onion» and «quail» respectively.

The letter Y sometimes represents a consonant (as in «young») and sometimes a vowel (as in «myth»). Very rarely, W may represent a vowel (as in «cwm», a Welsh loanword).

The consonant sounds represented by the letters W and Y in English (/w/ and /j/ as in yes /jɛs/ and went /wɛnt/) are referred to as semi-vowels (or glides) by linguists, however this is a description that applies to the sounds represented by the letters and not to the letters themselves.

The remaining letters are considered consonant letters, since when not silent they generally represent consonants.

History[edit]

Old English[edit]

The English language itself was first written in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc runic alphabet, in use from the 5th century. This alphabet was brought to what is now England, along with the proto-form of the language itself, by Anglo-Saxon settlers. Very few examples of this form of written Old English have survived, mostly as short inscriptions or fragments.

The Latin script, introduced by Christian missionaries, began to replace the Anglo-Saxon futhorc from about the 7th century, although the two continued in parallel for some time. As such, the Old English alphabet began to employ parts of the Roman alphabet in its construction.^[9] Futhorc influenced the emerging English alphabet by providing it with the letters thorn (Þ þ) and wynn (Ƿ ƿ). The letter eth (Ð ð) was later devised as a modification of dee (D d), and finally yogh (Ȝ ȝ) was created by Norman scribes from the insular g in Old English and Irish, and used alongside their Carolingian g.

The a-e ligature ash (Æ æ) was adopted as a letter in its own right, named after a futhorc rune æsc. In very early Old English the o-e ligature ethel (Œ œ) also appeared as a distinct letter, likewise named after a rune, œðel^{[citation needed]}. Additionally, the v-v or u-u ligature double-u (W w) was in use.

In the year 1011, a monk named Byrhtferð recorded the traditional order of the Old English alphabet.^[2] He listed the 24 letters of the Latin alphabet first, including the ampersand, then 5 additional English letters, starting with the Tironian note ond (⁊), an insular symbol for and:

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z & ⁊ Ƿ Þ Ð Æ

Modern English[edit]

In the orthography of Modern English, the letters thorn (þ), eth (ð), eng (ŋ), wynn (ƿ), yogh (ȝ), ash (æ), and ethel (œ) are obsolete. Latin borrowings reintroduced homographs of æ and œ into Middle English and Early Modern English, though they are largely obsolete (see «Ligatures in recent usage» below), and where they are used they are not considered to be separate letters (e.g., for collation purposes), but rather ligatures. Thorn and eth were both replaced by th, though thorn continued in existence for some time, its lowercase form gradually becoming graphically indistinguishable from the minuscule y in most handwriting. Y for th can still be seen in pseudo-archaisms such as «Ye Olde Booke Shoppe». The letters þ and ð are still used in present-day Icelandic (where they now represent two separate sounds, /θ/ and /ð/ having become phonemically-distinct — as indeed also happened in Modern English), while ð is still used in present-day Faroese (although only as a silent letter). Wynn disappeared from English around the 14th century when it was supplanted by uu, which ultimately developed into the modern w. Yogh disappeared around the 15th century and was typically replaced by gh.

The letters u and j, as distinct from v and i, were introduced in the 16th century, and w assumed the status of an independent letter. The variant lowercase form long s (ſ) lasted into early modern English, and was used in non-final position up to the early 19th century. Today, the English alphabet is considered to consist of the following 26 letters:

Written English has a number^[10] of digraphs, but they are not considered separate letters of the alphabet:

Ligatures in recent usage[edit]

Outside of professional papers on specific subjects that traditionally use ligatures in loanwords, ligatures are seldom used in modern English. The ligatures æ and œ were until the 19th century (slightly later in American English)^{[citation needed]} used in formal writing for certain words of Greek or Latin origin, such as encyclopædia and cœlom, although such ligatures were not used in either classical Latin or ancient Greek. These are now usually rendered as «ae» and «oe» in all types of writing,^{[citation needed]} although in American English, a lone e has mostly supplanted both (for example, encyclopedia for encyclopaedia, and maneuver for manoeuvre).

Some fonts for typesetting English contain commonly used ligatures, such as for ⟨tt⟩, ⟨fi⟩, ⟨fl⟩, ⟨ffi⟩, and ⟨ffl⟩. These are not independent letters, but rather allographs.

Proposed reforms[edit]

Alternative scripts have been proposed for written English—mostly extending or replacing the basic English alphabet—such as the Deseret alphabet and the Shavian alphabet.

See also[edit]

• Alphabet song
• NATO phonetic alphabet
• English orthography
• English-language spelling reform
• American manual alphabet
• Two-handed manual alphabets
• English Braille
• American Braille
• New York Point
• Chinese respelling of the English alphabet
• Burmese respelling of the English alphabet
• Base36

Notes and references[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• Michael Rosen (2015). Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story. Counterpoint. ISBN 978-1619027022.
• Upward, Christopher; Davidson, George (2011), The History of English Spelling, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 978-1-4051-9024-4, LCCN 2011008794.

Самое первое с чего стоит начинать изучение языка это английский алфавит (English Alphabet). Вам не обязательно учить его в порядке следования букв, как на уроках в школе. Но знать, как правильно читаются и пишутся буквы английского языка просто необходимо.

Современные реалии таковы, что с буквами английского алфавита мы сталкиваемся каждый день. Читать английские слова сегодня, может даже ребенок, но делают это многие люди, как правило, с ошибками в произношении.

С вами наверное случалась такая ситуация, когда вы по телефону, пытались продиктовать какое то иностранное слово или ваш личный E-mail. И в ход шли «буква S — как знак доллара» или «буква i которая пишется как палочка с точкой наверху».

Специально создание нами интерактивные упражнения и таблицы помогут узнать, как правильно произносятся буквы английского алфавита и ускорить ваше обучение в несколько раз, если вы будете уделять им всего лишь по несколько минут в день, и все это совершенно бесплатно.

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Ниже представлена интерактивная таблица английского алфавита транскрипцией и переводом на русский язык. В таблице вы можете скрывать необходимые колонки, а после клика на строки они вновь появятся.

Вы также можете посмотреть печатный и письменный вариант английского алфавита и увидеть, как правильно пишутся английская буквы.

Для того чтобы услышать правильное произношение нужной вам буквы алфавита, просто нажмите на неё и прослушайте аудио произношение

Этот способ изучения поможет вам быстрее запомнить буквы английского алфавита, но стоит заметить, что перевод произношения на русский язык, является лишь условным.

В англо­языч­ных стра­нах уже дли­тель­ное вре­мя пишут полу печат­ны­ми или печат­ны­ми бук­ва­ми, поэто­му не все зна­ют как писать строч­ные бук­вы пра­виль­но. Рас­смот­рим как пра­виль­но писать про­пис­ные бук­вы англий­ско­го алфавита.

Прописи английского алфавита — плюсы и минусы

Тем, кто не хочет в век гло­баль­ной ком­пью­те­ри­за­ции тра­тить вре­мя на обу­че­ние про­пис­ные бук­вы англий­ско­го алфа­ви­та, вполне доста­точ­но зна­ния печат­но­го алфа­ви­та. При таком спо­со­бе пись­ма надо обра­щать вни­ма­ние на то, что­бы меж­ду бук­ва­ми одно­го сло­ва рас­сто­я­ния были мини­маль­ны­ми, посколь­ку печат­ные бук­вы меж­ду собой не соеди­ня­ют­ся, и зача­стую текст труд­но читать, так как внут­ри сло­ва про­ме­жут­ки боль­ше, чем интер­вал меж­ду словами.

Каж­дая бук­ва долж­на писать­ся слит­но, не раз­де­ля­ясь на части, ина­че напи­сан­ное будет тяже­ло понять.

При этом необ­хо­ди­мо учесть, что печат­ный спо­соб напи­са­ния букв в зна­чи­тель­ной сте­пе­ни уве­ли­чи­ва­ет вре­мя, необ­хо­ди­мое на напи­са­ние тек­ста. Поми­мо это­го, чело­век, усво­ив­ший толь­ко печат­ный алфа­вит, не смо­жет про­чи­тать руко­пис­ные тек­сты или их элек­трон­ную имитацию.

Для того что­бы при­сту­пить к заня­тию запа­си­тесь шари­ко­вой руч­кой и лист­ком бума­ги (жела­тель­но в линей­ку). Помни­те, очень важ­но пра­виль­но повто­рить тра­ек­то­рию напи­са­ния англий­ских про­пис­ных букв. Это сле­ду­ет делать для того что­бы в даль­ней­шем мож­но было достичь высо­кой ско­ро­сти напи­са­ния англий­ских слов.

Прописные буквы английского алфавита

Если ваш ребё­нок начи­на­ет учить англий­ский язык – вам пона­до­бит­ся пла­кат не толь­ко с печат­ны­ми англий­ски­ми бук­ва­ми, но и с про­пис­ны­ми бук­ва­ми англий­ско­го алфавита.

Обра­ти­те вни­ма­ние на новую тен­ден­цию напи­са­ния боль­шой бук­вы A. Сего­дня при­ня­то ее писать так­же как и малень­кую, хотя ранее она писа­лась похо­же на рус­скую боль­шую A.

В насто­я­щее вре­мя, пожа­луй, сто­ит сми­рить­ся с тем, что боль­шин­ство носи­те­лей англий­ско­го язы­ка (осо­бен­но – аме­ри­кан­цы, австра­лий­цы) уже дав­но в сво­ем повсе­днев­ном оби­хо­де не исполь­зу­ют клас­си­че­скую про­пись, посколь­ку изоб­ра­зить «коря­вые» печат­ные бук­вы гораз­до проще.

Каллиграфический английский алфавит

Каж­дый может научить­ся кал­ли­гра­фии. Даже если вы дума­е­те, что ваш почерк отвра­ти­те­лен, най­дет­ся тот чело­век, кото­рый захо­чет, что­бы имен­но вы под­пи­са­ли сва­деб­ные при­гла­ше­ния перье­вой руч­кой. Осо­бен­но людям нра­вит­ся совре­мен­ная кал­ли­гра­фия, пото­му что она откро­вен­но игно­ри­ру­ет тра­ди­ци­он­ные пра­ви­ла и под­чер­ки­ва­ет индивидуальность.

Английский алфавит прописью

Английский алфавит, в основе которого лежат латинские буквы, имеет интересную и долгую историю. C течением времени алфавит претерпел значительные изменения. Теперь английский представляет чётко оформленную систему. Различают печатный и прописной английский алфавит, каждый из которых отличается преимуществами и недостатками.

Буквы английского алфавита

В составе английского алфавита 26 букв, из которых:

• 6 передают гласные звуки;
• 21 передаёт согласные звуки.

Название последней буквы – “Z” – пишется и произносится двумя способами:

• в британском варианте как “zed” (читается [zɛd]);
• в американском как “zee” (читается [ziː]).

Таблица английского алфавита

Таблица заглавных и строчных букв, а также транскрипция:

Заглавная буква	Строчная буква	Как произносится название
A	a	[ei]
B	b	[biː]
C	c	[siː]
D	d	[diː]
E	e	[iː]
F	f	[ef]
G	g	[dʒiː]
H	h	[eɪtʃ]
I	i	[ai]
J	j	[dʒeɪ]
K	k	[kei]
L	l	[el]
M	m	[em]
N	n	[ɛn]
O	o	[əʊ]
P	p	[piː]
Q	q	[kjuː]
R	r	[ɑː, ar]
S	s	[es]
T	t	[tiː]
U	u	[juː]
V	v	[viː]
W	w	[‘dʌbljuː]
X	x	[eks]
Y	y	[waɪ]
Z	z	[zɛd, ziː]

Плюсы и минусы прописных букв английского алфавита

Плюсы	Минусы
Отлично развивают моторику, поэтому используются при обучении детей.	Нужно время, чтобы научиться писать красиво.
Повышают скорость письма, так как буквы в слове соединяются между собой.	Иногда трудно разобрать то, что написано.
При аккуратном почерке текст с прописными буквами выглядит опрятнее.	Используются все реже и реже.
Нет строгих правил написания, поэтому можно добавлять что-то своё.
Владея этим типом письма, проще разобраться рукописные источники.
Развивают аккуратность.

Прописные буквы английского алфавита

Представить алфавит этого языка без прописных букв невозможно. Прописной алфавит — комфортный и быстрый способ письма. Кроме того, прописные буквы не подразумевают полное копирование образцов. Вы сами можете создавать собственный стиль письма, главное, чтобы буквы были разборчивы.

Каллиграфический английский алфавит

Каллиграфию считают декоративным стилем, поэтому требует немало времени, креативности и точности. Нельзя утверждать, что научиться этому нельзя, когда у человека плохой почерк. Освоить каллиграфию могут все. Это займёт время, но принесёт пользу.

Так как каллиграфия становится популярной проводят удобные мастер-классы и уроки по ее освоению. Научиться можно не выходя из дома.

Вам потребуется только:

• бумага;
• необходимые принадлежности (ручка, перо, тушь);
• терпение и желание.

Прописи английского алфавита

Несколько прописей, которые можно скачать и распечатать:

Песни для запоминания английского алфавита

Чтобы запомнить порядок алфавита и произношение букв самым маленьким, начинать изучение стоит с раскрасок и песен. Здесь представлены популярные песни, которые будут помогать изучать алфавит малышам.

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Заключение

Английский алфавит существует в прописном и печатном варианте написания, как и в некоторых других языках, например, русском. Овладеть письменным алфавитом не так трудно, если научиться каллиграфии. Пропись имеет преимущества, почему и стоит уделить ей внимание.