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In the year 1011, a writer named Byrhtferð ordered the Old English alphabet for numerological purposes. {Link without Title} He listed the 24 letters of the Latin alphabet (including Ampersand ) first, then 5 additional English letters, starting with the ''nota'' or ''ond,'' ⁊, which was a specifically English 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 (By this point Œ had dropped out of the language, and Ȝ had not yet been devised.) In Modern English Orthography , þ, '''''', '''ð''', and '''''' are obsolete, although þ continued its existence for some time, its lower case form gradually becoming graphically indistinguishable from the minuscule Y in most handwritings. On the other hand, U and J were introduced as distinct from V and I in the 16th Century , and '''w''' assumed the status of an independent letter, so that the English alphabet is now considered to consist of the following 26 letters:
Unfortunately, these common names for the letters are often hard to distinguish from each other when heard. The NATO Phonetic Alphabet gives each letter a name specifically designed to sound different from any other. Therefore, Aircraft pilots and many other people use the NATO phonetic alphabet names instead of these common names. NOTES Phonology The letters A, E, I, O, U are Vowel s; sometimes Y and rarely W function as vowels too, but more often they're Semivowel s. The remaining letters are Consonant s. The letter most frequently used in English is E. The least frequently used letters are Q, X, and Z. Letter names The names of the letters are rarely spelled out, except in compound words like ''tee-shirt'', ''deejay'', ''emcee'', ''okay'', ''aitch-less'', ''wye-level'', etc., and derived forms like ''exed out'', ''effing'', ''to eff and blind''. The forms listed here are from the Oxford English Dictionary : vowels stand for themselves, and consonants are ''C+ee'' or ''e+C'', with the exceptions of ''ef (eff), aitch (haitch), jay, kay, cue, ar, ess (es-), wy (wye), zed''. The plural forms of the vowels are ''a's'' or ''aes'', ''e's'', ''i's'', ''o's'' or ''oes'', ''u's''. Diacritics ), versus ''cooperate'' (from 1604 ), ''co-operate'' (from 1762 ), or ''coöperate'' (from 1876 ), where they represent two. These distinctions are, however, optional, and often unused even where they would serve to alleviate some degree of confusion. See also Written Accents In English . Ligatures The Roman ligatures Æ and Œ are still used in formal writing for certain words of Greek or Latin origin, such as " Encyclopædia " and " Cœlom ". Lack of awareness combined with technological limitations (the QWERTY -format keyboard commonly used in typography does not have keys representing either ligature) has made it common to see these two letters displayed as "ae" and "oe" respectively in modern, non-academic usage. In Old English , Æ was adopted as a letter on its own and called '' æsc '' ("ash"), and in very early Old English Œ also appeared as a distinct letter named '' œðel '' ("ethel"), both after Futhorc runes. Other Old English letters (also used in Middle English and modern Icelandic ) are Þ ''(thorn)'' and Ð ''(eth)'', both now ''th'' with the exception of being ''y'' in a few archaisms like ''Ye Olde Booke Shoppe''. The variant lower-case form ''( Long S )'' lasted into Early Modern English , and was used in non-final position up to the early nineteenth century. The for the letters ''Et''. In English it is used to represent the word ''and'' and occasionally the Latin word ''et,'' as in the abbreviation ''&c'' (et cetera). SEE ALSO
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