ABSTRACT
Over hundreds of years, the English language has picked up words, phrases and spellings from all over the world as its people travelled, traded, invaded and explored the depth and breadth of communication afforded by the acquisition of words. Spellings and pronunciation have changed over time, but their origins can be traced back to the West Germanic languages spoken by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. A large number of spelling patterns which existed during the time of Old English were swept away by the arrival of the Normans in 1066. George Bernard Shaw championed the idea of spelling reform. When he died in 1950, he left funding for a contest to design a new, phonetic alphabet. The contest was won by Kingsley Read, who based his new alphabet on words as they were spoken by King George V. At the time, that pronunciation model was considered typically British, and was held in high esteem.
