Context👨‍💻

Question 1

Context of a recount (child language written)

Answer 1

• Likely to be told what to include by a teacher
• Teacher may have put key words on the board (could link to jargon)
• Shows reader awareness as the child is using context bound language

Question 2

Caxton’s printing press in the 15th century🕰

Answer 2

• Encouraged a unified spelling as it facilitated mass printing
• HOWEVER, in the Early Modern English period, individual printers established their own conventions - as did writers - so uniformity was not deemed important at first

Question 3

Printing press🕰

Answer 3

• Printers wanted to fit words neatly on a line, so began to drop the terminal ‘e’
• Other times, they added letters because they got paid by the number of letters produced

Question 4

Ligatures🕰

Answer 4

• The linking of two graphemes
• Was once common in printing but is now becoming less common
• The ampersand (&) developed from a ligature in which the Latin letters e and t were combined

Question 5

Consonant clusters🕰

Answer 5

In words like ‘knee’ and ‘gnaw’ consonant clusters reduced to the /n/ phoneme, but the spelling remained

Question 6

Long S🕰

Answer 6

• Lost in the late modern English period

* Used initially and medially but short s used at end

Question 7

Silent letters🕰

Answer 7

Often have Greek etymology, e.g. psychology

Question 8

U and V graphemes🕰

Answer 8

Were once interchangeable until 1630

Question 9

Pre and pro🕰

Answer 9

Latin affixes

Question 10

French influence🕰

Answer 10

• Some of the earliest standardisation was with the French after the Norman invasion in the 11th century
• French scribes began to include their own spelling patterns
• E.g. ‘qu’ was once written as ‘cw’ - cwen

Question 11

Double consonants🕰

Answer 11

Middle English developments included the use of double consonants to show that the vowel before this was short, such as ‘dinner’ compared to ‘diner’

Question 12

Ck ending🕰

Answer 12

• Some spellings have simplified with words like ‘physick’ losing its final k
• There isn’t consistency - some other words have retained their ck ending just involving the velar plosive /k/, such as the word ‘sick’

Question 13

Silent b and l🕰

Answer 13

•Silent, although still in the written word
•b of thumb
•l in walk
-not all follow this, e.g. milk and sulk

Question 14

The letter c🕰

Answer 14

• The letter c was used in French to spell an /s/ sound in many loanwords of Latin etymology
• The letter c in the Roman writing system represented a /k/

Question 15

Why might ‘he’ as a gender neutral term have declined in use by the 20th century?🕰

Answer 15

The feminist movements of the 1960s/70s