Why English doesn't use accents

Summary

Portrait of Jean Miélot (after 1456), Jean le TavernierCanterbury, AD 1105The cold of the stone floor in the scriptorium creeps up through Godwin’s boots. He pays it no mind. Before him lies a copy of the Chronicle, just arrived from the old capital of Winchester. In it is written the history of the English people. His people.Today, his job is to make another copy. No difficult task for Godwin, or any monk.But Abbot Robert will want to inspect the work before vespers. Abbot Robert. A Norman. Last week, the abbot pointed at Godwin’s lettering and called it “crude.” The word still stings.Godwin’s quill forms the letters scip. The passage is about a foul fleet of ships: the raiding parties of Danes that had harried the coast, whom the great King Alfred eventually brought to heel. If only England had a king like that today.Godwin stares at the word. Scip. It’s the right word, the right spelling. The ‘sc’ makes the same sound that the Normans spell ‘sh.’ But Robert won’t see it that way. For him, this will be nothing but Saxon stubbornness.Godwin takes up his knife. The steel edge scrapes away the ink, taking a thin layer of the vellum with it. He smooths the spot and writes the word again, this time as he knows Robert will want it: ship. An English word, somehow made foreign.He works on, his hand steady. He reaches a later entry: the arrival of a new queen. Pride or the devil takes hold of his soul, and he writes cwen. He thinks with a smile of Edith, the last English queen, a woman of his grandfather's time.Then the smile vanishes. There are no more English queens or kings. Only Normans.He scrapes the vellum clean again and writes it like a Norman would: queen. He writes the ‘e’ twice so the Normans know to drag out the sound. The ink settles, black and final.He looks at the two words. Ship. Queen. This is writing that even a Norman abbot will find acceptable. Good work, he’ll surely say. But Godwin isn’t so sure. He dips his quill again into the ink and continues to ...