What is the medieval period alphabet?

Answer 1

There were a number of alphabets in the Middle Ages. Some Germanic groups used runes, and the Greek alphabet, used in the East Roman Empire, was used as the basis for a number of alphabets used in Eastern Europe. But since this question refers to the alphabet, I would assume you mean the Alphabet used for English.

The English alphabet is derived from the Latin alphabet, which was in use at the beginning of the Middle Ages. It consisted of the following 23 letters, and only upper case:

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z

The lower case was developed by Celtic Scribes, and usually the two cases were not used together for quite some time, so they were just alternate forms of the alphabet, one used for writing and the other for inscriptions.

Old English was first written in Runes, with letter forms very different from what we are used to. When the Latin alphabet was introduced, runic letters were used for sounds that did not exist in English. So the alphabet looked like this:

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

or, in lower case:

a æ b c d ð e f g h i l m n o p q r s t þ u ƿ x y

The character æ was originally a ligature (two letters stuck together for appearance), but developed into a letter; it remained in use for a long time, gradually being phased out. The letter ð, called eth, represented the voiceless th sound; its use faded away about the year 1300, as it was replaced by th. The þ, called thorn, was the voiced th; it disappeared about the year 1500, also replaced by th. The letter ƿ, called wynn, represented the w sound; it was replaced by the w, starting about the year 1300. W was originally a ligature of two v's (v was sounded like u at the time).

There was also a letter sometimes used in medieval English, which was Ȝ or ȝ, called Yogh, and sounded as ch.

Around the end of the Middle Ages, the letter k came into use, originally derived from c. And since w had come into full use at the time, the English alphabet looked like this:

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V W X Y Z

or, in lower case:

a b c d e f g h i k l m n o p q r s t v w x y z

The letter i was pronounced either as an i or a j, and these sounds were separated. Similarly, the letter v was pronounced either as u or v, and the were separated. This produced the modern English alphabet.

Answer 2

In medieval times, the most common alphabets in the world were: Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Hebrew.