Learning to Write English: Problems and Evidence

Professor Wendy Scase (University of Birmingham)

Abstract:

We know very little about how medieval people learned to write Latin -- in the sense not of composing Latin, but of crafting the letters on the tablet or page. We know even less about how people learned to craft written English.  This paper asks what special problems were associated with learning to write in the English language. What solutions were found and how did they relate to learning to write Latin? What criteria might we use for identifying the writing of learners? Focusing on alphabets and abecedaria, this paper elaborates these questions and identifies and discusses some new evidence for studying how medieval people learned to write English.