The Word Snoop Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1. - How it all began . . .

  Chapter 2. - Why is English so strange?

  Chapter 3. - Dots and dashes, interrobangs and cat’s claws

  Chapter 4. - Letters, letters, letters

  Chapter 5. - Is that another Greek word?

  Chapter 6. - Who likes playing games?

  Chapter 7. - Say that again!

  Chapter 8. - Hmm I wonder what you’re really Saying...

  Chapter 9. - Is that a real person?

  Chapter 10. - Back to the future

  Word Snoop Glossary

  The Keys to the Word Snoop’s Codes

  First published in the United States 2009 by DIAL BOOKS

  A member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Published by The Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A. •

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario,

  Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin

  Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St.

  Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin

  Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd,

  11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin

  Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a

  division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd,

  24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa • Penguin Books

  Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published in Australia 2008 by Viking as The Word Spy

  Text copyright © 2008 by Ursula Dubosarsky Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Tohby Riddle All rights reserved

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any

  responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Text set in Adobe Caslon • S.A.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dubosarsky, Ursula, date.

  The word snoop / Ursula Dubosarsky ; illustrated by Tohby Riddle.

  p. cm.

  Previously published under title: The word spy, 2008.

  Summary: A tour of the English language from the beginning of the

  alphabet in 4000 BC to modern text messaging and emoticons.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-16285-9

  1. English language—History—Juvenile literature. I. Riddle, Tohby,

  ill. II. Duborsarsky, Ursula, date, Word spy. III. Title.

  PE1075.D83 2009

  420.9—dc22

  2009008306

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For everyone at

  Ferncourt Public School,

  in appreciation.

  And to my dear friends and

  colleagues at the New South Wales

  School Magazine, where the Word Snoop

  was born . . .

  U.D.

  For I.J.V.

  T.R.

  Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

  Hamlet: Words, words, words.

  HAMLET BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  Dear Readers,

  You may not know me, but I know you. I am—

  the WORD SNOOP!

  The Word Snoop? Allow me to explain . . . You

  see, I love words. Ever since I can remember, I’ve

  been listening to, speaking, reading, writing, and

  yes—snooping on words. I follow words every-

  where. I creep down dark hallways, roam wide

  highways, and sneak along country lanes.

  I listen to conversations, read over people’s

  shoulders, flip through books, click on

  websites, and tap out text messages . . .

  But the time has come at last for me to emerge

  from undercover and share with you some of the

  many, many things I have learned.

  Why don’t you come and be a Word Snoop with

  me? All you have to do is open this book, take

  a deep breath, and dive inside. The wonderful

  world of words awaits!

  But shhh! Someone’s coming! I cannot stay.

  See you very soon, I hope. Don’t delay, my

  snoops, I’m expecting you . . .

  Bye-bye! Must fly!

  Yours ever,

  The Word Snoop

  P.S. Oops, I almost forgot! There’s a secret

  message for you hidden in the pages of this

  book. You will find a part of the message at the

  end of each chapter, and each part is written in

  its own special code.

  See if you can decipher them all.

  Farewell, my snoops . . . and good luck!

  Timeline

  Dear Snoops,

  I’m writing to you from a secret location. Don’t

  tell anyone where I am, okay? Oh, that’s right,

  you don’t actually know where I am—do you?

  Anyway, one thing you do know is your ABCs.

  That’s right, the alphabet. Now, maybe the

  alphabet sounds like a pretty ordinary thing to

  you, but actually it’s not. The only way you are

  able to read this book, or have it read to you, is

  because of the invention thousands of years ago

  of that mysterious thing we call—

  The Alphabet.

  It’s funny, when something is as familiar as

  the alphabet you would think it had been there

  since the beginning of time. But it hasn’t . . .

  Read on, my friends!

  And remember, keep snooping.

  Your abecedarian friend,

  The Word Snoop

  1.

  How it all began . . .

  The First Alphabet

  Imagine yourself back when you were learning the alphabet for the very first time. Twenty-six different letters—you probably thought you’d never be able to remember them all. But have you ever wondered where those strange shapes came from in the first place?

  The very earliest writing in the world started in the area now known as Iraq in about 4000 BC. It’s called cuneiform, which means “wedge-shaped.” You know when you play with putty or clay, and you dig your fingernails into it to make shapes? Cuneiform was a bit like that—it was a way of writing by pressing wedges into soft clay to make signs for words and sounds. It looked like this:

  In ancient Egypt they did something a bit different. They carved or drew little pictures to show sounds or ideas. This kind of writing is called hieroglyphs, which means “holy writing” because it was mostly used by priests. Here’s an example of a hieroglyph:

  Can you guess what the word means? (I’ll give you a hint—look at the very last picture. Meow!)

  But neither cuneiform nor hieroglyphs were really alphabets. In an alphabet like ours, the signs or letters are supposed to stand only for sounds. To write the word cat, we use three letters to show those three sounds: c a t. But in writing systems like cuneiform and hieroglyphs, only some of the signs stood for sounds, while others stood for ideas or whole words, and sometimes these were combined (like the word for cat above—the first three pictures stand for sounds, while the last picture sums up the whole word). That sort of writing is a lot more complicated to write and to remember than an alphabet—
in cuneiform alone there were about 1,500 different combinations!

  The Phoenicians, who lived north of Egypt as far up as modern-day Lebanon and Syria, are said to be the first people who used an actual alphabet. It looked like this:

  The first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet were called “aleph” and “beth.” (Get it? Aleph-beth—Alphabet!) There were 22 letters, all consonants. Ys, thts rght, jst cnsnnts . . . The first letter, aleph, was not actually an A as we know it, but a funny sort of glugging sound in the throat. (Okay, you can stop glugging now.)

  Anyway, because it made life simpler and writing quicker and easier, the Phoenician alphabet started to catch on, glug and all. The ancient Hebrew alphabet that most of the Bible was first written in is based on the Phoenician alphabet. The ancient Greeks adopted it too, adding extra letters for the vowels in around 1000 BC. (Phw! Tht ws lcky!) This is what the Greek alphabet looked like:

  This alphabet eventually turned into the alphabet for Russian, Bulgarian, and other languages in that part of the world. In Italy, though, the Greek alphabet was adapted by the Etruscans, an amazing ancient people who lived in Italy before even the Romans did. This is how the Etruscans wrote their letters. (Are some of these starting to look familiar?)

  The Romans got hold of the Etruscan alphabet, changed it a bit, and used it to write their language, Latin. It’s more or less this Roman alphabet that we use to write English today—and French and Spanish and Italian and lots and lots of other languages as well. In fact, the Roman alphabet is now the most widely used alphabet in the world. Have you ever looked at the names of the fonts on your computer? One of the most popular fonts is called Roman—and now you know why!

  So you thought kindergarten was hard . . .

  It probably took you a while to learn the 26 letters of the alphabet back when you started school. But actually, you should count yourself lucky. Some languages use alphabets with many more letters than that. Russian, for example, has 33 letters, and the Khmer language of Cambodia has over 70. And in China and Japan, where they write with signs called characters, there are hundreds, even thousands of different shapes to remember. Japanese primary school children are expected to learn about a thousand characters before they can go on to high school!

  Okay. But why do we use a Roman alphabet for writing in English? Why don’t we have an English alphabet? Well, that’s exactly what the Word Snoop wondered too, so I waited until it was dark, and then I crept down a few hallways to do some snooping . . .

  The English Alphabet

  One of the first things I discovered is that English, as far as languages go, is not actually very old. It only began about 1,500 years ago (just a baby!). English began in a country called—you guessed it—England.

  England is part of the islands known as Britain, which are just northwest of Europe. In the beginning, before English was even thought of, the local people in England and the surrounding countries of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland mostly spoke Celtic languages, which are completely different from English. But then, in about the fifth century AD, some noisy tribes from Germany paid England a visit. Quite a long visit, actually, and they brought their own language with them. (At least they remembered to bring something!)

  Some of these Germans were called Saxons, some were called Jutes and others Angles, which is where the word English eventually came from (think “angle-ish”). The German language they brought along is known as “Anglo-Saxon” or “Old English.” But not only did they bring their own language, they remembered to pack their own alphabet as well. (Who would travel without one?) This alphabet was called runes and is what early Old English is written in. Have a look and see what you think:

  So why don’t we use runes to write English? Well, the Germans weren’t the only ones to come and live in England. A whole lot of Christian monks from Europe and Ireland also turned up. They mainly spoke and wrote in Latin, using the Roman alphabet. After a while, naturally enough, they began to speak Anglo-Saxon/Old English too, but they wrote it in the Roman alphabet because it was easier for them than remembering all those runes. They did keep a few of the runic letters for a while, though, with lovely names like Eth, Thorn, Yogh, and Wynn. (Hmm, they sound a bit like some of the Word Snoop’s relatives . . .)

  So for a while Old English was written in a mixed-up Roman-and-runic sort of alphabet. When the Vikings turned up in the ninth and tenth centuries, the Old Norse they spoke used runes as well. But the monks, who did most of the writing, preferred to use the Roman alphabet to write Old English. Finally, William the Conqueror came across the sea from France in 1066 and conquered everyone. He and his fellow conquerors spoke and wrote in French, which also used the Roman alphabet. Those runes didn’t stand a chance!

  By the sixteenth century the English alphabet had more or less become the one we use today, with a few extra letters thrown in that the Romans didn’t have, like J, V, and W. Admittedly Thorn (remember him?) was still hanging around, although by this time it looked like the letter Y. That’s why if you ever get to see a book printed around that time, the word the is often written “ye.” (Thorn stood for the sound th.) But as time passed, even Thorn finally withered away and we were left with the alphabet we use in English now.

  Phew! That was a lot of snooping! I’m worn out, aren’t you? Although I suppose it did take thousands of years to make our alphabet, so it was bound to be a long story. And probably it will go on changing as even more thousands of years pass. Just imagine what it might look like in the year AD 4000 . . .

  Let’s Change the Alphabet

  It’s a sad thing, but not everybody who writes in English loves the Roman alphabet. (Sob!)

  The main complaint is that the Roman alphabet was really meant to write the sounds of Latin words, not English ones. In English, there are at least 40 different sounds, and yet the Roman alphabet (even with the extras thrown in, like J, V, and W) has only 26 letters. It’s not surprising that all sorts of funny mixtures of letters have been used to create the sounds. But this has meant we’ve ended up with some pretty strange spelling rules (as I’m sure you would have noticed!).

  Most of us think, Oh well, that’s the way it goes, better learn my spelling list (sigh) and be done with it . . . But the Word Snoop has discovered that some people have more adventurous minds. The famous American thinker Benjamin Franklin, for one. He had ideas about all sorts of things, including the English language. Way back in 1779, he said we should change the alphabet to make spelling more sensible. He suggested kicking out C, J, Q, W, X, and Y, and replacing them with six new letters, including a special one for the sound ng.

  Ten years later in 1789, another American, the dictionary maker Noah Webster, had a different idea. He thought we should put little lines or dots above the letters, like they have in French and German, to show the different sounds. Then in the nineteenth century yet another American, the Mormon leader Brigham Young, suggested a whole new alphabet called Deseret that would make reading easier. Fifty years after that, the novelist Mark Twain, who wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,added his complaints about our alphabet. He said, “It doesn’t know how to spell, and can’t be taught.” (Tsk tsk, bad alphabet!)

  Mark Twain thought the best idea would be to make the alphabet shorter. (Hooray!) But on the other side of the world, the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw thought exactly the opposite. (Uh-oh.) He wanted to make the alphabet longer, with more letters for all the different sounds. Even though this might make learning to read and write seem harder at first, he was sure it would be worth it in the long run.

  When Shaw died in 1950, he left instructions in his will for an “invent-a-new-sensible-alphabet” competition. A man called Kingsley Read won the prize of 500 pounds, or about 678 dollars, with his invention of the “Shavian alphabet.” But only one book was ever published in this alphabet, a play called Androcles and the Lion by—you guessed it—George Bernard Shaw!

  Invent your own Alphabet

  All these people were trying to be
useful (well, let’s hope so) with their different alphabets. But what about inventing a whole new alphabet just for fun?

  That’s what J.R.R. Tolkien, the writer of The Lord of the Rings,did. He made up an Elvish alphabet, inspired by runes, for writing his own invented Elvish language. He’d been making up languages and alphabets since he was a schoolboy.

  Here’s an example of Tolkien’s Elvish script:

  The makers of Star Trek also invented a special alphabet for the fictional language Klingon. And in the Star Wars movies the language Aurebesh has its own script too. Here’s what it looks like:

  Can you guess what I’ve written? (Yes, my name does look rather strange . . . )

  Now, if you were to make up your own alphabet, how would you go about it? You could start with another alphabet, as Tolkien did with runes, and play around with it and change it until you make it your own. Or you could invent something entirely new.

  Try using the shapes of things you see around you. Remember the Phoenician alphabet? Those letters started off as pictures of things that the Phoenicians saw in their everyday life. For example, their word for ox was “aleph,” so the letter we know as A was originally a picture of the head of an ox. B or “beth” was a house, C or “gimel” was a camel, and D or “daleth” was a door, and so on. Over time with lots of drawing, the picture became simpler and simpler, till you couldn’t tell how it had started off.