Where is the Glasgow School of Sport?
What subjects are there at the school?
What sports can students do?
How many students are there in the school?
What happens every year?
What do many students do when they finish school?
Which competitions do students take part in?
Who has got a silver medal for swimming?
English was first written down in the 6th century. At that time, writers had to use the 23 letters of the Latin alphabet to write down what they heard. Because English has sounds that do not exist in Latin, they added letters to represent the 44 sounds of English. This resulted in some irregular spelling. After the Norman invasion of England in 1066, French became the language spoken by the king and other people in positions of power and influence. Many French words were introduced and the spelling of many English words changed to follow French patterns. The result was a rich and irregular mix of spellings. The printing press was invented in the 15th century. Many early printers of English texts spoke other first languages, especially Dutch. They often paid little attention to how English words were spelled. Sometimes technical decisions were made to give columns of print straight edges. To do this, letters were taken off the ends of words and sometimes added to words. With time, people became used to seeing words spelled in the same way. Fixed spellings were therefore created by printers' decisions. Spoken English, however, was not fixed. It continued to change, as it still does. It is no wonder that English spelling seems irregular. Words such as although, through and cough, for example, all have the same spelling at the end, but are pronounced differently. Words such as feet, eat and seize on the other hand, are spelled differently but have the same sound in the middle.