THE English language has had a long and storied history, and it's gone through many changes throughout the years. You only have to flip through a few pages of any William Shakespeare's play to see how ...

How many vowels does English have? Five, right? A, E, I, O, U. Oh, and sometimes Y. So, six? Actually, English has at least 14 different vowel sounds and, depending on the speaker and dialect, maybe ...

I ran across a few letters that once were part of our alphabet but later faded away. One is called the thorn. It represents the "th" sound. Because you make the sound by pushing air out of your mouth, ...

Z style alphabets. Chinese uses characters tied to meaning while Japanese blends characters and syllabaries. Together they show how writing can evolve far beyond letters.