William Bullokar

William Bullokar was a 16th-century printer who devised a 40-letter phonetic alphabet for the English language.[1] Its characters were presented in the black-letter or "gothic" writing style commonly used at the time and also in Roman type. Taking as his model a Latin grammar by William Lily,[2] Bullokar wrote the first published grammar of the English language, in a book titled Brief Grammar for English, which appeared in 1586.[3]

Bullokar's alphabet.
  1. ^ Clair, Colin (1976). A History of European Printing. Academic Press. p. 270. ISBN 978-0-12-174850-0. Retrieved 23 September 2024.
  2. ^ "The History of English Grammar". lawyerment.com. Retrieved 20 April 2017.
  3. ^ Valeika, Laimutis; Buitkiene, Janina (2003). An Introductory Course in Theoretical English Grammar (PDF). Vilnius Pedagogical University. p. 7. Retrieved 20 April 2017.