QuickCheck: Has the English language lost letters in its alphabet?

The first folio of the heroic epic poem Beowulf, written primarily in the West Saxon dialect of Old English. - Courtesy of the British Library

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 much it has changed since the Middle Ages. The one thing that has stood the test of time though, is the alphabet that the language is written in. Adopted around the 700s, the English alphabet is based on Latin script and has 26 letters consisting of five vowels, nineteen consonants and two letters (Y and W) that can function as either a consonant or vowel.