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from the æ-þƿ-is-the-name-of-the-spy-in-my-novel dept.
Along quaint New England streets, you'll probably spot a sign or two declaring itself "Ye Olde Tavern" or "Ye Old Soda Shoppe." But before you adopt a British accent and order a pint of ale inside, there's a bit of history you should know.
Phrases like ye olde are actually just some of the late 19th century's first marketing ploys, meant to evoke a sentimental connection to older times. And ye has its own complicated story—based in the history of the alphabet.
English has always been a living language, changing and evolving with use. But before our modern alphabet was established, the language used many more characters we've since removed from our 26-letter lineup.
The six letters described in the article are: ð, þ, ƿ, ȝ, æ, and œ. Orthographic history is fun!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @12:42PM
Thanks for the interesting article. Those were mostly new to me.
Esset, ß, the German double 's,' was used in early English too, wasn't it?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:35PM
I don't think so; I think you mean either the really uncommon ancient letter yogh (U+021D, ȝ) [wikipedia.org] or more probably the long s [wikipedia.org] that looks like an f : U+017F, ſ , and you can still find that one in books only 1-200 years old.
It's quite difficult to get uſed to reading texts wiþ ðose long eſſes, I find.
Maybe you just invented the Lovecraftian ligature sgh, though :-)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @03:23PM
I assume based on its appearance in some typefaces that the German ß was originally simply a ligature of a long s followed by a regular s. It therefore seems possible that English-language typesetters may have used a similar ligature in the past.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @05:06PM
You're right. I half-remembered seeing it in the Declaration of Independence and other documents of the period and thought of it as ß.
Either way there's a seventh letter to add to obsolete English orthography.
I wonder if we'll ever see OMG or BFF or the like become ligatures the way et became &.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:07PM
If you look at handwritten American stuff from the 18th Century (e.g. The Declaration of Independence), you'll see that the style of the day had a double s written as a thing that looks like an exagerated lowercase f followed by a normal s.
If I'm remembering correctly, it was "Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America Volume One" that poked fun at this when Thomas Jefferson was involved in a dialog.
So, English speakers didn't keep the German thing intact, but did their own version.
It seems that that went out with powdered wigs.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @02:31AM
That's actually a long s and s ligature (weird, I know).