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 likeye oldeare actually just some of the late 19th century’sfirst marketing ploys, meant to evoke a sentimental connection to older times. Andyehas 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 that most recently got axed are:
Eth (ð)
Theyinyeactually comes from the letter eth, which slowly merged withyover time. In its purest form, eth was pronounced like thethsound in words likethis,that, orthe. Linguistically,yeis meant to sound the same asthebut the incorrect spelling and rampant mispronunciation live on.
Thorn (þ)
Thorn is in many ways the counterpart to eth. Thorn is also pronounced with athsound, but it has a voiceless pronunciation—your vocal cords don’t vibrate when pronouncing the sound—like inthing orthought.
Today, the samethletter combo is used for both þ and ð sounds. There is a pronunciation difference—thorn is a voiceless pronunciation and eth is voiced—but that’s just something you pick up as you learn to speak. Of course, you’ll never hear about this in school, because that’s English for you.
Wynn (ƿ)
Wynn was incorporated into our alphabet to represent today’swsound. Previously, scribes used twoucharacters next to each other, but preferred one character instead and chose wynn from the runic alphabet. The doubleurepresentationbecame quite popular and eventually edged wynn out. Ouch.
Yogh (ȝ)
Yogh was historically used to denote throaty sounds like those inBachor the Scottishloch.As English evolved, yogh was quickly abandoned in favor of theghcombo. Today, the sound is fairly rare. Most often, theghsubstitute is completely silent, as in thoughor daughter.
Ash (æ)
Ash is still a functional letter in languages like Icelandic and Danish. In its original Latin, it denoted a certain type of long vowel sound, like theiinfine.In Old English, it represented a short vowel sound—somewhere betweenaande,like incat.In modern English, æ is occasionally used stylistically, like in archæology or medæval, but denotes the same sound as the lettere.
Ethel (œ)
Ethel also once represented a specific pronunciation somewhere between the two vowelsoande,though it was originally pronounced like theoiincoil.Like many clarifying distinctions, this letter also disappeared in favor of a simpler vowel lineup (a, e, i, o, u) with many different pronunciations.
This post originally appeared at OMG Facts.
