These are their stories.
…I miss Law & Order.
Yogh (capital Ȝ, small ȝ, although
it evolved over time much like other letters)
came from an Old Irish form of the letter g.
The pronunciation was a hard, throaty y-g sound,
if that makes sense. Because it looked like a Z, a lot of words that were
supposed to have yogh instead had a z. It’s how the name Mackenzie got its Z.
Thorn (capital Þ, small þ) is one of
the old th sounds. It has a straightforward pronunciation, like th in math or
thesaurus. The reason old timey
signs say “ye” is because that y is supposed to be a thorn, making it “the”. It’s
because thorn kind of looked like a y in some of its evolutions.
Eth or edh (capital Ð, small ð) is
the other of the old th sounds. It’s pronunciation is much softer than thorn’s, more
like if you barely said the th (compare how hard you th when you say the word “math”
to when you say the word “this”).
Wynn or wen (capital Ƿ, small ƿ),
from an old runic alphabet,
is an old character for w back before w existed.
When W showed up, wynn wasn’t cool anymore and faded into obscurity.
And there are plenty more where those
came from, but I’ve bored you enough for today.
Sources
Briem.net
I took a Medieval literature class in college one semester, and it turned out that everything we read was written in the original middle English.
ReplyDeleteI was all, "Hey, that wasn't in the course description!"
But it turned out to be a cool class.
I recently started following Mental Floss on FB. They are hilarious.
ReplyDeleteI remember the Dutch language sometimes uses ij in place of the y.
ReplyDeleteMental Floss makes my evenings. I've written about Norse gods and monsters and some of this seems familiar. You outdo me in research!! Sorry my duties as rare blood courier messed up my memory about my guest post. Sigh. I try. I really do. But sometimes I flup. Sorry. :-(
ReplyDeleteWhat does a y-g sound sound like?
ReplyDeleteSo, you mean when you see in old timey writing a "ye" it's correct to pronounce it "the"?
As for edh--that reminds me of a series of books I read a while back. The writer used "dd" to denote this letter. I think. I only equate the two because she said in the notes somewhere to pronounce it like the "th" in breathe.