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There are a few points wrong in this article. First of all the <y> of <ye> does not come from <ð> but from <þ>. Secondly in Old English the letters þ and ð are

• deleted 10y ago
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• metafunctor 10y ago
  Seems like you know quite a bit about the subject. Would you care to enlighten us with lesser knowledge about how <y> came from <ð> instead of <þ>? The article says “ðe” became “ye” because of the voicing, but you say voicing plays no part – so as an amateur linguist I'm already confused. Was “the” originally spelled “þe” instead of “ðe”?
  • acqq 10y ago
    I've just found in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_olde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_olde "The anachronistic use of "ye olde" dates at least to the late 18th century, as seen in the image at below right (image 1908). The use of the term "ye" to mean "the" is based in Early Modern English, in which the could be written as þe, employing the Old English letter thorn, þ. During the Tudor period, the scribal abbreviation for þe was EME ye.svg ("þͤ" or "þᵉ" with modern symbols); here, the letter ⟨þ⟩ is combined with the letter ⟨e⟩" Wikipedia links to MW: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ye[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ye[2] "Origin and Etymology of ye alteration of Middle English þe the, from Old English þē; from the use of the letter y by printers and scribes of late Middle English to represent þ (th) of earlier manuscripts First Known Use: 1551" And finally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)#Old_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)#Old_English "The letter thorn was used for writing Old English very early on, as was ð; unlike ð, however, thorn remained in common use through most of the Middle English period. Both letters were used for the phoneme /θ/, sometimes by the same scribe."
  • Xophmeister 10y ago
    Yes, it was originally "þe". When printing presses came around, they didn't have a thorn character (because they were imported from countries that didn't use them), and so they used a "y" (in Gothic type, they look almost identical).
  • filmor 10y ago
    It was spelled "þe". As the writing of þ evolved, it got closer to a "y" and so this was chosen by printers as a replacement character. The Wikipedia page on the þ has a section for its use in the English language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)#English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)#English
  • laumars 10y ago
    The reason why thorn (þ) became synonymous with <y> is because the character evolved to look similar[1] so when the printing press was invented people used the similar looking <y> character in place of the thorn. So the whole <y> / <þ> relationship wasn't born from pronunciation but rather technological innovation. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/EME_ye.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/EME_ye.s...
    • opk 10y ago
      It wasn't a case of the character evolving. It was more that thorn didn't exist on printing presses imported from Germany where they had been invented and y was chosen as a common substitute.
      • laumars 10y ago
        Both happened. I did already mentioned the printing press point but there's a reason y was used specifically. The thorn character originally looked more like the letter p but with time it lost the loop at the top of the character and became more like the letter y. (See [1] in my previous post for example)
    • balabaster 10y ago
      Having grown up in England and never really paying this much attention to the etymology of the English language, I had always assume Ye to be pronounced exactly as it looks... Yee. Am I right in interpreting what you're saying is that it's actually pronounced as "the" because the y is really just a print substitute because of the lack of thorn character on the press but would have still been pronounced when read as if it were the thorn character? If that's the case, you have just unlocked a fascination of the English language I never had until this exact moment. Thank you, no more work is getting done today.
      • Sharlin 10y ago
        The "ye" business is the first thing the article mentions...
  • aap_ 10y ago
    The other comments already explained it. I just wanted to add that we use <> to notate writing, so <þ> is the letter þ, not the sound. /þ/ and [þ] are the phoneme and the sound þ respectively (I don't want to go into details about the difference).
  • nl 10y ago
    Others have answered your question quite well. But as an interesting aside, one of the reasons spelling is so hard in English is because the printing press arrived just as the great vowel shift[1] was occurring. The printing press resulted in (somewhat, eventually) standardized spelling, but some words were "standardized" before and some after their vowels shifted. That means sometimes words are spelt like they sound (now) but other times they are spelled like they used to sound (or like the letters in them used to be pronounced). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
• deleted 10y ago
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