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I thought this would be about Old→Middle→Modern English, in which case the lost letters are Ƿ, ð, þ and æ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English#Alphabe
by Symbiote 3y ago
I thought this would be about Old→Middle→Modern English, in which case the lost letters are Ƿ, ð, þ and æ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English#Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English#Alphabet
- dagmx 3y agoThey mention those with links at the bottom of this article as well
- EA-3167 3y agoI think it's interesting that despite our access to this sort of information, a huge number of people still don't understand that "Ye Olde" was not pronounced "Yee" and rather "The".
- rocketbop 3y agoI only learned that in university. I did a joint major in English and history, but it actually came up in a history module in an offhand comment by the lecturer. I’m not surprised it’s little known.
- km3r 3y agoI know it's pronounced 'the', but 'yee' is more fun
- hinkley 3y ago“Yee oldy hat shoppy” is the most fun.
- ashton314 3y agoYou forgot to throw “timey” in there too ;)
- contingencies 3y agoMilliner doesn't have the same ring.
- tornato7 3y agohttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q6EoRBvdVPQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q6EoRBvdVPQ
- dehrmann 3y agoMy immature side just thinks it's fun to write þorn.
- bombolo 3y agoTo mean this song, I presume: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSZBIs0gs0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSZBIs0gs0E
- klysm 3y ago[flagged]
- EA-3167 3y agoI think it's really interesting, both as a view into how quickly English was changing around the advent of the printing press, and as a way to appreciate how quickly common knowledge can be totally lost or supplanted.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y agoAgreed. Pronunciation is almost always the least interesting thing about the evolution of language.
- mdp2021 3y agoIt's very fortunate that we have a place like this where we can indulge in «intellectual curiosity» and gain relative protection from said «people». I understand you are judgemental about «people» like the character of Chris O'Dowd, Roy, in "The IT Crowd" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZv_TARX3lI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZv_TARX3lI . There is no need to focus about them. You can rest on these refreshing notions we are discussing.
- ortusdux 3y agoI feel the same way about fonts, but if the front page HN is any indication, I'm probably in the minority.
- rootusrootus 3y agoI'd think HN, of all places, with so many software developers would actually be a pretty good audience for pedantry.
- bobthepanda 3y agoOld English is just generally not a priority. There are only so many hours in the schoolday and so many schooldays in the year.
- irrational 3y agoNeed to teach kids to be self learners. I knew these facts about old English, but I wasn’t taught them in school. I learned them on my own.
- Phil987 3y agoOther kids know facts that you don't because people care about different things.
- skissane 3y ago> Old English is just generally not a priority “Ye Olde” is Middle English (or maybe even Early Modern) Old English doesn’t look like English at all. To my eyes, it looks Scandinavian-even though I know it is closer to Dutch than to Swedish/Danish/Norwegian. Actually, the closest living relative to Old English (apart from its descendants) is Frisian, a minority language of the Netherlands and northern Germany.
- ForOldHack 3y agoIt is because the Y was a character called 'thorn' and it symbol was Y drawn as a stick, pronounced the like the 'th' in the and thorn. Also s got reversed and became the z we know today. This article was written by someone who knows noYing.
- gdavisson 3y agoActually, the article ends with "The ampersand isn’t the only former member of the alphabet. Learn what led to the extinction of the thorn and the wynn." (which links to https://www.dictionary.com/e/letters-alphabet/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/letters-alphabet/)
- jjtheblunt 3y agoNot thorn. Thorn is the vertical bar with circle: unvoiced th. It’s eth (voice on, like in pronouncing “that”). Icelandic still uses both, didn’t replace both with ambiguous “th”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth
- kazinator 3y agoIf you're speaking, and don't pronounce it "yee", nobody will know that you're making a reference to the "Ye Olde" orthography.
- ozim 3y agoWell, world is huge and amount of stuff you might not know is endless. https://xkcd.com/1769/ https://xkcd.com/1769/
- jjtheblunt 3y agoThat’s eth (voiced th), which was the greek letter delta with hash across the top, visible in Icelandic still, and some typographer used a Y at some point and overlooked the loop at the bottom. Typos evidently perputuate!
- ljlolel 3y agoAlso from op site: https://www.dictionary.com/e/letters-alphabet/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/letters-alphabet/
- mathieuh 3y agoAlso yogh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogh There’s a politician in the UK called Menzies Campbell, his name is pronounced “mingis” because that “z” actually used to be a yogh
- TMWNN 3y agoThat explains why his nickname is "Ming"!
- emmelaich 3y agoVery interesting! One of the most famous Australian prime ministers was known as "Ming" and now I know why. > Menzies was proud of his Scottish heritage, and preferred his surname to be pronounced in the traditional Scottish manner (/ˈmɪŋɪs/ MING-iss) rather than as it is spelled (/ˈmɛnziz/ MEN-zeez). This gave rise to his nickname "Ming", which was later expanded to "Ming the Merciless" after the comic strip character
- ignoramous 3y agoWell, Ƿ & þ are covered in a separate article: https://www.dictionary.com/e/letters-alphabet/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/letters-alphabet/
- toastal 3y agoESL learners would probably appreciate the visual split between voiced ð & voiceless þ from the th digraph that isn’t a dental fricative (e.g. Thailand, Thomas, Thames). With such a reform we could replace “the” with standalone “ð” which would bring symmetry with the single-character indefinite article, “a”.