tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 14 16:40:43 1995
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Re: ye and thee
- From: Round Table Account <klirt>
- Subject: Re: ye and thee
- Date: Tue, 14 Feb 1995 19:40:41 -0500 (EST)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> from "Mark E. Shoulson" at Feb 14, 95 06:55:04 pm
<<assorted dull and possibly erroneous commentary on thorns and edths
deleted>>
>
> Hmm. This is strange: looks like I'm going up against Lawrence.
>
> I think you're wrong here, Dr. S. I recall talking about this in a class I
> once took in the history of English. It seems that thorn and edh were used
> interchangeably for *both* "th" sounds, when they were used. In fact, we
> know the old name for the edh character in English: it was called th{ae}t
> (with an ae ligature), pronounce liked "that" only with an *unvoiced* th.
> (maybe this had to do with the fact that the word "that" was often
> abbreviated as a *thorn* with a crossed ascender, which resembles a
> backwards edh). It is a common misconception that edh and thorn differed
> in voicing, but apparently this wasn't the case (looking in my textbook and
> that seems right). Basically, what happened was that they needed a way to
> represent the "th" sound, which the Latin alphabet couldn't do well for
> them. So they invented a new letter. Unfortunately, they invented two
> letters, so there was conflict. Edh didn't last long (nor did wynn, the
> early letter used for the "w" sound before the invention of "w"), but thorn
> actually lasted *quite* a while, even into early printing days (though it
> was printing that really killed it: nobody wanted the expense of an extra
> piece of type when they could get away with using t and h). And as
> mentioned above, it survived in two words: the (spelled thorn-e usually
> with the e superscripted) and that (spelled thorn-t with a superscripted
> t). And the form changed until it looked like a y, hence "ye olde
> shoppe"... for which there is *NO* evidence to pronounce the "y" like in
> "yes."
>
> ~mark
Hmmm, well, maybe I mis-remember the thing then. It has been about 17
years since I took that class and read that book. I'd look it up, but
that book (I've never sold back any of my text books) was "borrowed"
about 15 years ago and never returned. Come to think of it, I haven't
seen the woman who borrowed it in almost that long. Oh well. I'll plead
senility and admit to being wrong (possibly), just so this thread doesn't
get any longer.
Lawrence
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