Lost letters

    If a restaurant or some other establishment wants to add an older, quainter atmosphere to their establishment, the quickest and easiest method is to add "ye olde" to the front of their name. However, what does this phrase mean? In simple terms, "ye olde" is an older antiquated method of saying. "the old". While dropping the "e" off of "olde" over the years is an understandable shortening, how in the world did the "y" in "ye" come to mean the "th" sound? As it turns out, the Europeans are to blame.

     Well, the Europeans were not the problem really. Their languages, however, are what is to blame. Originally, English included a letter called the thorn, þ. This letter had its roots in the old runic alphabet, coming from the thurisaz rune.

Now, the rune/letter changed shape many times as it was passed down through the centuries. Going from a þ, which kept the same basic shape of the rune, the letter eventually ended up looking like Ƿ. Now all of this was fine and dandy up until the printing presses first came to England. As most of the European languages didn't contain the thorn, the English printers with a quandary, what were they going to do for the letter thorn?

     Fortunately, one bright printer, whose name is lost to history, came up with the solution. In the blackletter, or Gothic script that was popular at the time, the thorn looked very similar to the letter "y". Because of this, printers started simply printing "y" for thorn, and the use of the letter died out. Eventually, English speakers started using the two letters "t" and "h" placed side by side for the "th" sound instead of the "y", and "y", was given a sound of its own.

    As often happens, old things become new again and "ye" started to make a comeback as part of "ye olde" being added to the descriptions or names of things to give them an aged feel. However, there was a problem. Instead of pronouncing the "ye" as "the", most were pronouncing it as "ye". While the spelling had come back, it left the rules for how it was supposed to be pronounced behind. While it reality it doesn't matter if you pronounce it as "the" or "ye", at least you know the way it supposed to "be".







1. http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/11/12/31017/737
2. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ye
3. http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2011/01/08/the-origin-of-ye-in-ye-olde-shoppe/
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%9A%A6
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_olde